Dr Charles Shepherd wrote to the Guardian (16/10/22) asking why their Long Covid coverage does not mention ME/CFS. The correspondence is shown below and the original article can be seen from the link below
Letter to the Guardian
Dear Bianca
Re: Article on Expert views on Long Covid Future Solutions
I have just been reading your article in the Guardian with all the comments from ‘experts’ who are all perplexed by both the cause and management of Long Covid
I was very surprised and disappointed to see that not one of them appeared to acknowledge or fully understand the very important clinical and pathological overlaps with ME/CFS
The ME Association has been providing information and support to people with Long Covid dating right back to May 2020 – when it became apparent that significant numbers of people were not recovering from COVID-19 and developing a post-covid syndrome that included symptoms that are the same as ME/CFS. And in some cases people with Long Covid were meeting diagnostic criteria for ME/CFS.
Since then we have continued to cover all aspects of Long Covid on our social media where we regularly report on research and treatment developments.
We are very happy for people with Long Covid to join the ME patient community and many now take part in our discussions on MEA Facebook.
We have also been critical of the way in which many clinicians and researchers have failed to acknowledge the important clinical and causative overlaps between Long Covid and ME/CFS and the failure to realise that what we know about the cause and management of of ME/CFS – especially activity and energy management – could help people with Long Covid.
MEA GUIDE TO LONG COVID AND ME/CFS
This is our new guide to the clinical and pathological overlaps between ME/CFS and Long Covid
This guide also explains how we can help people with Long Covid who have ME/CFS like symptoms – debilitating fatigue and post exertional malaise, cognitive dysfunction, unrefreshing sleep, orthostatic intolerance, PoTS etc
Free MEA website download:
I hope you will take this information into account when you next cover Long Covid
Kind regards
Dr Charles Shepherd
Hon Medical Adviser, MEA (UK)
Reply from the Guardian
Dear Charles,
thank you for your email. I am very familiar with the parallels between long Covid and ME/CFS, and I have previously reported on this in some detail.
The brief for this particular long Covid story was to ask experts how they envisage long Covid playing out in the coming years. Given the limits of space for each expert, and for the overall piece, it was not possible to pursue the ME/CFS angle in this case. However I chose to interview the disability expert Dr Laura Mauldin to centre the long Covid discussion in the bigger context of disability, which includes ME/CFS.
I hope you'll appreciate that it is not always possible to include ME/CFS in every story on long Covid.
Sincerely,
Bianca Nogrady