Ed Yong on Long Covid and ME/CFS

Ed Yong has been one of the most important journalists covering long covid and ME/CFS, beginning in 2021 when many psychiatrists were still claiming that both illnesses were manifestations of depression. His new essay in the New York Times is a must read for anyone interested in the sociology of disease. Here is an excerpt:

Covering long Covid solidified my view that science is not the objective, neutral force it is often misconstrued as. It is instead a human endeavor, relentlessly buffeted by our culture, values and politics. As energy-depleting illnesses that disproportionately affect women, long Covid and M.E./C.F.S. are easily belittled by a sexist society that trivializes women’s pain, and a capitalist one that values people according to their productivity.

Like the pandemic writ large, long Covid is not just a health problem. It is a social one, and must also be understood as such.

Dismissal and gaslighting — you’re just depressed; it’s in your head — are among the worst aspects of long Covid, and can be as crushing as the physical suffering. They’re hard to fight because the symptoms can be so beyond the realm of everyday experience as to seem unbelievable, and because those same symptoms can sap energy and occlude mental acuity. 

Many long-haulers have told me that they’ve used my work to finally get through to skeptical loved ones, employers and doctors — a use that, naïvely, I hadn’t previously considered.

The entire essay is here, paywalled but most law school libraries probably have subscriptions.

Readers of The Faculty Lounge may recall that I have written much the same, beginning in 2015. Here is an excerpt:

I have not spoken much about ME/CFS, even to close friends, because it has been very hard to bring myself just to say the word “fatigue,” which is a trivializing and demeaning description of the illness. People with ME/CFS are not tired or worn out in any ordinary sense; rather we are neurologically disabled.

Almost every other ME/CFS sufferer has at one time or another been referred to a psychiatrist, after being told dismissively that “there is nothing physically wrong with you.”

Too many employers, insurance carriers, schools, and physicians have failed to recognize the crippling nature of this disease – because “everyone gets fatigued” – and that is not going to change unless we are willing to acknowledge and talk about it openly.

Sometimes, sick people need respect more than anything else.

If you have the stomach to read about some of the medical dismissiveness of long covid, you can begin here.

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