And so the world starts up again as if nothing happened. Drinks, parties, conferences, dinners: we continued without thinking about who is no longer here, what has broken down, and who is still sick. There are a large number of previously healthy Dutch people who did not immediately jump up after a collision with covid. They can literally not stand on their feet sometimes due to a lack of energy.
What Covid taught us was that the syndrome of long-term disabling energy depletion, which we also know well from ME and chronic fatigue syndrome, can apparently arise spontaneously after a relatively mild virus infection. People are sick to death of it and yet it hardly has any urgency. Long covid disrupts lives, but not society. The patients do not die, they are not admitted, because doctors cannot do anything for them.
If I had lung covid, not only the disease but also the frustration would fall on me. A lot of money is being allocated for research. And what do those studies do? monitor. They collect questionnaires at RIVM. They count the type and duration of the complaints, they ask a thousand times: how are you? And a thousand times you answer: bad.
On the site amazingerasmusmc.nl – no lack of modesty in Rotterdam – can be read more about their lung covid study: „Researchers […] Corona patients who have long-term complaints will be followed for several years. They not only look at how corona affects their physical and mental health, but also whether and how patients can resume their work and social life.”
You read it right. Exactly zero hypotheses are tested and zero treatments tried. These physician-researchers are going to carefully observe the desperate lung covid patient lying on the floor at their feet as if it were a new animal species. This research will soon provide a prognosis at most. A diminutive view in a hopeless situation, which, despite the large research budget, remains completely incurable.
I have a hunch why no one dares to burn their fingers on it. There is a significant chance that for the treatment of lung covid you will have to descend into the world of alternative healers, herbal women and medicine men. That the solution had been in the Etos all along, or something embarrassing. That you have to use something medically unusual with all the associated risks, for example that you actually have to agree with such a ‘wappie’.
Remember that doctor who treated with hydroxychloroquine, azithromycin and zinc? He was publicly taunted and reviled. Partly right, because several studies have now shown that hydroxychloroquine in particular does more harm than good. But zinc? You don’t want to bend your knees to fish that mineral out of the trash as part of a working lung covid cocktail. Just think of the reactions of the mates in the partnership. How will the professional association respond to such a research question? But earlier it was also necessary to admit that Maurice de Hond was right about the role of aerosols in infections; because of rather convincing evidence, that could no longer be ignored.
The long covid field is already bursting with dogmas. Just like with the wappies: solutions are set aside with great certainty without being examined. This is how the national long covid expertise center C-support writes that “additional vitamins and nutritional supplements are not necessary”† In reality, they have no clue if that is so.
Doctors, meanwhile, watch, shaking their heads, how desperate patients do not wait quietly until they have been observed for years, but go in search of solutions on their own: cocktails that would only help theoretically and of which it is unknown what health risks are involved and whether those risks might be worth it. to be. Don’t blame them. After all, living a life is fun too.
Covid has and continues to destroy careers, businesses, families and dreams. A large part of the Netherlands can now continue with its life, but we are leaving a lot of patients behind. They deserve more than just being observed.
Rosanne Hertzberger is a microbiologist.
A version of this article also appeared in NRC Handelsblad on 26 February 2022
A version of this article also appeared in NRC on the morning of February 26, 2022