(Molly Bruns, Headline USA) A recent study revealed that so-called “long COVID” is largely a myth and young people’s symptoms are usually due to lack of exercise and personal communication.
The Journal of the American Medical Association Network Open followed hundreds of young people, ages 12-25, in Norway. Subjects received COVID testing at the beginning of a six-month period, and again at the end.
According to Just the News, researchers from Norway, Sweden, England, China and Australia noted no significant differences between infected and uninfected test subjects who showed symptoms for long COVID.
The researchers concluded that young people who experienced a “significant increase in mental distress” throughout the pandemic are likely suffering from something other than long COVID.
“What you can see is that the fatigue and neuroticism and emotional maladjustment and loneliness and depression are all linked” when they are plotted out, epidemiologist Vinay Prasad wrote in his newsletter. “What you also see is that none of this has anything to do with prior COVID-19.”
The study also revealed that despite the government’s best efforts to brand the alleged disease as a danger, the real danger has little to do with actual illness.
“[Long COVID] was not associated with biological markers specific to viral infection, but with initial symptom severity,” the report on the study read. “Low physical activity” and “loneliness” were two common denominators, along with specific “personality traits.”
For a time, long COVID appeared to be a “mass disabling event;” however, this and other studies reveal that the symptoms are not as serious or common as originally anticipated.
Despite this fact, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has not reneged long COVID’s classification as a “physical disorder” that “causes crippling fatigue that may last a lifetime.”
In a recent virtual seminar CDC’s chief of chronic viral diseases, Elizabeth Unger, discussed the organization’s long COVID program where she claimed 80% of the population could have the disease.
When fears of long COVID first surfaced, the National Institutes of Health received $1.15 billion in funding to address the issue.
Francis Collins, director of NIH at the time, said his team of scientists would study “the underlying biological cause of these prolonged symptoms,” and “enhance our knowledge of basic biology of how humans recover from infection.”
Long COVID is classified as “post-infective fatigue syndrome” by the JAMA Network Open study, which occurs in the aftermath of many diseases.
