Far-left Senator Bernie Sanders has proposed a massive investment in research into long Covid, a condition that many experts remain unconvinced is the big public health threat people claim.
Sanders, of Vermont, hopes to establish a $10 billion project to accelerate research and create a large database of Covid patients for doctors to share information with each other.
His proposal would also create a centralized committee made up in part of actual long Covid patients to oversee research grant disbursements and the status of government-funded research.
The CDC said in 2022 that seven percent of Americans reported ever experiencing long Covid, about 18 million.
But doctors have said that overly broad definitions of the condition (a catch-all term for about 200 different symptoms) have led to a gross exaggeration of the risks and how common it is, leading to many misdiagnoses.
Senator Sanders’ far-reaching Covid proposal would allocate $1 billion over 10 years to research and development of treatments. However, the proposal is still in committee and will have to advance before going to the floor for a vote.
Long Covid is a constellation of symptoms such as brain fog, fatigue, headache, difficulty sleeping, changes in smell or taste, neck pain, constipation, irregular heartbeat, and many more.
However, many experts have said that the long-term symptoms that some patients experience after an infection are no different from those caused by other viruses, such as the flu.
A recent study found that patients who had been hospitalized for the flu were much more likely to seek medical care for certain conditions than those who had received hospital treatment for a Covid-19 infection.
They also found that those who were hospitalized for flu were almost twice as likely to be treated for a neurological disorder in the following year, compared to their Covid patient counterparts.
An Australian doctor previously told DailyMail.com that the “Long Covid” designation can cause unnecessary fear “and, in some cases, hypervigilance to longer-term symptoms that can impede recovery.”
Last year, scientists from the UK, US and Denmark analyzed the definition of long Covid from several global health organisations, including the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) and the World Health Organisation. Health (WHO).
They found that any new symptoms that emerged after a confirmed or suspected Covid infection could be considered consistent with long Covid, resulting in more than 200 symptoms associated with it.
Many doctors are not convinced that long Covid exists as a disease in itself, but rather believe that different symptoms could mean other diagnoses, such as hypertension, diabetes, lupus and even cancer.
But with millions of Americans reporting similar symptoms for weeks or months after recovering from Covid, and a cost of about $11,000 per person In the form of lost income and medical spending, the federal government has considered the long Covid crisis.
Senator Sanders, who released a draft of his proposal this week, saying: ‘In my opinion, it is past time for Congress to treat Long COVID as the public health emergency that it is.
“Congress must act now to ensure that a treatment is found for this terrible disease that affects millions of Americans and their families.”
The proposal aims to speed up the process of research and development of treatments by speeding up the amount of time it takes to review, approve and distribute grant money to scientists.
In addition to including a major funding boost for long-Covid research over 10 years, the project would give doctors better tools to diagnose patients by establishing a database of patients’ symptoms, which aims to improve the diagnosis.
Limited evidence about the prevalence of long Covid, how it affects different organ systems, what exactly causes it, and the extent to which certain patients’ symptoms could be attributed to fear and anxiety about it have made doctors hesitant to use the term. .
Patients have stated that they have often had to convince doctors that their symptoms were real, describing feelings of having been “turned on” by doctors who do not believe them.
Senator Sanders said: “Too many long COVID patients have struggled to have their symptoms taken seriously.” Too many medical professionals have dismissed or misdiagnosed their health problems. That has to change.
‘We cannot turn our backs on the millions of Americans who continue to suffer from long COVID. “I look forward to hearing from patients, experts and researchers about what we need to do to address this crisis.”
There are still no specific treatments for long Covid, something Senator Sanders hopes his moonshot initiative can change about a year after its implementation.
The proposal is still in the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, chaired by Senator Sanders, and will need to be approved by that committee before it can be voted on in the full Senate, where Democrats have a very large advantage. narrow. most.