Long haul COVID is sometime referred to as Post-Virus Syndrome. I prefer the more general, Post-Infection Syndrome. Most people with a CFS/ME diagnosis fall under that classification and causation. It appears to impact about 10% of people with a certain severity of COVID. The profile is very similar to ME/CFS: “were predominately white females, between the ages of 30 and 60, who lived in the United States. “[NIH]

Forget about Disability etc

A few people may get it, those with positive test results for something wrong, for example a SPECT scan of the brain. In general, long haul covid show no atypical results from standard medical tests. This has been the situation for ME/CFS for decades. Some people may get it granted for up to one year… and then will get turned down on renewal. The fact that they may not have been hospitalized or had a formal diagnosis may make a claim more difficult “More than half never sought hospital care. Only 8 percent said that they’d been admitted to the hospital for COVID-19.”[NIH] Insurance Company: “We need clinical evidence that you had COVID…”

How will the insurance company respond?

From ME/CFS experience, it will be suggested that it is either psychosomatic, or work-phobic , or someone using it as an excuse not to work, or psychologically crippled from COVID stress. There is nothing wrong with the patient according to medical tests. Hence, it is psychological or attitude. Benefit denied.

COVID cases grew exponentially, Long Haul Cases will decline with Exponential decline or decay. Unfortunately, insurance company will view it as linear decline…if 50% recover in 9 months, then anyone still with it at 18 months must be a faker.

Probable Cause … microbiome dysfunction

Microbiome dysfunction, even when shown, would be viewed as an experimental or research diagnosis and thus, not applicable for disability. This gets much worst because almost no physician knows now to effectively deal with a microbiome dysfunction apart from a Fecal Matter Transplant (which may require multiple attempts using different donors — they still have not figured out compatibility and compensation vectors for FMT). FMT in the US is restricted to a very small number of conditions, and long haul covid is unlikely to be included for decades.

Technically, sufficient information appears to be available on PubMed (National Library of Medicine). It is not consolidated into a cookbook formula but spread across over 3000 separate articles. Clinical MDs do not have time to consume this, and applying it would be contrary to existing standards of care. Their supervisors will veto it (been there, seen that!)

Bottom Line

The cure for Long Haul Covid is likely the same cure as ME/CFS. From existing studies, we know that a percentage will spontaneous recover every 6 months, with the percentage decreasing over time. Some will never recover. A few will, like ME/CFS. continue to get worse.

My hope is that some long haulers will get their 16s results (from one of these providers), upload it to Microbiome Prescription and in time, we’ll see the pattern and how to address it.