A Chink of Daylight (For Some) With Long Covid?

Paul Garner (Professor of Infectious Diseases at Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine) has described his experiences of attempting to deal with a Long Covid infection (https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/jun/10/long-covid-hope-recovery-symptoms). Garner notes that one million people, in the UK, have developed Long Covid (more properly termed the Post-Covid Syndrome). He also points out that different patients show very varied collections and durations of symptoms. Garner obviously found it difficult to deal with the lack of an explanation for his condition. He also initially felt there was no certainty he would ever be 'cured'. Garner emphasises there is no guarantee that what worked for him, will work for others. He eventually got help from the Recovery Norway website, that helps people with chronic fatigue symptoms. He also had the aid of a mentor. It was put to him that the Covid19 infection had induced a physiological stress response. This put his brain into a state of high activation, influencing his endocrine, heart, gastrointestinal and immune systems. His experienced fatigue was his brain 'shutting him down' inorder to recover. Normally, fatigue would disappear, when he recovered from the infection. His nervous system scanned for alarm signals and, in his case, detected 'false fatigue alarms'. Garner's body may have become classically conditioned to those signals and this became the source of his Long Covid. He was eventually able to break the link, using a combination of positive thinking, meditation and light exercise. If nothing else, his experiences at least suggest that some Long Covid sufferers can escape from their condition.