A dreadful assessment when it comes from family or friends; even more so, when it comes from a medical professional. It is a frequent answer for medical anomalies – the patient does not fit a checklist of symptoms – worse still, there is no neat laboratory test that can provide a diagnosis with a suitable insurance code.
COVID-19, the most catastrophic event of our lifetimes, has so many elements of uncertainty that medical professionals most often answer honestly: “I don’t know.” Consider: why do some people seem to have it, and show no symptoms?; once one had contracted it, can one contract it again?; will a vaccine be developed?; how many versions of COVID-19 are there?: And how many more mutations might occur over the next year?... the list is long. In general though, few now claim: “It is just all in your head.”
In October 2006, Ryan Prior, a vigorous high school student inexplicably lost his energy and became lethargic. His condition would eventually be labeled “Chronic Fatigue Syndrome,” with its unfortunate connotations. Another term, more medicalese, is also used: Myalgic encephalomyelitis. Prior eventually recovered, he became a reporter, and in 2015 decided to do a documentary on this medical condition which he claims affects 10 million Americans (Wikipedia states somewhere between one and two and a half million). Prior did a good job.
Few things are as compelling as listening to a spectrum of individuals tell their story. For example, there is Jamison Hill of California stating how he could once dead lift 400 lbs. Now, he says he is lucky to lift 40 lbs. Others describe how they too were quite active and suddenly they were spending much time on their backs. One woman describes going to a demonstration, waving a sign, to attract attention to CFS, but then being completely “wiped out” for two weeks. Dr. Ron Davis, who is the Director of the Genome Technology Center at Stanford, has a son who has been severely impacted by CFS, and is trying to determine the genes that might be involved. Prior also interviews Hillary Johnson, author of a ground-breaking work on CFS, “Osler’s Web.”
Prior is not very complimentary of the CDC’s standoffish response. He does go to Harvard, and finds a more sympathetic physician, Anthony Kamaroff, who now tracks the disease, which STILL has no “biomarkers,” and states that the name itself makes it more difficult to secure research funding, vis-à-vis Parkinson’s, for example. One of the interviewees says: “I hope I get cancer so people will be more sympathetic.”
Prior also mentions a couple other medical conditions, due to the anomalies involved, which receive a similar “It is all in your head” treatment: Lyme Disease and the Gulf War Syndrome. I’d highly recommend Andrea Caesar’s “A Twist of Lyme,” with the telling subtitle: “Battling a Disease that ‘Doesn’t Exist’”.
I was impressed that Prior referenced a book I had read long ago: Thomas Kuhn’s “The Structure of Scientific Revolutions.” Things do not change, we do. It sometimes requires a paradigm shift in thinking… which took four decades for Agent Orange. And for COVID-19? Well, we are all in the laboratory, watching this unplanned grand experiment.
Ryan Prior did a very good job covering yet another human aliment that admittedly I had not thought about for a decade or so. 5-stars.