Exercise advice for long covid may be doing more harm than good

https://archive.is/E4wjH#selection-974.0-974.3

“I think there can be no excuse for doing further trials on exercise that don’t make it explicitly clear that if it works, it only works for a subgroup of people and they need to be really carefully defined, and that any results that are presented should not generalise across the entire long covid population,” says Caroline Dalton at Sheffield Hallam University, UK.

Perhaps most importantly, the study was patchy in its assessment of one of the most debilitating aspects of long covid: post-exertional malaise. This is a worsening of symptoms, such as extreme fatigue, after exertion that isn’t proportional to the amount of activity that was done. “Post-exertional malaise is the most unifying and profound and debilitating aspect [of long covid],” says Danny Altmann at Imperial College London. “It’s incredibly non-trivial.”

“The thing that has messed up my life is the post-exertional malaise,” says Margaret O’Hara at the charity Long Covid Support, who has long covid. “So any study which isn’t addressing that is just tinkering around the edges.”

This situation is reminiscent of chronic fatigue syndrome, also called myalgic encephalomyelitis (ME/CFS), which may be caused by an infection and commonly involves post-exertional malaise. In 2011, The Lancet published the PACE trial, which concluded that graded exercise therapy – incrementally increasing the duration and intensity of activity from an achievable baseline – moderately improved fatigue and the ability to perform daily tasks in people with ME/CFS.

#MaskUp #WearAMask #CovidRealist #CovidIsAirbone #LongCovid #YallMasking #DisabledLiberation #DisabilityJustice #HealthSelfDefense

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De-transition is Gender Liberation, Too

Here's to never being satisfied and forever changing.

https://drdevonprice.substack.com/p/detransition-is-gender-liberation

Of course our path to self-discovery is flawed and never-ending. The widespread adoption of gay marriage necessarily meant the possibility of gay divorce. So why is it a problem for the embrace of transition to mean more detransitions?
Is detransition not a form of gendered freedom, too? Are we not all owed the fantasy of the escape from all this fucking gender, even if the utopia we try to build is constructed from the bars of our old prison cells?

I really don’t know what the fuck I “am” anymore. Gender liberation is not really a question of individual identity anyway. I understand that all existence is action-based and relational, and that an identity barely matters at all when it’s not an activity that we do.

So what do I want to do? I want to grow my hair out. I miss the feeling of skirts swishing against my legs. I want to hold hands and stare into a lover’s eyes and feel that they find me beautiful. I want to get railed like a fleshlight and then tucked into bed. I want to cuddle with friends on the couch without them fucking sexualizing me. I want to dance at the street festival without ever taking note of who might be looking.

I want to try climbing a rock wall and see if I have the strength for it. I want to take a break from testosterone to see if I become less anxious and impatient. I want to get heavier dumbbells and build up my chest. I want to bake more. I want to sit still in the park watching the waves. I want to make my peace with my body growing older and getting weak. I want to keep walking down the street and saying hello to my neighbors no matter how I look, no matter who I become, accepting that who I am will be forever changing.

My detransition in 2020 helped me to better understand what is good for me. So did my initial transition and then my retransition. And yet they were all incomplete. If I were to ever detransition again, it would surely bring me insight, and reflect another truth of me while still never representing the whole truth. Some trans people truly identify very strongly as women or men, or as enbies, but for me, being trans is all about feeling uncomfortable with any category, and with the action of breaking away again and again and again. It’s the disavowal, not the desire. I’ve always been better at being a hater than at loving things.

#MaskUp #WearAMask #CovidRealist #CovidIsAirbone #LongCovid #YallMasking #DisabledLiberation #DisabilityJustice #HealthSelfDefense

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Three Long-term Long COVID Patients – Three Rapid Recoveries: The Monoclonal Antibodies Strike Again!

https://www.healthrising.org/blog/2025/12/12/monoclonal-antibodies-long-covid/

Dec 12, 2025

Last week, in “Exploring the Effects of Pemivibart Monoclonal Antibody Infusion in Long COVID: A Case Series Offering Initial Clinical Insights“, John Baratta’s team at the University of North Carolina’s COVID clinic reported on another three long-COVID patients who underwent dramatic recoveries after receiving a different monoclonal antibody.
The drug used, Pemivibart or Pemgarda, is not FDA-approved for any use but can be used in people who are immunocompromised in certain situations. Like other monoclonal antibodies, Pemgarda binds to the viral protein that latches onto cell cell, thereby preventing viral entry. Pemgarda appears to able to neutralize a wide range of Omicron-lineage coronavirus variants.

Monoclonal Antibody Field Heats Up
“We believe that monoclonal antibodies are key to managing the ongoing burden of endemic COVID-19 disease in all forms.” Marc Elia, Invivyd

Monoclonal antibodies appear to be a growth field. Betsy Ladyzhets reported that a Pemgarda LC trial is underway and Invivyd, whose motto is “Tenaciously Working to Fight Viral Threats“, recently announced the formation of the aptly named SPEAR (Spike Protein Elimination and Recovery) group that will “structure and guide anticipated clinical monoclonal antibody (mAB) long COVID trials”.

ME/CFS and other Post-Infectious Illnesses
Because a variety of viral triggers may be present – and some people don’t have a viral trigger – ME/CFS, fibromyalgia, POTS, and other diseases face more of a challenge when it comes to producing pathogen-directed monoclonal antibodies. Studies finding EBV reactivation in long COVID has triggered more interest in this very complex virus.
Monoclonal antibodies to Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) have been and are being developed, but most are used in research and are not available for public use. They should appear over time, though, and may be helpful in diseases such as ME/CFS, which have long been associated with EBV.

Masks are community care❤️‍🔥😷 free masks: maskbloc.org

• Remember: covid is not over, 50% of infections are asymptomatic, minimum 10% of infections end up in long COVID, re-infections wreck us, COVID spreads and moves like cigarette smoke, think of the people around you and you as people who are all day smoking, it becomes more visual to understand how COVID moves.
• There is no way to “train” the immune system because it is not a muscle. there is a common misconception that exposure to harmful germs strengthens the immune system. viral diseases like COVID, flu, measles weaken the immune system, leaving the possibility of lasting damage. The reality is that you don't build your immunity with repeated infections, vaccines strengthen the immune system by teaching it to recognize pathogens without all the risks. Focusing on infection prevention is key.
• Rapid antigen tests give many false negatives.
• Solving the pandemic was never in the cards for the capitalist world.
• Instead, the explicit goal of the ruling class has been to make the pandemic simply disappear from public perception. Any reminder of the existence of a highly-transmissible, highly-dangerous, mass-disabling disease could trigger panic, or worse: organized, militant labor action. Averting this crisis required a careful campaign of culture-crafting; the people themselves needed to become convinced that there was no reason to fight. Consent for protracted mass infection needed to be manufactured.

“The cold truth of the matter is that the motive behind COVID minimization is greed and social control. (…) Solving the pandemic was never in the cards for the capitalist world. Instead, the explicit goal of the ruling class has been to make the pandemic simply disappear from public perception.” Let Them Eat Plague! http://clarion.unity-struggle-unity.org/

#MaskUp #WearAMask #CovidRealist #CovidIsAirbone #LongCovid #YallMasking #DisabledLiberation #DisabilityJustice #HealthSelfDefense

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Sticky Nets and Damaged Blood Vessels: A Long COVID Subset is Born?

https://www.healthrising.org/blog/2026/05/02/blood-vessels-long-covid/

May 2, 2026

A recent analysis on Health Rising of 11 recent ME/CFS studies pointed to two main themes – one of which involved the blood vessels. Recently, a nicely sized (n=94) long-COVID study from Mass General Hospital (Harvard), titled “Endovascular profiles linked to neutrophil activation in children and young adults with long COVID“, dug deep into that question.

It’s also a rare study that included children and young adults (< 25 yrs) and determined whether the coronavirus spike protein could be harming the blood vessels.

That last focus by itself is potentially a very big deal. In their recently published review article, “Virus-induced endothelial senescence as a cause and driving factor for ME/CFS and long COVID: mediated by a dysfunctional immune system“, Nunes and Pretorius proposed that an acute viral infection (not limited to the coronavirus) could be harming blood vessels found everywhere from the blood-brain barrier, to the blood vessels in the brain, to the gut and the skeletal muscles in ME/CFS and long COVID. (Talk about a systemic problem!)

The Mighty (or Not So Mighty) Blood Vessels
We rely on our blood vessels to deliver energy (oxygen) and nutrients to the tissues; to build new muscles; to cleanse the tissues, including the brain, of toxins; and to direct the immune system to areas of infection.
As we work our way through this series, we’ll see that several components of the blood vessels may be affected in long COVID and ME/CFS.

Blood vessels are composed of a thin line of endothelial cells perched on a basement membrane, which is surrounded by smooth muscle (pumping action) and finally an outer connective tissue layer.

The endothelial cells are the great workers of the blood vessels. They’re responsible for opening (nitric oxide) or closing the blood vessels (endothelin-1) to increase or reduce blood flows.
In the blood-brain barrier, they form the tight junctions that limit unwanted substances from reaching the brain. Like leaky gut, a leaky brain barrier could be causing toxic/damaging substances to end up in the wrong place. They also play a key role in something called “neurovascular” coupling, which ensures that more active areas of the brain get the blood/oxygen they need. It’s pretty clear that neurovascular coupling is impaired in these diseases.

Masks are community care❤️‍🔥😷 free masks: maskbloc.org

• Remember: covid is not over, 50% of infections are asymptomatic, minimum 10% of infections end up in long COVID, re-infections wreck us, COVID spreads and moves like cigarette smoke, think of the people around you and you as people who are all day smoking, it becomes more visual to understand how COVID moves.
• There is no way to “train” the immune system because it is not a muscle. there is a common misconception that exposure to harmful germs strengthens the immune system. viral diseases like COVID, flu, measles weaken the immune system, leaving the possibility of lasting damage. The reality is that you don't build your immunity with repeated infections, vaccines strengthen the immune system by teaching it to recognize pathogens without all the risks. Focusing on infection prevention is key.
• Rapid antigen tests give many false negatives.
• Solving the pandemic was never in the cards for the capitalist world.
• Instead, the explicit goal of the ruling class has been to make the pandemic simply disappear from public perception. Any reminder of the existence of a highly-transmissible, highly-dangerous, mass-disabling disease could trigger panic, or worse: organized, militant labor action. Averting this crisis required a careful campaign of culture-crafting; the people themselves needed to become convinced that there was no reason to fight. Consent for protracted mass infection needed to be manufactured.

“The cold truth of the matter is that the motive behind COVID minimization is greed and social control. (…) Solving the pandemic was never in the cards for the capitalist world. Instead, the explicit goal of the ruling class has been to make the pandemic simply disappear from public perception.” Let Them Eat Plague! http://clarion.unity-struggle-unity.org/

#MaskUp #WearAMask #CovidRealist #CovidIsAirbone #LongCovid #YallMasking #DisabledLiberation #DisabilityJustice #HealthSelfDefense

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Impaired function and delayed regeneration of dendritic cells in COVID-19

https://journals.plos.org/plospathogens/article?id=10.1371/journal.ppat.1009742

Disease manifestations in COVID-19 range from mild to severe illness associated with a dysregulated innate immune response. Alterations in function and regeneration of dendritic cells (DCs) and monocytes may contribute to immunopathology and influence adaptive immune responses in COVID-19 patients. We analyzed circulating DC and monocyte subsets in 65 hospitalized COVID-19 patients with mild/moderate or severe disease from acute illness to recovery and in healthy controls.

Persisting reduction of all DC subpopulations was accompanied by an expansion of proliferating Lineage−HLADR+ cells lacking DC markers. Increased frequency of CD163+ CD14+ cells within the recently discovered DC3 subpopulation in patients with more severe disease was associated with systemic inflammation, activated T follicular helper cells, and antibody-secreting cells. Persistent downregulation of CD86 and upregulation of programmed death-ligand 1 (PD-L1) in conventional DCs (cDC2 and DC3) and classical monocytes associated with a reduced capacity to stimulate naïve CD4+ T cells correlated with disease severity. Long-lasting depletion and functional impairment of DCs and monocytes may have consequences for susceptibility to secondary infections and therapy of COVID-19 patients.

#MaskUp #WearAMask #CovidRealist #CovidIsAirbone #LongCovid #YallMasking #DisabledLiberation #DisabilityJustice #HealthSelfDefense

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Still On the Margins: Long COVID Patients of Color

https://disabilityvisibilityproject.com/2023/12/02/still-on-the-margins-long-covid-patients-of-color/

Angela Meriquez Vázquez, MSW
Before getting COVID-19 here in Los Angeles in March 2020, I was a runner for nearly two decades. In fact, the morning of the day I first started feeling sick, I had gone for a great three mile run. It’s been over three years of Long COVID symptoms and I now embrace my new identity as a disabled person of color. Still, it has been a journey of reflecting on my own privilege, and understanding the new (to me) ways in which I and people like me, continue to be marginalized — not just in healthcare or employment, but also in our own justice movements.

With Long COVID, I now have several ongoing chronic illnesses, including myalgic encephalomyelitis (ME), formerly known as chronic fatigue syndrome or more simply, ME/CFS. It is a neuroimmune condition whose hallmark symptom is post-exertional symptom exacerbation, which means when I push myself past a dynamic, often unpredictable threshold, I will experience a relapse of my worst symptoms like insomnia, trouble concentrating and confusion, sleep apnea, heart palpitations, fevers, and severe migraines. I have developed a strict pacing regimen that allows me to work from home more than full-time, but not do much else, even three and a half years after getting sick. Even as a disabled person of color, I have a tremendous amount of privilege due to my professional employment, skills as a policy advocate and organizer, and citizenship status in this country — all of which have served as essential buffers against some of the worst outcomes of our country’s white supremacist ableism.

Unlike me, at least half to nearly two thirds of surveyed Long COVID patients could not work full-time, according to peer-reviewed research conducted by the Patient Led Research Collaborative, a group of patients with Long COVID that started their peer-reviewed research through the now sunset Body Politic support group. Many patients like me experience unremitting fatigue along with neurological and cognitive symptoms that make it difficult to drive, make decisions, remember instructions, follow conversations, and plan ahead. The Brookings Institute recently estimated that 1.6 million workers are out of the workforce due to Long COVID, which represents an astounding majority of the estimated 2.2 million people that the labor force is missing from its pre-pandemic size.

National data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) Household Pulse Survey indicates that Latinx and LGBTQ people are experiencing Long COVID at disproportionate rates. This is no surprise, particularly for communities of color, as we have overwhelming evidence that marginalized communities who contend with systemic barriers to social drivers of health like adequate housing and income, and safe workplaces were disproportionately impacted by COVID-19 hospitalizations and deaths. This is only compounded for people who are undocumented, many who are frontline workers who had no choice but to risk exposure to survive, and yet even in a global health emergency, were systematically excluded from healthcare and public resources, leading to ongoing and compounding poor health outcomes in immigrant communities.

I am on the mild end of the spectrum of disability of Long COVID patients and have had access to a lot of concrete support from others with ME/CFS. In the early days, these “illders” guided me to the right specialists, and armed me with research on infection-triggered conditions like POTS (postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome), MCAS (mast cell activation syndrome), ME/CFS, and potential treatments to try. Crowd-sourcing this type of historical grassroots wisdom was part of the magic that was born out of the digital organizing that Long COVID and other social justice activists led in online spaces.

This organizing happened in parallel and seemed to generate momentum from the in-person organizing and protests led by Black activists that sprung up in the summer of 2020 after the police murdered George Floyd, an unarmed Black man. My own lifeline, and the lifeline of nearly 15,000 patients from across the globe, was the Body Politic support group, founded by Fiona Lowenstein, who kicked off the movement for Long COVID justice with their op-ed in the New York Times that identified what would become the devastatingly common experience of prolonged, debilitating, largely untreated symptoms after getting sick with COVID-19.

Taking our cues from historical movements for disabled and sick communities such as those with HIV/AIDS, individual patient support grew beyond the sum of its parts to transform into acts of radical activism and civil disobedience, policy advocacy, with leaders in our movement testifying in front of Congress, driving clinical research publicly funded by the National Institutes of Health, and inspiring federal legislation.

Masks are community care❤️‍🔥😷 free masks: maskbloc.org

• Remember: covid is not over, 50% of infections are asymptomatic, minimum 10% of infections end up in long COVID, re-infections wreck us, COVID spreads and moves like cigarette smoke, think of the people around you and you as people who are all day smoking, it becomes more visual to understand how COVID moves.
• There is no way to “train” the immune system because it is not a muscle. there is a common misconception that exposure to harmful germs strengthens the immune system. viral diseases like COVID, flu, measles weaken the immune system, leaving the possibility of lasting damage. The reality is that you don't build your immunity with repeated infections, vaccines strengthen the immune system by teaching it to recognize pathogens without all the risks. Focusing on infection prevention is key.
• Rapid antigen tests give many false negatives.
• Solving the pandemic was never in the cards for the capitalist world.
• Instead, the explicit goal of the ruling class has been to make the pandemic simply disappear from public perception. Any reminder of the existence of a highly-transmissible, highly-dangerous, mass-disabling disease could trigger panic, or worse: organized, militant labor action. Averting this crisis required a careful campaign of culture-crafting; the people themselves needed to become convinced that there was no reason to fight. Consent for protracted mass infection needed to be manufactured.

“The cold truth of the matter is that the motive behind COVID minimization is greed and social control. (…) Solving the pandemic was never in the cards for the capitalist world. Instead, the explicit goal of the ruling class has been to make the pandemic simply disappear from public perception.” Let Them Eat Plague! http://clarion.unity-struggle-unity.org/

#MaskUp #WearAMask #CovidRealist #CovidIsAirbone #LongCovid #YallMasking #DisabledLiberation #DisabilityJustice #HealthSelfDefense

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It’s World Mask Week! Here are some zines to give you inspiration, motivation, or vindication:
• Laurel Lynn Leake - Why We Mask: https://laurellynnleake.com/whywemask/
• Clean Air Oly - How to Choose a High-Quality Mask: https://cleanairoly.org/maskzine/HowToChooseAMaskEZine.pdf
• Disabled Queer Alliance - So You Want to Wear a Mask: https://ugc.production.linktr.ee/42aa62aa-33f9-43b7-af1d-f24486ed21b6_Masking-Intro-4-Aotearoa-Zine-PDF.pdf
• How to Start a Mask Bloc: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1yF1-pCKt2JVHG8Cj6FRo8tMngRQpgSWI87A5cHq2qws/edit?tab=t.0#heading=h.vg1xnany3qbj

If you’ve got some respirator-focused zines, send us the links!

#WorldMaskWeek #MaskWeek2026 #YallMasking

Persistent complement dysregulation with signs of thromboinflammation in active Long Covid

https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adg7942

Some individuals can endure persistent, debilitating symptoms for many months after an initial severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) infection. However, the factors underpinning these health issues, called Long Covid, are poorly understood. Comparing the blood of patients with confirmed SARS-CoV-2 infection with that of uninfected controls, Cervia-Hasler et al. found that patients experiencing Long COVID exhibited changes to blood serum proteins indicating activation of the immune system’s complement cascade, altered coagulation, and tissue injury (see the Perspective by Ruf). At the cellular level, Long Covid was linked to aggregates comprising monocytes and platelets. These findings provide a resource of potential biomarkers for diagnosis and may inform directions for treatments. —Sarah H. Ross

#MaskUp #WearAMask #CovidRealist #CovidIsAirbone #LongCovid #YallMasking #DisabledLiberation #DisabilityJustice #HealthSelfDefense

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‘Brilliant at survival’ — Long Covid afflicts trans and bi patients at highest rates

https://clearhealthcosts.com/blog/2024/02/long-covid-challenges-trans-bisexual-lgbtq-patients/

“God, when I said I wanted to be a little boy, I didn’t mean it like this.”
That’s how Cy, a 23-year-old trans man, described how he feels living with the severe physical pain and neurological deterioration caused by Long Covid.
“I feel simultaneously like I’ve become both an infant and geriatric,” he said in a phone interview. A 2023 college graduate, he once looked forward to days filled with creating art: Forming sculptures, composing print layouts and using his new graphic design degree in his first “big job” in the industry.

And art wasn’t Cy’s only avenue for self-expression. “I had just gotten top surgery last summer,” he said. “I wanted to get more active because I was just starting my transition.”
But Cy, who spoke on condition that we use only his first name, contracted Covid-19 in August 2023. His initial bout of the virus sent him to the emergency room with severe vertigo and nausea. Even after getting the antiviral Paxlovid and going home, the fatigue he felt never went away — instead, it got worse and developed into frightening new symptoms.

“It started getting really hard to take care of myself on a daily basis. I felt in my muscles like I was being stretched too thin, like taffy or something,” he said. He dragged himself to the emergency room, to doctors, to specialists, with each appointment yielding little in the way of effective treatments. Meanwhile, he developed extreme lightheadedness, tremors and nerve pain, and his heart rate frequently rose to the point where he would pass out.

“I kept pushing it because I had to. I have to eat. I had to do my job,” he said. But in late 2023, the symptoms became too much. Cy is now forced to spend most of his days in bed without the strength to address his basic needs. Exertions like getting up to eat or use the bathroom can leave his entire body sore in the days after. The mental fog feels like his brain is “turning itself inside out,” he said.

Roughly 15% of all adults in the U.S. have or have had Long Covid, according to the U.S. Census Bureau’s October 2023 Household Pulse Survey. “Long Covid” encompasses a throng of debilitating symptoms and long term effects brought about by Covid-19. Some of the most common include post-exertion malaise, gastrointestinal problems, heart palpitations and cognitive issues. It can impact every organ system of the body. The physical ramifications can last for years: Some people are now in their fourth year of symptoms.

Cy is not only one of the millions of Americans with Long Covid — as a trans man, he’s part of a population that is overrepresented in these millions. Less than 2% of U.S. adults are trans or nonbinary, yet nearly 24% of all transgender adults report that they have experienced Long Covid. Bisexual adults report Long Covid cases at the same percentage rate (24%). That makes trans adults and bisexual adults, along with disabled adults, the demographic groups that are experiencing Long Covid in the highest percentages in the country.

“I used to be really, really competent at navigating the healthcare system. And now I’m struggling,” Cy said. “Before, I could ring out 15 phone calls in an afternoon and play phone tag all day. Did I enjoy it? No, not really, who does? But I could do it,” he continued. “And now I just can’t — there’s a lot of things that I just can’t do anymore.” As a result of Long Covid, Cy was also diagnosed with myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS) and postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome (POTS), conditions marked by severe fatigue, brain fog and lightheadedness, among other symptoms.

#MaskUp #WearAMask #CovidRealist #CovidIsAirbone #LongCovid #YallMasking #DisabledLiberation #DisabilityJustice #HealthSelfDefense

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