[SA Chris]

Not sure if I might be mis-reading or misunderstanding some of the previous posts but…
If you are symptomatic a LFT is not an appropriate test to rule out Covid. If you have symptoms get a PCR and await the results.
LFT’s are not great tests, but they are relatively easy and quick. So they make sense as a way of catching a proportion of asymptomatic carriers that will have a reasonable level of compliance and and degree of effectiveness. But the are not the test to use if you are symptomatic.

You're right, but I haven't got any of what you would call COVID symptoms, just a sore throat, same as what I've had every year  about this time for as long as I can remember (except last year.....). I only did the LFT as a precautionary measure as we had some handy from kids' school.

[nik at work]

Fair enough, misunderstood on my part, sorry 

[webbo]

I may be out of touch with current services but chronic fatigue syndrome treatment was under mental health services in the trust I worked for as it was seen to have a major Psychological base.

[mrjonathanr]

And that is the problem Webbo, exactly.

 https://www.theguardian.com/society/2021/aug/30/withdrawal-planned-guidance-me-leaves-patients-distraught

There is a startling lack of therapeutic progress since the Royal Free, nearly 70 years ago. https://me-pedia.org/wiki/1955_Royal_Free_Hospital_outbreak

[Oldmanmatt]

Aaaaand…

No.3 just threw a positive on his Monday LFT.

I’m moving out to a tent in the garden.

[webbo]

And that is the problem Webbo, exactly.

 https://www.theguardian.com/society/2021/aug/30/withdrawal-planned-guidance-me-leaves-patients-distraught

There is a startling lack of therapeutic progress since the Royal Free, nearly 70 years ago. https://me-pedia.org/wiki/1955_Royal_Free_Hospital_outbreak

My experience of co working with a few patients in conjunction with chronic fatigue service and working with the Team leader from the CF service in another role. Is that you get referred for CF when all your medical tests come back negative because there is no medical test for it.
You can test for Covid so to me there is no connection.

[mrjonathanr]

Does absence of definitive aetiology prove absence of physical illness?

[webbo]

That depends on how much you have invested in being ill.

[mrjonathanr]

The reason I puntered you is for the arrogance behind that remark.

[webbo]

 

[Oldmanmatt]

That depends on how much you have invested in being ill.

Dude, are you saying that everybody with ME, is imagining it, because you met some people who were?
As in, because some people have symptoms as a result of psychological/psychosomatic conditions, all people with similar symptoms must have (only) a psychological/psychosomatic condition?
Obviously, from my clumsy terminology, I’m no expert, but that seems like a bogus claim. A bit like those old diagnoses of “Hysteria” you read about.

I guess there’s research supporting that position though?

Edit:

I nearly rewrote that completely, because it’s way more confrontational in tone than I actually intended, for personal reasons.
But better to qualify, I think.
I mean, I thought this was an established condition, with a substantial number of recognised sufferers. Surely they can’t all just be “ invested” in being ill.

[TobyD]

Matt especially might be interested in this opinion piece:

https://inews.co.uk/opinion/boris-johnson-cheek-devon-cornwall-encouraging-covid-spread-1173952

[slab_happy]

And that is the problem Webbo, exactly.

 https://www.theguardian.com/society/2021/aug/30/withdrawal-planned-guidance-me-leaves-patients-distraught

There is a startling lack of therapeutic progress since the Royal Free, nearly 70 years ago. https://me-pedia.org/wiki/1955_Royal_Free_Hospital_outbreak

My experience of co working with a few patients in conjunction with chronic fatigue service and working with the Team leader from the CF service in another role. Is that you get referred for CF when all your medical tests come back negative because there is no medical test for it.
You can test for Covid so to me there is no connection.

But patients with long Covid don't have Covid anymore. They've merely had Covid in the past. There's no medical test that determines whether you have long Covid, just a loose list of symptoms (as is the case with a bunch of other medically-recognized syndromes).

So -- there must have been an outbreak of previously mentally-healthy people suddenly becoming very invested in being ill, which happens by amazing coincidence to have coincided with a pandemic virus, I guess?

[slab_happy]

Does absence of definitive aetiology prove absence of physical illness?

Look, if you're going to upset the doctors by having something they can't easily diagnose, you deserve all you get.

(Sarcasm, obviously.)

As a teenager with undiagnosed autism in the '80s (back when they thought  "autistic kids can't talk"), I got sent to a therapist who spent many sessions trying to convince me that I only thought I was weird and had trouble making friends and understanding other kids because I was so depressed (oh, and sexually repressed, that was in there too for some reason).

I mean, I was also very depressed, but turns out, none of that was causing my social problems. And all the sessions being told it was all in my head ... did not do me any favours.

Psychosomatic disorders are a real thing! But "We can't identify what you've got so it must be all in your head" is something of a recurrent medical failure mode.

[webbo]

Apologies to anyone I offended. I shouldn’t have posted half way through a bottle of wine.
 What I was trying to say is that sometimes someone’s illness is part of a bigger picture. It is not the illness it’s self but how does it effect the person and everyone in there network.
It can foster dependence in not only the ill person but also their carers. So if someone recovers from their illness suddenly all relationships have changed. This may not have a positive outcome for those relationships. So for some people getting better may be perceived as a negative outcome as they may fear that as no one needs care for them no one will be around anymore.

[Durbs]

Some anecdotal evidence for someone...

My family of 4 (two kids 6 & 3), Father in Law, Sister in Law and her son (13) and daughter (31) had 1 week holiday together.
All adults double-jabbed, mix of Pfizer and AZ.

31YO had to test before returning to work, came back positive. We all then tested and everyone except myself (AZ) and S-i-L (also AZ) negative. The other adults (Pfizer) all positive and consequently symptomatic, our youngest did too.
PCR tests confirm all of these except our daughter is now clear.

So of our sample group, the AZ vaccine worked, the Pfizer didn't prevent infection. I was the most recently jab'd (3 weeks ago), the others were quite early as all NHS frontline or over 75.

Update: I got COVID too, a few days later. Felt a bit sniffly, not much, and had a band practise booked that evening for a gig on Saturday, so thought it'd be best to check. LFT'd and very faint positive, so re-took and clear result. Not that surprising given I'd spent so much time with a load of infected, including a 5 hour drive back in a car with 4 other positives.

Friday, felt like a bad cold, Saturday felt utterly awful - aches, lethargy, couldn't stay awake, Sunday aches and cold, Monday post-cold vibes. I have lost sense of smell and taste (which is much more annoying than I'd imagined).

Everyone else has already recovered - kid are our of self-iso, wife's out tomorrow, I'm 4 days behind them.

So of our group of 8; 5 double-vax'd adults and 3x under 14's - all but one adult, and one child caught it. The ones who didn't catch it had Covid at Christmas, supporting the theory that immunity from contracting the disease is stronger than the vaccination, but equally the vaccination made everyone's illness much more manageable.

Our only lingering concern now is Mrs Durbs who is 8-months preggo - which isn't ideal.

[James Malloch]

Not tested positive but last week was the first time I’ve been “pinged” by the app.

First time I’d spent any real time in Leeds (went for dinner) since leaving on Day 1 of the first lockdown.

Made it feel a lot closer than it had for a while.

I was due to go to the doctors the next day but cancelled as my PCR results hadn’t come in time. I was surprised that the GP didn’t have a view on what I should do having been pinged, but not being required to isolate. In the end I asked to move it as it didn’t seem right to go in just before getting results…

[mrjonathanr]

Apologies to anyone I offended. I shouldn’t have posted half way through a bottle of wine.
 What I was trying to say is that sometimes someone’s illness is part of a bigger picture. It is not the illness it’s self but how does it effect the person and everyone in there network.
It can foster dependence in not only the ill person but also their carers. So if someone recovers from their illness suddenly all relationships have changed. This may not have a positive outcome for those relationships. So for some people getting better may be perceived as a negative outcome as they may fear that as no one needs care for them no one will be around anymore.

Yes, but this can apply to any state of interdependency of which persistent illness is manifestly one. Hoiking it out in relation to chronic fatigue syndrome smacks of being just more patient blaming. Many people with ME/CFD have heard an ‘all in the mind’ narrative. Do teenagers with Epstein Barr get the same spiel? Of course not. The word is stigma.

Edit : those issues of interdependency can be real enough and people may well need support to resolve them. For people with a physical illness they aren’t causative however and care needs to be taken not to present them as such where that is not the primary source of the illness.

[TobyD]

Apologies to anyone I offended. I shouldn’t have posted half way through a bottle of wine.
 What I was trying to say is that sometimes someone’s illness is part of a bigger picture. It is not the illness it’s self but how does it effect the person and everyone in there network.
It can foster dependence in not only the ill person but also their carers. So if someone recovers from their illness suddenly all relationships have changed. This may not have a positive outcome for those relationships. So for some people getting better may be perceived as a negative outcome as they may fear that as no one needs care for them no one will be around anymore.

I entirely agree with you if you're saying what I think you're saying i.e. all illness has a psychological component and can be affected by attitude, mood and circumstance.
This fact doesn't mean anyone is making anything up, or conversely if they don't get better they aren't trying hard enough. It's well evidenced in research into back pain, cancer and probably many other things. There was a study which showed that whiplash effectively didn't exist in countries where there wasn't a legal mechanism for claiming compensation for it, for example. This clearly doesn't mean noone in the UK should have a painful neck after a RTA.

[webbo]

I hope you still agree when I give this example. Someone I know who was a successful athlete and very single minded and out spoken when discussing relationships. Often stating that no matter what relationship they were in it wouldn’t stop them training or competing. However once in a relationship  and having 2 young children pressure to give up the training was immense. At this point they developed CF which stopped the conflict about training/ competing and childcare etc.
Therefore the CF in this case is Psychologically saving someone from changing their rigid belief system or having relationship issues.

[Offwidth]

So of our group of 8; 5 double-vax'd adults and 3x under 14's - all but one adult, and one child caught it. The ones who didn't catch it had Covid at Christmas, supporting the theory that immunity from contracting the disease is stronger than the vaccination, but equally the vaccination made everyone's illness much more manageable.

You need to be very careful with that. It may be that being double jabbed and having prior infection gives more immunity to an adult than being double jabbed for an adult but any accurate conclusion needs proper research on a significant population.

It's very unlikely an infection more than a few months back (but no vaccination) offers more immunity than being double jabbed as there is a lot of research showing the exact opposite.  Yet lots of anti-vaxers are claiming prior infection is better than being jabbed, which very likely leaves the population more at risk. There was a recent pre-print looking at delta which contradicted the existing research apparently showing for delta that recent  prior infection is slightly better than  vaccination, but it's not peer reviewed yet.

[TobyD]

I hope you still agree when I give this example. Someone I know who was a successful athlete and very single minded and out spoken when discussing relationships. Often stating that no matter what relationship they were in it wouldn’t stop them training or competing. However once in a relationship  and having 2 young children pressure to give up the training was immense. At this point they developed CF which stopped the conflict about training/ competing and childcare etc.
Therefore the CF in this case is Psychologically saving someone from changing their rigid belief system or having relationship issues.

Absolutely, assuming that you are using CF as an acronym for chronic fatigue as opposed to cystic fibrosis in this case. That sort of thing tallies with what I saw in practice as a physio treating people with lower back pain, and things like fibromyalgia, but also with recovery from operations or fractures. It is also supported by a lot of healthcare research that I've seen. That doesn't diminish these conditions or mean anyone is faking anything, anymore than it would if they were suffering from anxiety and depression.

[Oldmanmatt]

I hope you still agree when I give this example. Someone I know who was a successful athlete and very single minded and out spoken when discussing relationships. Often stating that no matter what relationship they were in it wouldn’t stop them training or competing. However once in a relationship  and having 2 young children pressure to give up the training was immense. At this point they developed CF which stopped the conflict about training/ competing and childcare etc.
Therefore the CF in this case is Psychologically saving someone from changing their rigid belief system or having relationship issues.

Absolutely, assuming that you are using CF as an acronym for chronic fatigue as opposed to cystic fibrosis in this case. That sort of thing tallies with what I saw in practice as a physio treating people with lower back pain, and things like fibromyalgia, but also with recovery from operations or fractures. It is also supported by a lot of healthcare research that I've seen. That doesn't diminish these conditions or mean anyone is faking anything, anymore than it would if they were suffering from anxiety and depression.

PTSD.

I went through that mill in the mid ‘90s, when it was “just” a syndrome and not  a disorder. The contrast between that time and the way all parties simply assumed it would be a complication of the whole widowhood thing, and acted preemptively, was very striking.
(At one point, in the first instance, after several weeks with the Psychologists (Technicians in the RN, so NCOs), I had to go for an assessment by the fleet Psychiatrist (a Commander, a commissioned officer) who spent several minutes  explaining to me that PTSS wasn’t really a thing and all the stuff the Psychologists had had me doing was probably pointless and asked me not a single question or let me say anything at all beyond “Yes/No Sir, for the entire assessment).

Anyway. No.3 just had his second PCR in since Sunday. Polly is really quite sick now, very much “a bad cold”. Fevers abound, and all except myself and No.1 feel like shit. Polly did an LFT last night, negative, but has booked another PCR for tomorrow.
Polly is Pfizer, I’m AZ, by the way; for reference in the current UKB study. Who wants lead author, by the way?

Oh, I still have excessive vertigo. So, I feel unfortunately confident of an eventual positive.

[webbo]

Military Psychiatrists everything’s got to fit the text book description and if it’s not in the book it doesn’t exist.
This is generalisation.

[Oldmanmatt]

I am (probably shouldn’t be) shocked at how crap the Track and Trace system is.
We had our three cases drop in 24 hr intervals, so No.3 got her PCR on Saturday morning, results in the evening. Call from T&T Sunday morning, we give all the contact details etc and expected info for all her contacts in the last x days etc, including the whole household here. We already book PCRs for the five remaining family on the Saturday after her positive anyway. Because most of the contacts are under 18, I give my number for all of them. I get an individual text for each, then one for each from our GP and an email for each.

So, we do PCRs on Sunday morning. This time, three negatives and a positive, results back on Sunday eve. Cue call 2 from track and trace. I say, we’re all the same household, do you not already have the details. Apparently not. So all the same details and contacts repeated. Everybody involved gets a second text/call/email. I get a repeat of the same six texts and emails from T&T and from the GP.

On Monday, our third case wakes up feeling shite, has a fever etc, despite testing negative the day before. Book test for Tuesday morning.
Test came back positive last night.
I get the same call from T&T, everybody involved in our little outbreak gets the same call, and texts, and emails again. I get another six copies of everything from T&T and the same from the GP.
Oddly enough, it’s the same operator today, as yesterday’s call, by the end of the call she’s calling me Matt, not Mr Glover and it’s all “same number? Same address” and lots of apologies for not being able to just link households. She actually had a mini rant about it. It still took more than 20 minutes.

This time though, she wanted to stress that none of the positive cases should seek another PCR for a minimum of 90 days, because you will test positive for at least that long, regardless of your virus status.
She had another mini rant, because of how many calls she’d made, to put people back into isolation, because they’re being asked by employers to get a negative test before returning to work after isolation. Apparently, this is throwing all the stats off and really overloading the system.
Seemingly, there is no option to disregard test results from tests sought too soon etc.

Edit:
Oh, and I just found out that my cousin, who wanted to travel to the UK from his home in France, got a positive on his required pretrip PCR, so booked another and tried not to swab properly, in order to get a negative so he could travel. Took him three attempts apparently. I told my aunt her son was a See You Next Tuesday (in the short form) and apparently I’m now the bad person. People’s stupidity still surprises me after fifty years of almost daily exposure.
Anyway, we’re now demonised by the other side of the family too, for listing the kid’s cousin, who came up on Friday night for my eldest’s 16th. She was due to fly out to Spain to visit her Grandmother on Sunday, but her mum got the text/call from T&T as a she was a “close contact” and it turned out dad hadn’t informed mum of the trip (complicated divorce) and mum has custody, and the rules say the kid couldn’t travel without an updated PCR and it couldn’t be arranged in time to make the flight.
Anyway, we are public enemy No.1 with both our families right now.

I’m actually amused, to be fair. Supposedly educated people who want to bend the rules to suit their convenience,  aka C#nts.
I always thought the “guy bitten by the zombies and trying to hide it” was an exaggerated dramatic trope for fictional purposes. Apparently it’s a significant human trait.