Wouldn't you say that the reasons why the covid-19 vaccines are much less effective than other vaccines is of academic interest as opposed to the practical fact that they are much less effective?
Saying the COVID vaccines are crap is a bit like saying rocket designers are crap, because they have not yet set up a regular daily rocket commuter service between Earth and the Moon. Of course the reason we don't have such a space commuter service is because its very hard to get people to the Moon and back. It's not because our rocket designers are crap.
Thus whether something is crap or a success depends on how hard the task is in the first place.
The Apollo missions to the Moon were one of the greatest human achievements, simply because the task was so damn hard. But walking down to the local supermarket and buying some groceries is no achievement whatsoever, as almost anyone can do it.
Thus the COVID vaccine success, or lack thereof, has to be judged in the context of how difficult the challenge was in the first place.
This of course is stating the obvious.
Do we in fact know that covid-19 is any more likely to cause persistent ME/CFS than any number of other viruses? Is it more likely to cause issues than Epstein-Barr virus, Ross River virus, or Coxiella burnetti or are we just paying more attention to it than we are any other virus at present because of the last three years?
ME/CFS has only been linked to a small number of viruses and bacteria. So not all viruses can cause ME/CFS.
From what we presently know, you cannot get ME/CFS from a cold virus like rhinovirus, and you cannot get ME/CFS from HIV, norovirus, rotavirus, adenovirus, papillomavirus, respiratory-syncytial virus, etc.
You get adenovirus outbreaks in military barracks, where soldiers live in close quarters and so easily spread pathogens. But there is no published or anecdotal data on ME/CFS emerging from these adenovirus outbreaks. Likewise, you get norovirus outbreaks on cruise ships, but again I have seen no indication that some people develop ME/CFS after these norovirus outbreaks.
Does SARS-CoV-2 cause ME/CFS more often than other ME/CFS-triggering viruses like Epstein-Barr virus?
That's a good question, but I think we can say the answer is yes.
It is hard to calculate, though, since of course it's not just the propensity of the virus to cause ME/CFS that counts, but also what percentage of the population have caught a particular virus. The more people catch the virus, the more chances the virus has to trigger ME/CFS.
SARS-CoV-2 has spread to the majority of the US and European populations, so has had many opportunities to trigger ME/CFS. But EBV is also a very widespread virus, with about 90% of the adult population having caught EBV. So in both cases, these are widespread viruses.
Before the pandemic, the worldwide population of ME/CFS patients was 17 million. These patients would have had their illness triggered by the most common ME/CFS-associated viruses, such as Epstein-Barr virus, Coxsackie B3, Coxsackie B4, Coxsackie B2, various echoviruses and cytomegalovirus. Possibly also HHV-6 and HHV-7. So the number of cases of ME/CFS triggered by EBV alone will be less than 17 million, because that 17M covers all the viruses. So maybe we can say that about 3 million ME/CFS patients worldwide had their illness triggered by EBV, as a rough ballpark figure.
Now after the pandemic, we have about 30 million more patients worldwide with the ME/CFS form of long COVID, whose ME/CFS was triggered by SARS-CoV-2.
This does suggest that SARS-CoV-2 has a stronger tendency to trigger ME/CFS than EBV, since both viruses are widespread, but SARS-CoV-2 seems to have triggered about 10 times more cases of ME/CFS than EBV.
Although it should be mentioned that many people have caught SARS-CoV-2 twice or more, and of course each time you catch it, there is a new opportunity to develop ME/CFS. Whereas with EBV, you can only normally catch this virus once, because you develop immunity after your first EBV infection, and are protected for life from catching EBV again.
Edited by Hip, 19 October 2023 - 10:59 PM.