Infections by SARS-CoV-2 can cause acute COVID-19 which may last up to four weeks. Post COVID Conditions, also known as Long COVID, are health consequences that persist or develop more than four weeks (or twelve weeks, according to WHO) after infection. Individuals who have had acute COVID-19 are at risk for Long COVID.
According to government health agencies, Long COVID prevention is another reason to get vaccinated. Without offering any evidence, or even a plausible mechanism for why it might be so, the CDC says that “people who did not get a COVID-19 vaccine” are more likely to develop Long COVID. Health+ Long COVID, a report sponsored by HHS and released last month, contains the recommendation to “promote vaccination as a preventative measure for Long COVID.” NIH even encourages unvaccinated people to get vaccinated after recovering from COVID-19 because it “may prevent Long COVID.” But there are good reasons to doubt that any of this is true.
Long COVID can follow mild or asymptomatic infections by SARS-CoV-2. Although there may be more than one pathway to Long COVID, autoimmunity is responsible for some, if not most, cases of Long COVID. The intensity of the initial disease does not matter. Mild or asymptomatic infections can stimulate the autoantibodies that cause Long COVID. Even if you believe that vaccination reduces severity of COVID-19—I am not saying you should—there is still no reason to believe that vaccination can prevent Long COVID.
Recent studies back this up. According to an article published in Nature last month, vaccination status does not modify the risk of Long COVID. Instead, Long COVID correlates to the number of SARS-CoV-2 infections a person has, regardless of vaccination status. Even though vaccination cannot prevent Long COVID, it may make it worse.
Think about how autoimmunity causes Long COVID. Once the immune system is stimulated to recognize the spike protein of SARS-CoV-2, the immune system may attack the body’s own cells. Whether by an accident of nature or by design, antibodies to spike protein cause autoimmune disease in some people. It does not matter whether the antibodies are formed in response to vaccine or natural infection, the effect is the same. Vaccination injuries can look like Long COVID.
Dr. Marivic Villa, a Florida pulmonologist who has treated thousands of COVID patients in The Villages, agrees. According to a recent publication, Dr. Villa says, “The signs and symptoms profile and clinical presentation of long-haulers from moderate to severe natural COVID infection, and individuals vaccinated three to four times, are almost indistinguishable from one another.” The formation of autoantibodies by either natural infection or vaccination connects Long COVID to vaccine injuries, consistent with Dr. Villa’s observation. She concludes, “Halting this vaccination is the highest emergency!”
Long COVID has White House attention. This focus seems timed to perpetuate the emergency, just like the government distribution of free tests earlier this year. These substandard tests, purchased by the government and mailed to anyone with a U.S. address, were bad laboratory medicine, saved no lives, and have not been missed since funding ran out. But the program stirred up COVID activity, keeping the crisis going. And it enriched test suppliers.
Similarly, attention to Long COVID is a pretext to extend the emergency powers of the executive branch by combining a tragic reality with bad medicine, unsupported by honest science. And it enriches vaccine manufacturers.
Every case of COVID-19, every SADS death, every victim of Long COVID, and every individual injured by vaccine is a life lost or damaged by the tragedy of the pandemic. Long COVID cannot become just another excuse to promote vaccine.
