<
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2022/oct/18/long-covid-women-symptoms-medical-misogyny>
"In June, Dr Massimo Galli, a well-known infectious diseases specialist in
Italy, disclosed that since contracting Covid in January, he had experienced
widespread muscle pain and “a fair amount of fatigue that I did not have
before”.
The interview, headlined
My Long Battle With Long Covid, contained a mea
culpa: Galli confessed that he had initially doubted the condition. “With due
embarrassment,” he admitted to having believed many long Covid symptoms –
including brain fog and cardiovascular issues – to be psychosomatic phenomena.
“Now that I’m myself affected, I have to reconsider some of my beliefs,” Galli
said.
One of Italy’s best-known Covid experts had, in other words, failed to give
credence to the experiences of long Covid patients until he himself became one.
Despite the condition gaining official recognition by the World Health
Organization last October, many are still reporting wide-ranging skepticism and
the minimization of their symptoms. This disregard, according to the
epidemiologists Dr Stephen Phillips and Harvard’s Prof Michelle Williams, is
partially attributable to the fact that it has disproportionately affected
women.
“Our medical system has a long history of minimizing women’s symptoms and
dismissing or misdiagnosing their conditions as psychological,” they wrote in
the
New England Journal of Medicine last year. “Women of color with long
Covid, in particular, have been disbelieved and denied tests that their white
counterparts have received.”
(Race and wealth play a role too; in the US, doctors are now pointing out that
Black and Latino men, who were the hardest hit by Covid, may be
underrepresented in long Covid research and have significant barriers to access
care.)"
Via Susan ****
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
