ah, well, can you see alex famine? sure, we examine one of the consequences of all for you kid ministrations. i live in corbett to sweep through the population. although cases have been searching through the late summer, the 4 nations have taken comforts in the fact that mass vaccination has weakened the link between infection and hospitalized ation. thus, although cases had been reaching near record level, the pressure on the health service from the contagion is much less than it was in previous wave of the by this. however, while the vaccines appear to be limiting the acute impact of the condition, that is still grace and certainty about the long term effects and in particular about the conditions of long coping. on today, shall we look at the science and the personal impact of the debilitating illness. professor daniel of the department of immunology and peter call is london,

is among the foremost specialists studying this issue. naturally, mcdermott is a clinical doctor. so specialized in pediatric infectious diseases. and she is also one of the know, estimated one know good people suffering from long corporate administration had no mandate, no political 1st to treat the nose and messages in response to i show last week on the forever wars. when alex interviewed cardinal lord and wilkerson, the former chief of staff to us 6 of state, general colin powell and she had already clocked up over 725000 views on facebook alone. in henderson says, knowledgeable expediency and deeply relevant thanks or not, and agrees good interview. she says, very informative. william says, this is the very best. yes. picky the rest of the media. what this open? thank you all at the alex salmon shoe corner york says great insight into deacon's

troubled past in feature and the long duplex dance jim wallace says the forever wars will continue simply because the people hold the power of those to manufacture weapons and ammunition. no more wars in an end to their prophets. jesus says it's a refreshing tavern, intelligent interviewer, asking intelligent and poignant questions. then actually listening to the system interviewee a civil hassan says, sending chips to got a son, was one of the biggest mistakes the united states is made. and bolton says, the war is only just beginning. biden's incompetence is made the taliban, the most well armed, tetanus history. felix says that discussion should be watched by millions. best one yet. keep them coming to it. steven nice agrees and says goods to that one great interview with top guest. finally, robin jewess says they were never a weapon up to tenant, but one of mass destruction is totally delusional. to think otherwise. post covered

900 percent or more long cove. it is still one of the under reported stories of the panoramic in the 1st year. attention was understandably focused on the dramatic acute cases of corporate cry. tonight, the emergency care was, however, it has gradually becoming understood that long term debilitation from the aftermath of the disease, maybe as socially and economically significant as immediate pandemic. alex introduce a leading academic in the field professor danny elfman of imperial college fest. danny elfman, thank you so much for joining me in the the alex simon show that this is still a relatively new condition because cobit obviously is a, is a new disease. how did the idea of long covert get 1st identified was the route to long cove. it has been a bit unusually l, because this is a disease. it's been identified not through the textbook, so lectures,

but through social media to disease of social media age or let's say a definition of the social media age. in the sense that during those months after the 1st wave of cove it, they were suffer as all around the world. initially, especially from europe, from italy, describing this condition. and they were the ones who named it, you know, who got the symptoms all listed down. there and that of course, will have set the advantages as well as being unusual because that means lots of people be talking to each other about the variety of symptoms. so each physician won't just be starting a single group of people, in fact, will have access to information from a large group of people. i'm a big fan of the approach. this is a condition that being defined and find itself very visibly through the patients. the, you know, the naysayers in the cynic say, what a self reported, but you know,

how could it be self reported when we have no other way and we're holding it. it's very real and a very good way of doing it. a long covert. well, will summarize a range of conditions of severity. i mean some people totally debilitated or that of extended period of time. some people just having periodic bolts of weaknesses or a full range of the severity of symptoms. you know, i think we've worked very hard like any other clinical definition to have a very clear working definition that any t p can kick the box for so they know exactly what we're talking about. and that is difficult when you've got $200.00 pass symptoms that are included under that list. but i think all of us working in it now have a sense of what it looks like and what this thing is. and bearing in mind that this is still a new condition of the vaccines offering hope for, for long corporate sufferers to be divided into very people developing call that the reduces the vanity of the midget. sometimes for many people, did the awful,

hopefully, long colbert suffers well any indirectly in the sense that long covert couldn't see from any active infection with a virus. it doesn't matter whether you are a symptomatic or intensive care. you are at risk of having long have it. the vaccines are really good and reduce risk of getting infected in the 1st place. therefore, they also reduce your risk of lung pneumonia. less than that. as a possibility, the therapy might be discovered therefore, would affect to be chased the violence. so the system all but people could dial along with the effectively beyond the aspect witnesses. so much research movement all underway at every possible aspect. so sure, if you could pin it down early, work out what it is where it comes from. you could perhaps treat people early with borrows or, and can plan trees. or if you just had a working definition,

what this thing is and you know, they'd be 73rd pukes, i'm sure that you can, you can apply man, if your colleagues and intensive care made. the point to me is that covered is unusual in the sense of violence which seems to attack the weakest points of the body almost is not purely bronco conditional but can attack the little fleet and any other organ long call the symptoms. do they have the same range of symptoms as the immediate condition? yeah, great point. so when we talk about the, know the sheer basis of this horrible virus. i say one of the things it does is it binds this receptor ace to that all over the body. and that has impact your brain, your kidney, your liver, your lungs, you've got your blood vessels. and to some extent, one could argue that's married in the long symptoms. well, you could just say, well, as long as you logical door immune system is all of your body. so why shouldn't you

problems everywhere as local from from your studies? is it a disease or refer to via sto attacking the body or is the symptoms of previous attacks and the body attempting to, to recover from the infection? yeah, important question. so the jury is still slightly out on, on which of the mechanisms we think most like people on it. some people like the idea that it's a reservoir system virus, perhaps in the gardner, there's some good evidence to support that. folks like ourselves also like the idea that it's kind of perturbation of normal immunity. that term, you know, your immune system takes months or years to get to know what should i estimate on the number of people across the country. know who can be classified as long call the sufferers. yeah, so we baker a lot about this because we don't have a hard definition. and even the state versus the react data,

depending on whether you say persistent is more than 4 weeks after acute tackle more than 8 weeks after that. or the real long haul is who is still desperate a year later. so we don't have to guesstimate. i say a minimum of a 1000000 people in the u. k. and with that scale of, of condition, you've been consulted by government departments. so as to how these definitions can go into social security policy, for example, what, what's been done to, to deal with an infection and that must scale. well, you know, i wouldn't be up my role and if i, yes, i get i get asked consultant lots of different things including long cove. it, i really want to see more and more consultation on this. because, you know, we so con, stick our heads in the sand because this will have implications for health care planning for medical school numbers for employment law. you name it. this is going

to all of the come. what would advice be to someone who believes of taking covert the leaves are suffering from the long symptoms, obviously consult their own possession, of course, but, but should they be going onto the internet? joining the society should be comparing notes of other people is therapy. and so i think there's more than a therapy. i think the, the patient groups have been dying. emma, they really have led the race and, and you know, some doctors are good and some are less good and you need to be able to walk into that g p. surgery and state. okay, pretty clearly. and i think the support groups can help you to do that. that's all meant in terms of the, the range of, of symptoms. you've seen report him. obviously, fatigue would be much of a common factor. other, other things that people should be looking for in particular, we know that the acute condition of set mechanics, let's take light loss of smell, this long covert also have some common factors and afflicting many people. it does

everything so many good studies on this now mainly out the support groups where the list now stretches to some right to 100. so i think commonly near the top of the list all know your fatigue, brain fog, neuro, cognitive, wheezing and breathlessness. chest pain, loss of taste, and probably, and hair loss, and then you get also slightly rarer ones, but they the super common all around the world. i'm speaking running the world. how much from international effort is being focused on, on, tackling the long cold it. i think it really is important to have an international effort that is growing. and there are meetings put up a world health organization and looking at it. and i, h and in the united states brought together different groups in different countries . and it's important, i think that a person anywhere in the world feels they have the same rights to walk into the doctor surgery and say, you know, i've been out of x. people are 6 months help me talk to my employer,

helped me to get mom to come to get some treatment. and i can't be local answers. those need to be global answers. and i think we're, you know, we're trying hard to build those. it's still an aspect which long cool with his at the back of the queue while people deal with the acute condition. yeah, so we basically what 19 or 20 months now of firefighting and looking at daily for allergies and little tolerance, good, anything else? but all i say when i get a chance to speak to policymakers about this is, you know, we can't, we can't duck this. when i look for example of brazil and they're exposed to continue the virus. long off, you stopped worrying about the acute infection. you have to worry about those 3 or 4 or 5 years of off the lot of people flooding your clinics. desperate to help out of work loss of income. you know, so whether you like it or not, it's all there to want to be come. so taking that opportunity, speaking to the, the health administers those factories and the ford administration of the u. k.

what message would you have to them about what's coming in terms of the long covered pandemic? oh, you know, let's do the crystal ball gazing. let's do the planning, let's do the financial planning this to the health care planning. let's do the manpower planning because it is noble and it is going to be here to call us if we don't address it. so bearing in mind the new conduct lease prolonged symptoms of the deadly pernicious violence. but in terms your medical expertise in a range of professional men that's remind you of any other virus in terms of the way it's attacking people over for a long period. the simple answer is like everything else were coded, we didn't see it coming, i didn't see it coming. we thought karone of ours just didn't do things like this. but when i think back to other things i've worked on in the past, i think of things like glandular fever. the way that that can them come in and take teenagers, especially in really lay them alone,

long period. i think about work we do in brazil on them. she can clear virus. do you get from mosquitoes? where a lot of people are forgotten, excuse infection. that they're, you know, they can't go to work because they've got to kind of thing, you know, frighten for years afterwards. so there are plenty of models out there that we can look at and try and understand what's going on. faster. danny elfman from peter college london. thank you so much for joining me on the alex salmon show as are coming up after the break. alex continues discussions on the impact of loan call that proceeding. me the ah

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i will better to rival guides. oh, it's going to store it at a federal reserve shirt so there you go, get it back. oh, heck, no. refrigeration came. well, look at the rest, the 7 years bill it separately or what kind of report. welcome back. the early weeks for the pines ethnic were busy for natalie mcdermott specialize in pediatric infectious diseases and experience and medical spots to disaster and expertise was in great media demand. then she contacted colbert herself. alex takes up the story with doctor mcdermott thought to madame

and i thank you once again for joining me only alex simon chau. my pleasure. thank you. well, let's go back to the start of the fun damage. i mean, there, you are very much demand by, by the media because of your expertise and an infectious diseases. and then suddenly, from being somebody explaining the pandemic to the public, you became a software yourself. what exactly happened last time? it started. yes. so it's not the panoramic or at least around march time, i pretend to clinical work. and while working at one of those 2 of the london i contract with 19 i was only on wow, probably for. but it was probably about 4 weeks to fully get back to normal, but i was back at work on the after about 10 days. and then i was working and then again, well, working on the board in about may time i became on well with an almost identical

illness again to keep it, which seemed very quick and time to become on while again. but i became a while i had a very similar illness for about a couple of weeks, but during that time i also developed some pain in my feet and not have sensation and my feet and things have kind of gradually progress from that to. now where i'm quite limited in my abilities, walk, i work with crutches and i have some, some issues with my bladder and we're still trying to get to the bottom of exactly what, what has happened. so let's striking you will feel medical expertise. you must fence quite quickly that little. this is strange. i mean, this is something i should have recovered from. this is not the same as getting another boat of coven saw it, with your medical expertise and back to it. and you must of realize family as something very, very different going on here. yeah, i think initially i had

a lot of pain in my feet during that 1st 2 weeks where i had the k b like illness. so i just thought it was positive, but i had a lot of muscle aches and pains, so i thought it was part of that. and then all of the other symptoms are though, but the pain in my feet didn't. and i think when i started to realize that it resembled no pain and my faith and i spoke with my doctor and, and got medication. but you know, you can get situations like that following viruses that are relatively transient. and then so to resolve. so i think i just type at the time that it would gradually get better. but then i realized when i was trying to drive my call one day to, to get to the pharmacy to get my prescription. that she, i couldn't feel the pedals properly with my feet. and then i started to realize actually my legs went as strong as they were. and i kinda hate that, you know, obviously i've been on, well, so it takes time and hopefully ever a couple of weeks i would build up that strength and my legs again. but i just never did. despite going the books every single day,

i never managed to build that strength up again, and then things seem to kind of gradually get worse in stages. so in september time i had quite a significant deterioration. and that's when i was, i became a very limited in how far i could walk and, and then gradually over time i, i got the crutches and i was a bit further using crutches but not, not without them. and then i think in january time i had another set back, some issues with my bladder and so on. so that kind of yeah, so it kind of continued to progress from there. well, of course, your own medical experience included working on academics and the african content range of, of viruses and diseases. had you recognized anything quite light, listen, and other vital conditions. i think probably not identical, certainly with the boa. we know that area is what's referred to by some of the page to beta syndrome and people can have sort of ongoing to clearly. but with the biter

it tends to be very specific, largely speaking, focused on the eyes. so people get a lot of information in the eyes and if that's not treated properly, they can go blind. but we also see that people have joint pain and i also have tightness and headaches, and so on. they said there are some features that last, but i think we probably didn't see it on quite the level that we have seen. people developing problems following caving and probably not with quite the variety of symptoms that people have following. with the border it was quite limited to sort of mainly 5 specific symptoms. olsen sin drugs in terms of which organ system was affected, but long covert a very unusual, a new condition obviously. but wasn't unusual in the sense it was actually named by the social media. and will you part of the family, social media groups who are competing experience, who likes the name, the condition and brought it to public awareness. so i think it had been probably

named shortly before i was really involved with some of the social media great side . i think i saw to get involved in, in around the july end of july, beginning of august time, when things still were improving in my condition. you know, i'd kind of anticipated a few weeks of recovery and things still went any better. so i, i guess i joined a bit later so in, already been named. but me, i was part of some of the doctors greats that were discussing the symptoms and discussing what was going on and, and, and realizing just how many people might, might be affected by this condition. so it was much of the medical profession, understandably caught up in the acute phase of the pandemic. and a lot of the media concentration on the intensive care was, and what the national health service would be overwhelmed in an acute sense. i think that the social media was an oval, at least for getting some concentration on this and shooting phase of the of the

disease and communicating with fellow sufferers. yes, certainly. and i think it's provided a lot of support to people during that time, especially when they couldn't accept any kind of health care or any kind of you know, really attention from their doctors. so i think they certainly provided a support network. i know it's received criticism because people believe that it fuels people believing that as a problem, even if they don't potentially have one. but i would disagree. i think it's been an extremely good report. network people, many of whom are still struggling, even 18 months into the pandemic, to actually get the kind of health care attention that they, that they need and that they deserve. so i think it's been use them in that sense, but i will say in particular, use them in, in raising awareness opposite to ation. it wasn't really until the autumn of last year that i would say to you take governments and people seem to really catch on

board about the significance of long have it in the number of people affected and, and people affected a very long period of time. so what do you think needs to be done in terms of official response to long coven given the, the number of people who are clearly being afflicted with the condition? i think it is being taken seriously now by the u. k. government, but i think there's still not the level of seriousness being taken by the medical community actually towards it. sometimes in terms of treating people, there's a co grief of clinicians who are doing very well at caring for patients and raising awareness about the situation. but equally, there are some, ne, as who dismiss it and simply think that it's just some level of fatigue and that people will get better. and it's not really that big a deal. and i think that people need to take on board that it is. and i have to say when it comes to children, i think there is still

a degree of dismissal about affecting children and young people. and actually, i think we need to be taking it more seriously because, well, proportionally, it might not affect as many young people as it does. adults, it's still affecting a significant group of young people and some older children. and we need to factor that in, and i'm not entirely convinced that being factored into our decision making about the vaccine either that lead from the documents i've read from the g b i. whilst they comment on it that sort of a sentence about it that says, well, long have age, it doesn't, we've had people raise concerns about located it, but it doesn't really seem to be something that perfect in children that much. and i think that if we're going to take into effect the side effects of back scenes and the risks of them, which are actually extremely rare. why we then not taking into account that people or children with longer with it might go on have long,

even if that's only 48 percent of them, that vastly higher than the risk of the side effect from the vaccine. so i just, i just wonder why we're not taking it seriously as we should yet. and finally made the ultimate down in terms of your own condition, your own experience. are you detecting some lighter than the tunnel is progress being made? i would say, sadly, not i think time just, i'm learning to live with my limitations a little bit better. but i don't think that that's really been any significant progress in terms of my in year a logical condition. and i continue to occasionally develop new symptoms related to that as well, which obviously a little bit concerning, but hopefully we are making some progress to where the problem is. i had some investigations recently which had suggested there is a problem at the very base of my spinal cord. so hopefully i might get some more imaging seen and identify what 3 going on, both of them and you have

a very best wishes and, and thank you once again for joining me. i'll examine show thank you very much. the focus on acute illness in face one of the panoramic is understandable. st. thomas is hostile behind me its way the prime minister himself was cheated, loved ones, dying, intensive care words full the health service, but clean under the pressure. this is what is dictated to focus on acute care. that is, the human cost of the pandemic. however, it is increasingly apparent in social economic terms, the threat of one corporate is even greater on a conservative estimate. 10 times as many people will suffer, debilitating effects of long term corporate. i have died from the 1st stage of the panoramic. this leads to serious questions on the policy of the ford administration of big u. k. s long corporate is a compatible threat to the acute stage is upon vic. been why the allowing the high

levels of disease to sweep through the population in all 4 countries. public health prevention measures have been the last to the point of non existence. the health service may not be overwhelmed in the short term thanks to the impact of vaccine. but in terms of human misery, they may be piling up huge problems for the future. the cost of freedom they may be very high indeed. but for now, from alex, myself and all the sure is good by stacy, i hope to see you all again next week. ah, me .

oh, what we've got to do is identify the threats that we have. it's crazy foundation. let it be an arms race is often very dramatic. development only personally, i'm going to resist. i don't see how that strategy will be successful, very political time. time to sit down and talk having alternate realities to experience or even live in like a world war. does my dear, you know, especially during and damage where you can go anywhere in the game world, go everywhere, choose the game that you want, any open roll game, choose it, and you are now on a vacation in a place where you're like flying helicopters or you're you're on beaches, you're, you're in a city drive, you know, what are the car, you want your name and these,

these are getaways the the the head, all the 911 of us, 3, all the memory. you insuring impact of the us led war on terror. us today we'll be hearing from the british army veteran on the devastating toll of the 20 african called flag. last to many people, the situation which we just gave up also had to be itala bon unveils, have new government from down to san including a terrorist on the f. b. i wanted list for washington left with no option to cooperate with see and coming leadership.