today shall we look at the science and the personal impact of this debilitating illness. professor daniel of the department of immunology and peter call is london, is among the foremost specialists studying this issue. that mcdermott is a clinical doctor. so specializes in pediatric infectious diseases and she is also one of the know, estimated 1000000 people suffering from long corporate ministration. 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 colonel lloyd and wilkerson, the former chief of staff to us to give state general colin powell and she had already clocked up over 725000 views on facebook alone. in henderson says, knowledgeable expediency and deeply relevant facts are not, sin 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 alec salmon shoe corner york says great insight into deacon's troubled past and future in the long duplex dance. jim wallace says the forever wars will continue simply because the people who the power of those to manufacture weapons and ammunition, no more wars mean an end to their profits. if she just says it's a refreshing, haven't intelligent interview or asking, intelligent and poignant questions, then actually listening to the answers to the interviewee. a cbl hassan says sampling chips to got a son, was one of the biggest mistakes the united states is made and bought and says, the war is only just beginning. biden's incompetence is made the taliban, the most well armed tennis history. felix says that discussion should be watched by millions. best one yet. keep them coming to it's nice degrees and says goods to that one great interview with talk guest. finally,

robin jewish says they were never a weapon to test it. but one of mass destruction is totally delusional. to think otherwise. post covered 1900 sandra moore, 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 crating emergency care war. however, it is gradually becoming understood that long term debilitation from aftermath of the disease may be a 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. 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 unusual yet because this is a disease. it's been identified not through the textbook, so lectures, but through social media to the disease of the social media age. or let's have 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 who got the symptoms all listed down there. and that of course, will have the advantages as well to be unusual because that means lots of people be talking to each other about the variety of symptoms. so each physician won't just be studying 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, it's been defined and find itself very visibly through the patients. the,

the naysayers in the cynic say, what is self reported? but you know, how could it be self reported when we have no other way and reporting it? it's very real and a very good way of doing it. a long cobra. well, will summarize a range of conditions of severity. i mean some people totally debilitated or but of extended period of time as 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 symptoms that are included under that list. 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 colbert,

suffered us to be divided into various people. developing call that the reduces the vanity of the mitchell. sometimes for many people, did the awful hope for long. coven suffers well, only indirectly, in the sense the long covey couldn't see you 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 your risk of getting infected in the 1st place . therefore, they also reduce your risk of long no more, no less than that. as a possibility, the therapy might be discovered for a fact with chase, the violence, the system all but people go down along with the effectively beyond the aspect witnesses. so much research at the moment 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 family trees. or if you just had a working definition, what this thing is, you know, they'd be 73rd cusick, i'm sure that you can, you can apply many of your colleagues and intensive care made. the point to me is that cover this unusual in the sense of violence which seems to attack the weakest point. the body almost is not purely bronco conditional, but attack level displayed in any other organ long cool with symptoms. do they have the same range of symptoms? so 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 impacting 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 or immune system is all of your body. so why shouldn't you problems everywhere as local from, from your studies? is it a disease with an act to via still attacking the body or, or is the symptoms of previous attacks and the body attempting 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 gods. 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. now,

who can be classified as long call the sufferers? yeah, so we baker a lot about this because we got into the hard definition. and even the state versus the react data, depending on whether you say persistent is more than 4 weeks off your queue to 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, i have 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 i really want to see more and more consultation on this because, you know, we,

so 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 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 patient groups have been dynamo, they really have led the race. 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, very clearly, and i think the support groups can help you to do that. for me in terms of the range of, of symptoms you've seen report him. obviously fatigue would be a bad, much of a common factor. i've got other things that people should be looking for in particular

. we know that the acute condition of sam, characteristic light loss of smell, this long, cold and also have several common factors and afflicting many people. it does have been 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. and speaking, running the world, how much from international effort is being focused on the, on the tackling, the long call that i think it really is important to have an international asset. and that is growing. and there are meetings, for example, world health organization and looking at it. and i h, in the, in the united states draw 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 their dr surgery and say, you know, i've been out of people are 6 months help me talk to my employer told me to get some time to get to treatment and i can't be local answers, those need to be global answers. and i think, well, you know, we're trying hard to build those. it's still an aspect which long covert is at the back of the queue while people deal with the acute condition. yeah, so we'd be see what 19 or 20 months now as fire fighting 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 virus. long off, you stopped worrying about the acute infection. you have to worry about those 3 or 4 or 5 years of off them out of people flooding your clinics. desperate to help out of work, loss of income, you know,

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 sectors 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 to the health care planning. let's do the manpower planning because it is noble and it is going to be here to support us if we don't address it. so bearing in mind, the new condition is prolonged. most of the deadly pernicious violence, but in terms your medical expertise and arrange for professional men that's remind you of any other violence in terms of the way it's attacking people all but 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 low perform period. i think about work we do in brazil on them. she can of iris. do you get from mosquitoes where a lot of the people are forgotten, a huge infection, that they're, you know, they can't go to work because they've got to kind of thing you know, frightens 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 of imperial colors, 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 long cool that will see that the war on drugs started as a way to come back. a great problem. what's the one it's part of the attitude of

the nation, not just of north dakota. and it got to be something that you could get elected. this time, the fight against drugs took a chic told us that andrew was competing short form. this is way too dangerous for him to be doing. clearly they put him in harm's way. a rural college student does interest get shot in the head and found in a river like that. something else had to be happening. there's financial survival. i don't. why a guy mom a few years. that's not an almost friday. that's the last time i buy it from the future. so watch, guys are in the

moon. welcome back. the early weeks for the fans, anneke were busy for natalie mcdermott specialize in pediatric infectious diseases and experience and medical spots to disasters. an epidemic expertise was in great media demand. then she contacted colbert herself. alex picks up the story with dr. mcdermott thought to me and diamond. thank you once again for joining me on the alex simon show. it's my pleasure. thank you. well, let's go back to the start of the fun damage value are very much demand by, by the media because of your expertise, 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 starts with

the panoramic or at least around march time i returned to clinical work and while working at one of the 2 in 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 after about 10 days. and then i was working and then again was working on the board. in about may time i became unwell with an almost identical illness again to keep it, which seemed a very quick time to, to become on while again. but i became a while and 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. my feet and things have kind of gradually progress from that to now where i'm quite limited in my ability to walk with crutches and have some, some issues with my bladder. and we're still trying to get to the bottom of the

exactly what, what has happened. so less for striking, you will feel medical expertise. you must sense quite quickly that little. this is strange and 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 background. and you must of realize fairly adler. something very, very different going on here. yeah, i think initially i had a lot of pain in my feet during that 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 in 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, the. she 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 kind of hate but you know, obviously i've been on well, so it takes time and hopefully every couple of weeks i would build up that straight to my next again. but i just never did. despite going 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 that temper 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 every 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 their say, 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 lightless and, and although via conditions i think probably not identical, certainly with a bona. 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 about or 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 overlap. 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 about or it was quite limited to sort of

mainly 5 specific symptoms. olson syndrome, 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 these? sadly, 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 for me, i was part of some of the doctors grades that were discussing the symptoms and discussing what was going on and, and realizing just how many people might,

might be affected by this condition. so it were much of the medical profession, understandably caught up in the acute phase of the panoramic. 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 outlet, at least for getting some concentration on this enduring 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 it's 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 would say to use them in, in raising awareness of the situation. it wasn't really until the autumn of last year that i would say that 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 are affected for a very long period of time. so what do you think needs to be done? know 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 as

a co grief of clinicians who are doing very well at caring for patients and raising awareness about the situation. but equally that some may say as who dismissed 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 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 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 i have decision making about the vaccine that lead from the documents i've read from the g b. i whilst they comment on it sort of a sentence about it that says, well,

long have age. it doesn't, we've had people res, concerned about located. 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 are we then not taking into account that people or children with long with it might go on have long k b, 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, in terms of your own condition, your own experience. are you detecting some light at the end of 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 significance program in terms of my near

a logical condition. and i continue to occasionally develop new symptoms related to that as well, which obviously is 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 soon and identifiable through the gang on both of ativan damage. you have a very best wishes and, and thank you once again for joining me, alex simon. sure. 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 treated, loved ones, dying, intensive care awards full, the health service buckling under the pressure. this is what is dictated to focus on acute care. that is a human cost of the pandemic. however, it is increasingly apparent in social economic terms, the threats of one call,

which 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 the u. k. s. long corporate is a compatible threat to the acute stages of panoramic ben. 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 for the point of non existence . the health services may not be overwhelmed in the short term thanks to the impact of faxing. 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 soon. oh, i i use

me the service play by a whole set of different rules. it's going to force us in your words to get mean dirty and nasty in order to take them. all right, we'll use all tools at our disposal to do so. my name is a monarch mattie, i'm the head of a family member can count on emma killed our children. we will never forgive them for lead this place a bit. am i? what united states was doing in afghanistan, they were bringing people to this torture sight, guns, ordering and abusing them outside of the law. and then allowing some of them to go back home and they would go home and tell people this is what the americans were not looking at. it was a pointless exercise. september the 11th

2001 day that reshape to the modern world. i remember watching the world trade center burn on a tv at the cia and i was standing there like this just looking at it. and a colleague of mine was standing next to me and he said, my god, do they have any idea what they've done? we're going to kill everybody now. everybody, the, the live tv image is provoked the us into declaring its war on terror. they've begun to bomb up, can villages and holmes and get people hurt and, and killed the main goal of destroying terrorism. and then was it achieved? yes, and no. ok to essentially no longer exists. good for us. but there are certainly

other terrorist groups that are worse than the ahead of the anniversary of 9. 11 parties been looking at the lasting impact of the us led war on terror. today we'll be hearing from a british army veteran about the devastating toll of the 20 year ap dan conflict was to many people for situation which we just gave up. also had the taliban unveils its new governments for up dana staff including a terrorist on the f. b i is most wanted list, but washington's left with no other options, must cooperate with the incoming leadership and the australian high court rules

that media company.