Since the pandemic began, there have been reports of patients – some of whom were not even that sick from COVID – developing debilitating long-term symptoms, which has become known as COVID long-haul. Obviously if a person has a very bad case of COVID, it can cause lasting damage to the lungs and other organs – but that is not the situation I am talking about here. Research may in time show that COVID long-haul is in fact a separate entity. However, what many practitioners such as myself who treat chronic stealth infections – such as Lyme disease, other tick-borne illnesses, and chronic viruses such as Epstein-Barr Virus or EBV – suspect is that this condition may be at least partially a flare-up of those underlying chronic infections that was there before, but was asymptomatic or only causing minor symptoms, and was never previously diagnosed.
When looking at the symptoms listed for COVID long-haul such as: brain fog, cognitive impairment, fatigue, anxiety, depression, headaches, shortness of breath, chest pain, palpitations, neuropathy (burning sensations or pins-and-needles), sleep problems, gastrointestinal problems, rashes, and more – it looks exactly like the symptoms of Lyme disease and its partners in crime – Bartonella, Babesia, Rickettsia, Brucella, TBRF, and others.
Since these stealth infections are essentially at epidemic levels and have been for a long time, and they can be in a person’s body for decades without them knowing it, and many people with the infections never test fully positive, and most doctors don’t know how to properly diagnose these infections anyway – the chances of many of these patients having an underlying, never-diagnosed, pre-existing stealth infection is very high. If someone had that situation and then got COVID – which hijacks the immune system and causes massive inflammation – those underlying infections would essentially have been let out of jail, and would have found the perfect opportunity to come out and take over.
If you are suffering from COVID long-haul, it is imperative that you see a doctor who knows how to diagnose and treat underlying stealth infections- such as we do – even if you have been previously tested for them and told it was negative. With the right treatment, this type of post-COVID syndrome doesn’t have to be a forever long haul.