> I am 99% convinced that a big part of what is reported as "long covid" is actually IKEA's mold-laced recycled wood time bombs shipped to people's apartments.

I'm glad you're better, but I'm sorry to say this is not a good take. I have a couple friends who suffered from Long COVID, one of whom eventually passed away from complications. Their conditions were clearly triggered by COVID and knowing both of their styles and tastes, I don't think they had a single IKEA furniture in their houses.

Long COVID misinformation is rampant and this is not helpful.

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bflesch 2 days ago | parent [-]

I'm sorry for your loss. It's definitely a fringe theory and I didn't intend to minimize their suffering. But this theory is grounded in my personal experience and my personal analysis with the furniture at hand and my immune system, plus the input of dozens of medical professionals and hundreds of lab tests along the way. My disease fits all of the long covid symptoms listed on wikipedia and it is brazen of you to swing the "long covid misinformation" hammer when I share my personal story of suffering and healing from the thing that people like you call "long covid".

This constant invalidation of multi-year delibitating disease is exhausting. If you come up with a long covid biomarker feel free to reach out so we can test and then you can officially gatekeep me from being part of "long covid". But until then please don't invalidate my healing story.

What helped me was other affected people sharing their story and figuring out what helped them personally to improve and what not. What DID NOT HELP was people in high-ranking social positions of power, especially in traditional medical fields, who (a) did not have the disease themselves and (b) just flat-out refused to even consider whole classes of causes and patients due to their personal hubris.

I have healed from this stuff DESPITE OF medical professionals.

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wizzwizz4 2 days ago | parent [-]

> the thing that people like you call "long covid"

No. See e.g. https://meassociation.org.uk/2023/05/updated-booklet-long-co.... There are many conditions with a similar spectrum of symptoms, distinguished by their suspected causes: Long COVID is specifically the name where this is caused by a COVID-19 infection. We already know that COVID-19 infections aren't the only cause, because these conditions predate SARS-CoV-2 (in humans).

If you've correctly concluded that your symptoms were caused by something other than COVID-19, then by definition you did not have long COVID. "Long COVID is actually caused by IKEA furniture fungus" is misinformation, and your experience with a similar condition doesn't give you immunity from criticism.

> What DID NOT HELP was people in high-ranking social positions of power, especially in traditional medical fields, who (a) did not have the disease themselves and (b) just flat-out refused to even consider whole classes of causes and patients due to their personal hubris.

I half-seriously want to propose "doctors flat-out refuse to think about your condition" as a diagnostic criterion for chronic fatigue syndrome.

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bflesch 2 days ago | parent [-]

It is a horrific disease and there are many who have it much worse than me. But I also nearly died from this.

> If you've correctly concluded that your symptoms were caused by something other than COVID-19, then by definition you did not have long COVID.

The symptom onset correlated both with covid infection and with covid vaccination.

> "Long COVID is actually caused by IKEA furniture fungus" is misinformation, and your experience with a similar condition doesn't give you immunity from criticism.

Feel free to critize, but I don't see evidence strong enough to immediately reject my theory with such a certainity. Of course not every long covid patient has IKEA furniture. But in my informed opinion there is a correlation, just as with the covid vaccine, and it would make sense to do both scientific and judicial discovery of this correlation.

Due to lacking medical methods one might most likely never be able to show that long covid is caused by a certain mycotoxin plus a certain covid strain hitting the body at the same time, or a certain mycotoxin weakening the immune system enough for long covid symptoms to appear.

But IKEA is/was aware of the problem as they change color from white to gray, they actively hide facts about these materials from their product detail pages, and their own videos demonstrate that it is very likely that shipments of their product were soaked in humidity. And if you soak wood in water, wrap it in plastic paint, and then put it into a room with 30% humidity it is like a fungal growth booster no matter what the person who lives in that apartment does. The water wrapped inside plastic will create micropores in the plastic and try to diffuse outside, thereby creating perfect conditions for mold growth. This is what I think IKEA has done, and I think they tried to hide it.

As mold-based materials are growing in popularity both due to lower costs and sustainability factors, the dangers of mold-based materials that are shipped with too much internal humidity need to be researched and remediated.

PS: There are some books/podcasts by doctors who themselves got long covid and felt the gaslighting by their peers and reported about it.

	▲	wizzwizz4 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		> Feel free to critize, but I don't see evidence strong enough to immediately reject my theory with such a certainity. Of course not every long covid patient has IKEA furniture. Can you please explain how this isn't evidence strong enough to immediately reject your "all long COVID is caused by IKEA furniture" theory? > But IKEA is/was aware […] they actively hide facts […] This is classic conspiratorial reasoning. You observe that group A do activity B to cover up activity C, which – if activity C causes situation D – would help cover up situation D. You then treat this as evidence that activity C causes situation D, and/or that group A is complicit in knowingly causing situation D; but this doesn't follow, no matter how much it feels like it does. This kind of conspiratorial reasoning is extremely seductive – as I know from experience. I was never able to reason myself out of belief systems shaped like this. I'm hoping that laying this out abstractly will help bypass this – that you can look at the shape of the argument, go "yeah, that shape of argument is exceedingly questionable", then let that cognitive dissonance sit in your mind and gradually break apart the conspiratorial thinking over time – but I'm not really expecting it to help you. I got lucky, because my conspiratorial beliefs (about big tech being evil cyberstalkers who collect and sell everyone's personal information) were never validated by others, and I began to doubt them (despite the mounting evidence), until I started to consider non-conspiratorial alternative explanations. It turns out, those have a lot more evidence to support them (as I'm sure most of HN is aware). This eventually allowed me to construct general models of the world where the "bad guys" are not necessarily omniscient, and these have served me well across a wide variety of topics. > PS: There are some books/podcasts by doctors who themselves got long covid and felt the gaslighting by their peers and reported about it. Please stay away from these. They are not healthy to someone with your mindset. You already know that the medical establishment is sceptical of the existence of ME/CFS, and only grudgingly acknowledges Long COVID: you don't need to expose yourself to repeated testimony from people with grudges and a vested interest in holding your interest.