Innovation will provide solutions to Long COVID — the new chronic disease of our time

Long COVID is a serious, growing nationalist health crisis. Though estimates vary, arsenic galore as 18 million Americans may be affected. This is wherefore it continues to seizure the attraction of Senator Todd Young, who asked Secretary Kennedy to prioritize Long Covid probe successful his confirmation proceeding past year. This week, the Senator had the accidental to travel up with the Secretary at this year’s fund hearing, who reported connected the Department’s efforts to identify biomarkers and committed to continuing the effort.  

This is invited news. For astir of us, the COVID-19 pandemic is simply a distant, though searing memory. However, too many Americans are inactive experiencing the pandemic arsenic a regular reality, suffering from what is present known as Long COVID. In 2026, 3 years aft the extremity of the Public Health Emergency, Long COVID patients report a wide assortment of symptoms, which include important cognitive dysfunction, utmost fatigue, station exertional exhaustion, autonomic dysfunction, cardiovascular conditions, blood vas pathology, air hunger, intravascular micro-coagulation, tinnitus, and other neurological symptoms.  Unfortunately, determination is no molecular diagnostic test, nary elaborate elucidation of the pathogenesis of the disease, and nary definitive therapy.  

I devoted my aesculapian career — in the US Army, at the University of Maryland, and successful nationalist service — to fighting deadly and debilitating diseases.  Today, much of my aesculapian signifier is focused connected helping patients afflicted with Long COVID.  The current Long Covid situation reminds maine of my aboriginal days arsenic a caller doc confronting AIDS earlier the NIH and HHS made solving AIDS a probe priority. 

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More than 30 years ago, I witnessed academia, national laboratories, and industry commit itself to solving AIDS. These efforts converted HIV/AIDS from a erstwhile fatal illness to a highly treatable and preventable infection, where individuals infected with the HIV virus can expect to unrecorded a full, natural lifetime. This occurred due to the fact that of an assertive absorption on what was possible and a major investment successful innovation by the U.S. Government.  Similarly, successful 2020 with the emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic, President Trump had the penetration to money Operation Warp Speed and engage industry successful the accelerated improvement of a COVID vaccine.

Many mistakes were made during the Covid-19 response, but processing vaccines astatine grounds velocity to support the susceptible was not one of them.  Given the enormity of the Long COVID problem, President Trump should now direct his team to accelerate innovative research to observe and develop an effective treatment for Long COVID.

Sadly, the NIH has failed to effectively invest the necessary resources to lick our knowing of Long COVID pathogenesis or to make a diagnostic test necessary to determination the tract forward.  

In 2025, the Administration undertook a bid of actions accordant with a pandemic that had tally its course. The Office for Long COVID Research and Practice was shuttered and probe backing was cut. The CDC and NIH both stated that they would, "no longer discarded billions of payer dollars responding to a non-existent pandemic that Americans moved connected from years ago."

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As overmuch arsenic we mightiness privation this to beryllium true, this is simply a mischaracterization of the current state of the pandemic, and it is simply a costly one. Productivity losses and aesculapian costs associated with Long COVID patients continue to outgo the United States hundreds of billions of dollars each year. Sadly, probe programs that would person made a meaningful dent successful these costs were chopped conscionable arsenic they were connected the cusp of yielding results that would person led to a question of objective trials. Fortunately, some of the cuts successful this research have been reversed. Unfortunately, the wide concern in Long COVID is inadequate. More needs to beryllium done. 

Now is the clip to prioritize the find of caller treatments to easiness the suffering of the 18 million patients struggling with Long COVID.  Simply put, the NIH should aggressively money Long COVID probe efforts.

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I applaud Secretary Kennedy’s emphasis connected battling chronic disease. This is agelong overdue. And so, we call on Secretary Kennedy and the medication to aggressively address Long COVID, a caller and large chronic disease.  

AIDS erstwhile was a mysterious, predominately fatal, disease of different steadfast individuals. Now, it is simply a treatable and preventable infection. The aforesaid could beryllium existent for Long COVID, if we aggressively invest successful the probe and the objective strategy truthful urgently needed. Now is the clip to empower HHS and industry to marque this a world and offer millions of suffering Americans the accidental to unrecorded unencumbered by the effects of Long COVID.