Anne Wilson, Chief Executive Officer
I want to briefly address feedback from a few regarding quotes attributed to me in a recent article published in The Age and SMH about a machine-learning tool developed by researchers at University of Melbourne that can predict ME/CFS. I was reported as commenting that people with long COVID will largely recover over a period of time, whereas people with ME/CFS rarely recover.
We know what causes long COVID, which is why this article was about a possible diagnostic tool for ME/CFS. We also know that people who have had post-infection conditions for a short time, less than a year, have a better chance of recovery than those who have been sick for longer. This is why some people who initially have lingering symptoms after COVID, and get diagnosed with long COVID, go on to recover. But like many people with ME/CFS who have been sick for years or decades, there are many people with long COVID who have been unwell for years since their first infection and are not recovering.
For those of you living with long COVID, we see you and we are here for you. This was not clear in the published comments attributed to me. I recognise the way my comments were portrayed was blunt and lacked the context in which they were made, thereby upsetting some readers. I apologise to those who were upset by the comments that were published. Once an interview has been granted, we have no control over what will be published.
I do wish to thank the many hundreds of people who made contact following the article providing their support and agreeing that a test such as the one reported on would be a diagnostic game changer, clarifying and reducing the time to diagnosis for people with ME/CFS. The availability of a formal diagnosis makes it far more difficult for medical providers to gaslight patients.
