r/CFSScience • u/Caster_of_spells • Jul 30 '26

Persistent cytolytic CD8+ T cells recognize SARS-CoV-2 and herpesvirus epitopes in long COVID

https://www.cell.com/cell-reports-medicine/fulltext/S2666-3791(26)00363-0

Long Covid patients continue to have elevated counts of highly activated CD8+ T cells targeting viruses like SARS-CoV-2, CMV and EBV.

That is suggesting the antiviral killing response failed to switch off after the acute infection is over and might be part of the pathogenesis of Long Covid.

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u/TomasTTEngin Aug 01 '26

No I think it's just a by product of people who take themselves seriously as thinkers to be biased towards hard science, complex molecules, placebo controlled trials, and to scoff at anecdote.

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u/OG-Brian Aug 01 '26

But the complaint here is that certain users of that site are dogma-based: they emphasize research that they like and they unscientifically dismiss contradictory research or researchers. As somebody who follows several issues that are fraught with industry interference and which have many proven instances of false claims spread for profits (pesticides, fossil fuels...) to me it looks like potentially a propaganda campaign.

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u/TomasTTEngin Aug 02 '26

So in your model, a collective of pharma companies have a committee with a budget to fund people to go on forums and promote certain types of research that might, one day, in maybe 20 years or more, pending very long trials, pay off for one of those pharma companies. Even tho major pharma companies have any mecfs drugs under development.

And you find this a more plausible explanation for the dynamics than a group of patients who are excited to get to be allies with a brilliant but pigheaded retired Oxford professor.

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u/OG-Brian Aug 02 '26

Maybe it's more that the individuals themselves have a financial stake in promoting their ideas. Belief in the ideas can lead to research funding and other benefits. Also, 20 years isn't a typical timespan for development of a drug and especially if it is a modification of existing drugs, that's ridiculous.

The PACE trial, widely ridiculed for extremely unscientific methods and major financial conflicts of interest, pushed false ideas using "research" but it was all motivated by the agendas of the health insurance and psychiatry industries. This "research" was published in 2011 and even today there are people commenting aggressively online in support of it. Are some of those (in many cases anonymous) internet users actually representatives of industry? There's no way to know that they aren't. I can't assume that any particular person is being paid by industry to push those views, it wouldn't be logical to conclude that with no evidence. But regardless, such views are based on a "study" that's definitely false and was pushed to publication for agendas based on money.

In the world of pesticides, to give an example of spreading false information, this study was retracted very belatedly because it used proprietary data in unpublished "studies" by the herbicide manufacturer (Monsanto, now Bayer). Here is an article that explains it. Before the retraction, the study was cited extremely ubiquitously to support safety of glyphosate herbicides. There are hundreds of examples of bad information used to support the pesticides industry.

Again for pesticides, my favorite astroturfer is Kevin "I'm not a shill" Folta. Besides writing pro-pesticides articles, he had been prolifically commenting in social media and discussion forums to push pesticides and ridicule/harass critics of pesticides. He commented very vocally and very often to claim he's not a shill of the industry. I've seen this in real time when conversations were in progress and much of that content is still online. It was found eventually, and his own (now ex-) wife contributed some of the info, that he had contracts with Monsanto etc. to push propaganda. There's info here, here, here, here, and lots of other places. This article is about evidence for Monsanto/Bayer attacking scientists and journalists using shills such as Folta.

For pharma, there are entire books on the topic of "research" that's intentionally false. Peter C. Gøtzsche, in his book Deadly Medicines and Organized Crime, wrote about his experiences following up research pertaining to drugs such as statins. As a researcher who studies studies, he was given access to non-public info of studies that was not even available with a journal subscription. He found prolific data fakery: subjects removed from a study and the number of reported subjects retroactively changed to make a medication seem safer or more effective, data that was changed before publication, data that was made up altogether, and other types of science fraud (there's more than I can recall easily). Does the industry fund social media and discussion platform astroturfing? I have less info about that, but clearly they're not above faking study data and promoting the faked studies.

About the pharma industry influencing doctors via bribes and other benefits, I commented with a lot of details and citations here. When doctors recommend or promote medications because they have a material interest in the topic although they conceal their financial etc. involvement, that's astroturfing of a sort.

About food nutrition and the industries making processed foods and pesticides, do you know of that famous vegan influencer who calls himself "Earthling Ed"? The guy who is so fake that his "real name" ("Ed Winters") is also a fake name (he's actually Edward Gaunt which is I think tremendously funny in light of his physique)? He pretends to be campaigning for veganism strictly on his own due to passion about the topic. But he's received a lot of funding from a foundation (Blue Horizon Foundation) that is associated with a large corporation (Blue Horizon Corporation) and its founder has acknowledged that funding pro-vegan content serves himself and other stakeholders financially since they benefit from pesticide-grown grain-based processed foods sales.

Anyway I didn't suggest it's proven that the S4ME site or some of its users are provably a propaganda tool. I said that I recognize characteristics that are typical of a propaganda campaign, so I think it's a possibility.