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Should people with Long Covid be donating blood? - The Sick Times
thesicktimes.orgIn the fall of 2009, researchers at a lab in Reno, Nevada, said they detected a potentially transmissible virus in the blood of people with myalgic encephalomyelitis (ME). The study led the American Red Cross to ban blood donations from people with ME. The study was retracted in 2011 and the Red Cross guideline was later reversed, but more than a decade later, there is still a lifetime ban on blood donation from people with ME in the U.K. by the National Health Service (NHS). Similar ME donor bans are also active today in Australia, New Zealand, Ireland, and Canada. The Canadian Blood Service and the Australian Red Cross both state that ME could be caused by a “transmissible” infection. More questions began to emerge about blood donation by members of the chronic illness community in 2022 when the NHS updated their eligibility requirements, deferring people with Long Covid from donating blood until they considered themselves “fully recovered.” Their reasoning? They stated that blood donation could worsen the symptoms of people with Long Covid or ME.
are people will long covid trying to donate blood?
Lotta people out there selling blood and plasma to survive. Also, long covid comes in many degrees of severity, many people may not know they have it.
true. i was thinking that the last thing i want to do when i feel like shit is have blood taken
There's a weird thing that some people with LC have where large blood draws lead to symptom relief for hours/days/weeks. Probably something something microclots or inflammatory something being removed temporarily, or maybe the body's response to injury...? No one knows, we're all just speculating. But it happened to me personally after a big blood test and then I was seriously looking into donating blood regularly, or, alternatively, nurturing a crop of medicinal leeches at home.
wow that's kinda wild.
It's truly strange. Hard to believe sometimes that it's 2024 and I'm bedbound from the plague and looking into bloodletting
The better question is how many people actually give a shit about long Covid?