Ross Douthat is a political analyst, blogger, author and New York Times columnist. As someone who has suffered for years with chronic Lyme disease, he has not only written about his own experience, he has also closely followed the stories of “long-haul” COVID patients, who continue to experience long-term symptoms.

Thus, he is uniquely positioned to review and analyze the newly published book Chronic: The Hidden Cause of the Autoimmune Pandemic and How to Get Better Again, by Dr. Steven Phillips and Dana Parish.

Douthat’s article in the February 2 edition of the New York Times carries the headline: “Long-Haul Covid and the Chronic Illness Debate.” The subheading is: “What persistent COVID cases might have in common with chronic fatigue syndrome and Lyme disease, and why it matters.”

A portion of the article reads:

The book makes the case that the spread of what the authors call Lyme+, an array of tick-borne pathogens that often infect patients simultaneously, is responsible not just for the more than 400,000 cases of Lyme disease diagnosed each year in the United States but also for an unknown number of chronic infections beyond that — undiagnosed or misdiagnosed and left untreated because of a combination of testing failures, institutional bias and the horrible complexity of the diseases themselves.

Then further, they argue that most of these cases can be treated effectively. Many people who are told they have a condition that can only be managed, not eliminated — to say nothing of the people told “It’s all in your head” — could claw back toward normalcy, if not always perfect health, with a long-term regimen of oral antibiotics and a doctor who’s willing to work with them to figure out which drug combination works.

READ HIS NEW YORK TIMES ARTICLE HERE.

READ AN EXCERPT OF THE BOOK HERE.

I highly recommend “Chronic” to anybody who’s trying to figure out their complex health problems.

TOUCHED BY LYME is written by Dorothy Kupcha Leland, LymeDisease.org’s Vice-president and Director of Communications. She is co-author of When Your Child Has Lyme Disease: A Parent’s Survival Guide. Contact her at dleland@lymedisease.org.