Why is airborne disease transmission still controversial to doctors?

Source: Canva Pro

Mal was tired of mainstream media misrepresenting COVID-19 and Long COVID, so she picked up a mic and a camera and told the story herself. Thus, Lola Germs was born.

In this episode of Still Here, co-hosts Miles Griffis and Betsy Ladyzhets talk to Lola Germs about her path from online COVID-safer community member to viral science communicator, and the research behind her latest project, “what if everything we thought we knew about disease spread was wrong?” She traces the history of airborne disease science from early miasma theory through germ theory’s overcorrection, the overlooked mid-century research of Mildred and William Wells, and the contemporary scientists who tried (and failed) to get the World Health Organization to act on airborne spread early in the COVID-19 pandemic.

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Jump to a specific part of the transcript:

Intro
Interview with Lola Germs
Research updates
Outro

Intro

Melanie Marich: [00:00:00] Welcome to Still Here, a Long COVID news and commentary podcast from The Sick Times. In today’s episode, we talk to Lola Germs about how disease spreads in the air and why doctors still can’t seem to believe it.

Miles Griffis: I’m Miles Griffis.

Betsy Ladyzhets: And I’m Betsy Ladyzhets. We’re the co-founders of The Sick Times.

Melanie Marich: And I’m Melanie Marich, the podcast producer for Still Here.

Miles Griffis: Many institutions are ignoring the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and trying to erase [00:00:30] the Long COVID crisis.

Betsy Ladyzhets: But here at The Sick Times, we’re bringing you the latest news and commentary that matters to the Long COVID community.

Miles Griffis: Without pandemic denial, minimizing, or gaslighting

Melanie Marich: If I had a nickel for every time a doctor asked me why I was wearing a mask at the doctor’s office where people are sick, I would be a very rich lady. Despite the overwhelming evidence and research [00:01:00] for airborne disease spread that has emerged in the last few decades, the medical community has been slow to adopt the measures to match, and there are plenty of measures to match: air purifiers, UV filters, just plain wearing a mask and opening some windows.

It’s not complicated stuff, and we know it makes a difference, yet it hasn’t translated into best practices. So we were excited to talk to science educator and content creator Mal, better known as Lola Germs, who just published a documentary on YouTube about the history [00:01:30] of how we think about airborne illness.

Lola’s content is so fun. It’s like watching Bill Nye meets Magic School Bus, meets your favorite TikToker, meets your friend who never stopped masking and loves to tell you why. Miles and Betsy spoke with her about her latest project, how she got into science content, and this perennial problem of people, especially doctors, not doing better even though they know better.

As always, all links are in our description, including Lola Germs’ full-length documentary. Here’s that conversation.

Interview with Lola Germs

Betsy Ladyzhets: Thank [00:02:00] you so much for joining us. We’re so excited to have you on the podcast.

Lola Germs: I’m so excited to be here. My name is Mal, uh, codename Lola Germs. Uh, pronouns she/her, and I am reaching you from beautiful sunsetty Vienna, Austria.

Betsy Ladyzhets: Um, yeah. So please tell us about the origins of Lola Germs. Who is she? Uh, how did you come to be a science educator?

Lola Germs: So Lola Germs is- Like, [00:02:30] the best parts of me, the kindest parts of me that wanna share knowledge with the world. Because as I feel like you guys can probably understand, there’s a lot of frustration, um, to being a person who is vulnerable and living through this pandemic and feeling isolated, and I definitely feel all of that.

But when I’m trying to, like, do outreach that’s especially targeted towards people who might not be in the same place as us, it’s a good idea to, uh, like, maybe come with a little bit more grace, even if privately sometimes I’m [00:03:00] frustrated. And how did I get started in this? Basically, I got involved in online COVID-safer community, like, early 2022, which was a huge lifesaver for me.

I was kinda hanging out on some Discords and Twitter, and I was really grateful to the people there who taught me so much about airborne spread and how to best protect myself as a vulnerable person in the world. Like, I learned so much. People are giving this knowledge to each other where the state has [00:03:30] failed to do so.

But I kind of got frustrated because I saw that the state, traditional public health institutions, and mainstream media were not giving this information to people. And so I had kinda been playing with the idea for a while, like, “Maybe I could make videos. I don’t know. I could try.” And then I moved to Vienna, and I found myself, uh, underemployed for the first few months, and I was like, “Ah, what the hell? Let’s give it a shot.”

And I just kinda started making some videos bit [00:04:00] by bit and the response was really good. I was kind of worried about haters, as obviously, like, there’s a lot of people who don’t, who don’t necessarily wanna hear, “Hey, hey, did you know the pandemic is still going on, and that it’s a good idea to protect yourself and others?”

I’m sure you guys have experienced this, but the response was overwhelmingly positive, and also just really great for me to connect with people, and that was how it, how it first started.

Miles Griffis: Thank you so much for sharing that. I loved how sort of earlier, before [we started recording], you were also [00:04:30] talking about, um, Lola sort of being, like, a drag persona of yourself.

Um, and I thought that was a really sort of, like, interesting way to think of this, like another character that we all sort of bring to communication, and it’s making me think about myself and what my Sick Times … drag character is. Um, so I think a lot of people with Long COVID probably became more familiar with your work in 2024 when you produced a video, “Why Is Everyone So [00:05:00] Sick?,”

um, which was kind of like a Long COVID 101, and you broke down the disease, and you busted common myths for your audience. What were the main facts about the disease that you think were missing from public health agencies’ communication or lack of communication on Long COVID?

Lola Germs: Oh, boy. There’s, there-

Miles Griffis: I mean, I’m sure there’s many, but what sort of, like, what was the main one that I think really, like, inspired you for that video?

Lola Germs: One of the first things that actually [00:05:30] inspired me was a conversation I had with somebody who worked in climate science, who I was trying to tell about Long COVID, and she said to me, “Oh, you know, like, that sounds really terrible, but, but it’s super rare, right?” And I just kind of, this was not the time to get into a deep conversation.

I didn’t know this person really well, but I wanted to be able to say, “No, actually, it’s not super rare. Here’s why. Here’s the prevalence. Here’s why you might not think that it’s [00:06:00] common, because a lot of the traditional sources and the doctors that you trust don’t know anything.” And it, honestly, it did kind of start with this first comment where somebody said, “But Long COVID’s really rare,” and I kind of wound up then collecting, so okay, so what are, Long COVID.

It’s not, it’s not really rare. Obviously, like, the people who are the most severely affected are a smaller group, although, to be fair, it’s a lot of people. But we have the evidence from so many, so many studies that we know this [00:06:30] virus is likely causing damage to everybody it infects, regardless of whether it is a mild infection, and that we probably have not even really started to see, like, the long-term repercussions of that Long COVID.

Your doctor doesn’t know anything about Long COVID. There is a translational gap in medicine in which breakthroughs take about 17 years on average to make it from the people in the halls of science with test [00:07:00] tubes to, like, what your doctor knows, and I think we, like, live in this society where, you know, I’m gonna say it, doctors are really on a pedestal in a way that a lot of other scientific professions are not.

And unfortunately, if you say to somebody, you know, “Here’s a fact about Long COVID,” and they say, “Well, my doctor, my doctor said that’s not true,” you’ve hit this barrier where it’s really hard to get someone to listen to you because who am [00:07:30] I? I didn’t go to medical school. And so for me, also, explaining the gap between why doctors might not know about Long COVID and then why public health officials also might not be sharing all of the information about Long COVID th- that they could.

Oh, yeah, and sorry, big one, coulda led with this, Long COVID can affect anyone. It’s not just people with, you know, quote-unquote, “pre-existing [00:08:00] conditions” that are at risk. Literally lots of people who are in or were in, you know, the prime of their life, very athletic people, can have their quality of life greatly reduced by this disease, and this sort of rhetoric that, you know, “Ah, it’s only old people, it’s only vulnerable people, you don’t gotta worry about whatever,” is just patently untrue.

Obviously, uh, we should be protecting people even if it did only hurt the vulnerable, but it, but it [00:08:30] doesn’t, and anybody can, can be taken down and seriously harmed by this.

Betsy Ladyzhets: Yeah, I mean, I think those are ones that we also think about pushing back on in our coverage. Um, there’s also, you know, there are just, like, so many challenges with communicating about Long COVID, but I think your videos do, do a great job of getting across some of these concepts and some of this kind of uncertainty in a way that is very [00:09:00] accessible, hopefully to people who don’t come in with the existing knowledge like we do.

Lola Germs: I, thank you. I’m kind of always like- Yeah … screeching to myself. I’m like, “There’s more nuance to it than this,” and I’m just shaking my fists and trying to figure out the most entertaining ways to communicate uncertainty, and shades of gray, and nuance to people, uh, while still having fun.

Betsy Ladyzhets: Yes, of course. So we wanted to talk about your latest project, which is a feature length video called What If Everything We Thought We Knew About Disease Spread Is Wrong?

[00:09:30] Um, it’s also a really fun watch. You have different costumes. You have puppets. There’s a ghost- … of public health past and present. Um, it’s so great, and on top of that, it’s really informative and really well-researched, and you talk a lot about public health history, uh, namely different ways the doctors have thought about airborne disease spread.

Um, so can you kind of tell us how you came onto this topic, like why you chose this for such a big video production?

Lola Germs: All good questions. So- [00:10:00] I don’t wanna say that like, oh, this project also started with me being annoyed and frustrated, as with the Long COVID crash course where somebody said, “Long COVID is rare,” but that’s really where.

But there, there was a little bit of a kernel, um, of that. But before I was annoyed, I read Megan Molteni’s really excellent 2021 w- long read for WIRED, which is like, uh, the 60-year screwup that, scientific screwup that helped COVID kill, and that was, [00:10:30] that was the first time that I actually dove into that topic and really learned how bad it was, and from that point on, I started getting into the research.

And she profiles, for anybody who hasn’t read it, she profiles the contemporary scientists who have been fighting to get airborne spread recognized and also, like, use contemporary technology to actually investigate this for the first time in, you know, 70 years. And so from there, I wound up actually reading those scientists’ work, and getting familiar and seeing more and more how much…

This information is not [00:11:00] common. And then Carl Zimmer’s book came out. Um, Carl Zimmer released a book in February 2025 called Airborne, which was based on this story, essentially diving farther in, and I was excited about the book, but I was also cautious because — this is not, this is not to throw shade on Carl Zimmer.

He does a lot of amazing, like, original research for this book, looking through, like, source materials. However, in my head, I was like, “Hmm, [00:11:30] I bet this is probably gonna, like, tell this story in a way that doesn’t really challenge power and kind of wraps up on a satisfying note, and then they’re gonna do a Radiolab episode about it, and then nothing else is gonna happen.”

And then that’s what ha- and then that’s what happened. Exactly what happened. Um- Classic. And I read, I read the book, and it, like-

Again, there’s this amazing original research, but there is no, like, disability [00:12:00] perspective awareness, not a single person with Long COVID in- interviewed, and it kind of wraps up with this, like, really fast chapter where he’s like, “Yeah, and then the scientists wanted to keep trying, but everyone stopped caring about COVID, but me and my wife drove through a field and the ocean of air was so beautiful. The end.”

And from the way he tells the stories, you wouldn’t even know that some of the scientists that he profiles are out there every day writing editorials and, like, fighting to get this science recognized. So anyways, so I was [00:12:30] annoyed at Carl Zimmer, um, and I also had a different kind of conversation with a producer for an extremely popular science podcast.

I had to teach this person what Long COVID was. Um, and then they were like, “Why do you think the mainstream media isn’t covering Long COVID?” And I had to not say, “Girl, diva, you are the mainstream media.” And so this w- this was, like, a person who had crossed paths professionally with Carl Zimmer, and I was like, “That’s it. I’m just … I have to, I have to tell this story myself.”

Um, and so [00:13:00] then I kinda went on this really wild journey of diving really deep into the research. Um, Carl Zimmer’s book was the main source, but I also … I mean, I read so much more, and I had to learn so much more about the contemporary science of airborne spread.

Even though a lot of it doesn’t really make it into the video, I wanted to make sure that I understood it so that I’m not misrepresenting anything. Uh, yeah, and so then I just kinda spent a very, very long time behind the scenes researching and writing and researching more and writing more [00:13:30] by myself in this project, uh, behind my day job.

Um, and then similarly to when Lola Germs started, I kind of found myself in a weird situation again where I was underemployed, and I was like, “Well, I have a few months. Maybe I’m just gonna make this because this might be my only shot to, to achieve my vision.” And then, so then I made this video with puppets and, like, 15 costumes and sewed a ghost costume and yeah.

Anyway, that’s how it came to be. [00:14:00] Uh, I I’m not gonna say anything else about Carl Zimmer.

Miles Griffis: Thank you for the, um, sort of the backstory of this. So I don’t wanna spoil the video for those who haven’t watched it yet. Um, but can you talk about some of, I guess sort of a couple of the broad takeaways, uh, from it?

Um, can you kind of briefly walk us through how doctors and scientists have thought about airborne disease spread throughout the ages?

Lola Germs: Yes. Okay, condensed version. Super condensed. [00:14:30] Basically, quickie quick version, in the past people believed in this idea called miasma, which was more or less the idea that kind of like bad smells or vaguely bad air could spread disease, which, you know, made more sense than believing that demons caused syphilis.

But it, it wasn’t really based on anything. And so then when germ theory came around, uh, in the mid-19th century, doctors realized, like, “Oh, you know, the reason that people [00:15:00] were dying in our clinics is because our, our hands were covered in blood from dissecting corpses and not because, you know, it smelled bad outside.”

And so they were very embarrassed, and there was this shift where early 20th century public health figures were so embarrassed about the mistakes of miasma that they over-corrected and were like, “Well, okay, diseases can never spread through the air.” And a few guys early on were like, “Hey, what if we apply germ theory to the idea that maybe [00:15:30] bacteria can float through the air?”

And the other guys were like, “Shut up. No one will wash their hands if we tell them that. It never happens.” And you kinda get this really frustrating back and forth where starting, especially in the 1940s with this one really influential couple from the United States, the Wellses, Mildred and William, they laid a lot of foundation of the science of airborne disease spread that we have now, and, like, nobody listened [00:16:00] to them.

Their work was seen by the first and longtime head epidemiologist of the CDC, who played a giant role in, uh, them not being taken seriously during their lifetime. There’s just an immense paper trail for this area of research over the years getting looked over. This kind of trail where the Wellses and then a few of their sort of scientific children were doing a little bit of work over the years, and airborne [00:16:30] spread was, like, very only piecemeal recognized.

The Wellses were finally able to prove that tuberculosis is exclusively airborne, and you would’ve thought this made it, the whole thing get revisited. It wasn’t. Then measles was, was proven to be airborne. You’d think they would revisit the whole thing. It wasn’t. And then SARS came around in the early 2000s, and this inspired some contemporary scientists to rediscover the work of the Wellses and be like, “Holy moly. Somebody f- figured this out, [00:17:00] like, 70 years ago, and nobody listened.”

And then this group of contemporary scientists were sort of quietly… Well, they weren’t trying to be quiet, but nobody was listening to them. They were using modern tools to investigate airborne spread from SARS up until 2020, and these were not doctors.

These were largely people with backgrounds in physics, engineering, which you need to understand if you wanna know how microscopic particles move through the [00:17:30] air. Knowing how to treat disease doesn’t tell you that, but there’s really a lack of interdisciplinary collaboration. And then anyways, the pandemic came around, and this group of modern scientists that had been inspired by the past scientists tried to get the attention of the World Health Organization, and the CDC, and other mainstream institutions to say, “Hey, we think this thing might be airborne, and the precautions that you’re recommending are not, are not gonna cut it,” and they were not listened to.

And a lot of people died and became disabled as a result, and [00:18:00] their work is being recognized now. Like, now these scientists are sort of being invited to, you know, be in these philanthropy-funded projects to do whatever, which may or may not accomplish anything. And they’ve… Look, I, like, I’m very glad that, that, like, they’re being recognized in their careers, and some of them are doing really cool work and are more activist.

But it’s, it’s like the science was, was recognized quietly behind the scenes, and then in [00:18:30] some small events and papers by the World Health Organization, but there has never been a campaign to combat direct misinformation that was spread with the world by the World Health Organization in 2020, where they, they said things that were not true.

Yeah.

Betsy Ladyzhets: Thank you for the great summary. Um, yeah, I mean, the, the misinformation really is so pervasive. Like, I think about, like, journalism conferences that I’ve gone to that are specifically for, like, people who cover science and health. [00:19:00] Like, journalists you do think would be educated about this stuff, and you would see things like back in, like, 2022, 2023, when it was still common for, like, big meetings to have mask requirements, and people would, like, have their masks on, and then, like, take it, pull it down to ask a question.

And I would be like, “That, that’s the very moment where you need to have your mask on because if you’re sick, then you’re, like, spreading it more when you talk.” And it’s like people just don’t- Anyway, yeah, it’s like it’s so easy to get frustrated about this stuff, and really like kudos to you [00:19:30] for taking that frustration and putting it into this great educational resource that —

Lola Germs: Thank you

Betsy Ladyzhets: — can be shared with the world. Yeah. Um, I know we also wanted to ask you specifically about this idea of the Semmelweis reflex, which is an automatic, like almost reflexive tendency to reject new evidence because it contradicts established norms and practices. Um, so how have you seen this reflex playing out with COVID-19 and with the fight for clean air?

Lola Germs: Ev- every day. I see it every [00:20:00] day. Um, yeah, the, the Semmelweis reflex is unfortunately so deeply alive and well. Um, one of the, I think, the most frustrating documents that really drives this home is something that I couldn’t really explore in detail in the video, but the, um, group of scientists that I talked about that were, they were dubbed by, I think Megan Molteni, Group 36.

They sent this letter very early on to the World Health Organization in the pandemic, [00:20:30] um, saying, “Hey, here’s what we’ve learned in the last few decades of research, and, you know, please read our studies. Please see this evidence.”

And the WHO sent them back a letter that is one of the most infuriating things I ever read, where they say like, “Don’t worry, we are following all of the best evidence and staying updated with research. And it’s actually literally impossible to know, um, how many microparticles might be created when somebody talks. And if they are created, they probably [00:21:00] don’t have viruses in them.”

And it’s like, like the World Health Organization said this to the scientists who literally sent them a million studies where they were counting the amount of microparticles that are created when people talk.

And it’s, it’s like — Our public health institutions literally had this world-class evidence from these scientists who were honestly in the most relevant fields, and couldn’t even [00:21:30] bother reading it, and we see this happen just again and again and again. In 2021, there was this, like, these hearings at Congress where some of the key airborne scientists, like Linsey Marr, were invited to testify, uh, and share what they had learned.

And as far as we can kinda see, it looks like, you know, quietly maybe the information that they shared [00:22:00] allegedly may have been incorporated to, you know, protecting people higher up in, you know, government offices and buildings, and updating, updating things for, you know, the fanciest people in the country.

But then a few months later, we had the CDC sharing information that contradicted everything that Linsey Marr shared, even though these scientists were just sharing and sharing and sharing this information. And it was, it was just getting, it was just getting turned down.

Betsy Ladyzhets: Yeah, [00:22:30] I feel like we see this kind of thing also with information about Long COVID, like a resistance to incorporate new research.

Like, Miles and I have had interactions with, you know, like, other public health communicators, where there’s a lot of resistance to, um, admitting things like the fact that reinfections can maybe increase the risk of developing Long COVID. Which, like, we’re still [00:23:00] getting more evidence on that, you know, exact numbers are unclear, but, like, I think we have a lot of studies that show this kind of escalating risk with multiple infections at this point.

Or things like, no, vaccines do not prevent Long COVID. Like, you know, like all of these things that I feel like to us here on this call are relatively straightforward, but just, like, because they contradict certain norms or expectations of how people in science or in certain health fields expect things to operate, it’s, like, [00:23:30] very hard to, uh, just, like, show them evidence to the contrary of what they think. I don’t know.

Lola Germs: Yeah. There’s, like, the psychological biases on an individual basis. There’s this institutional inertia where people don’t wanna do something different than what they’ve already been doing. And then there’s, like, this, the, the sort of the social implications of, like, “Oh, well, if that’s true, that means that we’ve been harming [00:24:00] people for years.”

Betsy Ladyzhets: Yeah.

Lola Germs: And-

Betsy Ladyzhets: And sort of a resistance to admitting- Yeah. Yeah.

Lola Germs: I’ve been talking a lot, um, to, uh- Um, Aurel, who’s, uh, the guy who runs Indoor CO2 Map, who’s a great guy. He knows a, a lot more about, like, engineering, um, and, like, engineering policy space and climate stuff, and he kind of pointed out that in so many other fields, like not public health and medicine, but, like, when we’re designing buildings, we are designing basically with the [00:24:30] precautionary principle in mind of being like, “Okay, we wanna do everything to make sure that this building doesn’t, like, fall and cr- crush a lot of people according to the math and whatever.”

Betsy Ladyzhets: Sure,

Lola Germs: Yeah. And then, when we come to human health, it’s like, “Well, you haven’t definitively proven that we’re hurting people yet, so, uh, we’re probably just gonna continue, continue doing it like this.” And it’s like, why is our approach to public health… Well, okay, I mean, that’s, like, a sociological question that deserves a lot of answers, but just, but just realizing that, it’s like, wow, this is busted.

This is pretty busted. Yeah. [00:25:00]

Miles Griffis: Yeah, it seems like so much of, I mean, the Semmelweis reflex is so common today be- and, like, there’s so many parallels to it today because to admit the harm of millions and millions of deaths from COVID-19 and so many millions of cases of Long COVID is, it would just take so much for these institutions to actually acknowledge, so they just s- try to sweep it under the rug.

Betsy Ladyzhets: Thank you. Yeah, so I, one more thing we wanted to ask [00:25:30] is, um, just, like, for you, for Lola Germs, obviously you just put out this giant project that you were working on for a long time. So what’s kinda coming next for you? What’s some other stuff that you’re working on or that you’re excited about at the moment?

Lola Germs: This is a good question, and it’s one that I’m asking myself, too. Um, I am in a, ano — find myself again in another transitional stage of life, as one does trying to survive in this world. Uh, so I will plug myself [00:26:00] that I’m sort of figuring out exactly what things will look like. And if anybody is looking to hire a science video editor, presenter, writer, researcher, science writer, somebody in any realm of skills that they think I have, I do have a lot of skills, hit me up.

But, like, live streaming, I’m hoping to schedule another stream soon, because I had a really, really fun time talking with the audience after the premiere of the airborne history video, and I’m hopefully starting up soon [00:26:30] a, an educational flavored live stream series. Here’s a book that I love that I wanna talk about in a next live stream.

Uh, Agnotology: The Making and Unmaking of Ignorance. So this is, like, philosophy about how ignorance happens in society, and they talk a lot about, for example, um, the tobacco industry and how the tobacco industry created ignorance around the topic of whether cigarettes harm people. So there’s a lot in here that I think that we can learn, uh, as people trying to combat ignorance about [00:27:00] Long COVID and about airborne disease spread.

So basically, I’m trying to start a little series where maybe we casually, together, look through some of these sources and learn something. And I’m also focusing on some more shorts, trying to share shorts that do have useful information, but also, if I’m being clear, build my audience because I, I wanna trick people into learning about Long COVID and the need for clean air by, by drawing them into my trap of giving them other [00:27:30] useful sociological or scientific public health takes.

So yeah, I’m sorta, I’m sorta doing a number of things and figuring out what’s next. Come to my next live stream if you wanna learn about the philosophy of ignorance, if that sounds like fun. I think it’s fun. I think it’s fun.

Miles Griffis: Lola, thank you so much for joining us today. It has been such a pleasure to speak with you.

Lola Germs: It’s been such a pleasure to speak with you guys. I’ve had so much fun.

Research updates

Melanie Marich: Thank you again to Lola Germs for joining us on the pod, and as always, all the [00:28:00] links mentioned are in our episode description. Now, here’s this week’s research updates.

Betsy Ladyzhets: Two posters at a recent Alzheimer’s disease conference included new data on Long COVID.

Researchers from NYU measured an Alzheimer’s disease biomarker and found higher levels in people with Long COVID compared to those who, quote-unquote, recovered and controls. And separately, researchers from Lancaster University in the U.K. found people over 50 with a recent SARS-CoV-2 infection were [00:28:30] more than twice as likely to be diagnosed with dementia within two to four years than those without a recent infection.

Miles Griffis: The dementia drug donepezil helped lessen fatigue for some people with Long COVID. In a study published in Frontiers in Pharmacology, researchers found a majority of the cohort with Long COVID reactivated a herpes virus which produced a protein which they linked to symptoms of fatigue and depression Then, researchers tested samples from a prior clinical trial of donepezil [00:29:00] and found that people with this protein had significant improvement compared to controls.

A recent preprint also linked Long COVID symptom severities with high DNA levels of the HHV-6 virus.

Betsy Ladyzhets: The National Institute of Health’s Recover Treating Long COVID Initiative announced last week in a webinar that a majority of its next set of three clinical trials will launch in, quote-unquote, “late fall.”

These trials were previously set to start recruiting this summer. You can watch a full recording of the webinar on [00:29:30] YouTube or read key points in a Bluesky thread that I posted, uh, while the webinar was happening.

Miles Griffis: The ME/CFS Research Foundation recently announced 2.4 million euros, that’s 2.74 million U.S. dollars, in funding for myalgic encephalomyelitis, ME, and Long COVID research projects.

Topics for the awards include a trial on the monoclonal antibody tafasitamab, a ME genetic study that includes 50 families, biomarkers for autoimmunity, [00:30:00] immune dysregulation, and a study stratifying children with ME. The German foundation wrote that they are providing rapid and unbureaucratic funding for projects that aim to generate key findings to advance research in the coming years.

Outro

Betsy Ladyzhets: That’s all for this week’s episode.

Miles Griffis: In the meantime, we’ll continue reporting the information that you need.

Betsy Ladyzhets: Solidarity with everyone still here.

Melanie Marich: This podcast and The Sick Times are supported by you. You can help us keep this work going by donating on our website. [00:30:30] Still Here is a production of The Sick Times, a nonprofit newsroom chronicling the ongoing Long COVID crisis.

Our theme song for this episode is The Rude Mechanical Orchestra’s rendition of Which Side Are You On?, originally by Florence Reece. I’m Melanie Marich, and I produced this episode. Our engagement editor is Heather Hogan. Sophie Dimitriou designed our podcast cover art, and Miles Griffis and Betsy Ladyzhets are your co-hosts and The Sick Times co-founders.

Thanks for listening.