I caught this in the Dec 2023/Jan 2024 Covid wave, in a densely-packed Bay Area tech office. I only returned to near-full mental clarity in Jan 2026 - two years later. It's an insidious illness that needs more visibility. Poorly ventilated offices full of sick colleagues in close proximity are ideal conditions for transmitting airborne diseases, and it's far too easy to develop a debilitating chronic illness this way. There should be minimum clean-air standards for open offices to protect workers.
While this seems to validate those syndromes as having real underlying physical causes, I do have to mention that you can treat this (and fibromyalgia) surprisingly well with psychiatric medication, implying there is at least a substantial fake element to it.
It'd have been interesting for them to discuss it, but from what I understand it looks like MCAS is probably an entirely separate thing (that can also be triggered by COVID), but because of the overlap in symptoms, many people who assumed they have long COVID actually had MCAS. And even after teasing those two out, there may be more conditions in the long COVID bucket.
This is a blog on the root cause. MCAS would be an intermediate mechanism in making you feel sick, but something must have triggered the MCAS. Thats the autoimmune response.
I caught this in the Dec 2023/Jan 2024 Covid wave, in a densely-packed Bay Area tech office. I only returned to near-full mental clarity in Jan 2026 - two years later. It's an insidious illness that needs more visibility. Poorly ventilated offices full of sick colleagues in close proximity are ideal conditions for transmitting airborne diseases, and it's far too easy to develop a debilitating chronic illness this way. There should be minimum clean-air standards for open offices to protect workers.
I am really grateful to see this still gets attention.
"Long Covid" isn't unique, there were similar reported malaises after major epidemics throughout history:
https://www.cell.com/cms/10.1016/j.it.2025.10.010/asset/0b5a...
This is the corresponding article about this phenomenon, "The lingering shadow of epidemics: post-acute sequelae across history":
https://www.cell.com/trends/immunology/fulltext/S1471-4906(2...
While this seems to validate those syndromes as having real underlying physical causes, I do have to mention that you can treat this (and fibromyalgia) surprisingly well with psychiatric medication, implying there is at least a substantial fake element to it.
Sadly, no mention of Mast Cell Activation Syndrome, or even mast cells at all
It'd have been interesting for them to discuss it, but from what I understand it looks like MCAS is probably an entirely separate thing (that can also be triggered by COVID), but because of the overlap in symptoms, many people who assumed they have long COVID actually had MCAS. And even after teasing those two out, there may be more conditions in the long COVID bucket.
And of course people can have both.
This is a blog on the root cause. MCAS would be an intermediate mechanism in making you feel sick, but something must have triggered the MCAS. Thats the autoimmune response.