Discussion on Naming Long COVID Society

This particular group of doctors and researchers who've come together to teach other doctors and researchers about long COVID,

there's a big discussion about what the name should be.

And when we started this thing, I wanted it to be International Society for Long COVID.

Period. The end. Not another syllable after that.

And then, of course, we had some people

who wanted to add and P A I S or the equivalent I A C C, whatever.

And I really didn't want that. But I tried to argue against it.

I failed.

And so it became I S L C.

And then it started out I A C C and turned to P A I S.

But then, you know, it's the next step. Then they wanted to drop long COVID.

Had they decided ultimately to do that, I would not have continued to work with them.

But I was totally in the minority.

You know, they were just determined, well, long COVID is just the type of post acute infection syndrome.

And I was I was beside myself.

What I did was I went on to online to X

and I copied every X post and copied and pasted every X post

that complained about the use of such terms I A C C and about the disappearance, how it would make long COVID words disappear.

I had 14 pages of those posts and in the meeting with everybody there,

I went through the 14 pages and I said, look, you've got to pay attention.

You cannot just take out everything except for long COVID and say, oh, it's all one bucket.

It just, it just will not work.

I said, you know, the Twitter, the X community is a large community represents people.

And do you know what?

They would have dropped long COVID except for one person who stood up for me.

And do you know who that person was? It was Dr. Duffy.

It was Dr. Duffy.

Because they were all saying, oh, you can't think about Twitter. Twitter is just a cispit, blah, blah, blah.

And Dr. Duffy said, no,

Twitter is important. The people on Twitter, the people who are represented there are important and they've got a point and we should listen to them

and we should keep long COVID in the name.

And that's why long COVID stays in the name. And it's because of Dr. Duffy.

And had it not been for him,

the name would have just been P I S or I don't know what kind of piss.