It’s perhaps not surprising that a lot of bogus and iffy claims get repurposed for various diseases, including Long Covid.
I haven’t read the book yet, but I recommend the interview with Matthew C. Ehrlich on the AskHistorians Podcast. He’s the author of The Krebiozen Hoax, which is a true story about a medical scandal around a bogus cancer cure back in the 1950s. The interview was great. But if I were going to interview this author, I would ask about more specific aspects around the culty behaviour of the people around this ineffective non-legitimate. In the podcast the host had mentioned a few times how people involved were really “ride or die” about the drug. I’d also like to know more about how this quack cure was defeated. The author mentioned that the book was published last year, and in today’s political context if he was doing the book now he would’ve focused more on the “medical freedom” claims that persist until today to justify peddling unproven and even disproven quack remedies.
AskHistorians Podcast Episode 236: Matthew Ehrlich and The Krebiozen Hoax.