I’m starting to think this issue is being pushed online because any type of controversy or fear mongering will generate attention and clicks, and drive engagement and therefore… generate money I suppose. It’s perplexing to me why people are worried that droves of people who are bedridden, feeling sick, extremely fatigued, or otherwise unwell with Long Covid would be giving blood. I seriously doubt that’s the case since it’s already a rule that you can’t donate blood if you’re even just currently feeling unwell.
It seems like people don’t realize how few people actually even do give blood at all.
I’ve noticed a zine put out and promoted by some popular online people and it contains odd fear mongering around blood donation and long covid. I wrote about how these claims were problematic because they’re so unspecific and unsubstantiated, and how the concerns really seemed overblown given existing guidelines for blood donations. It’s already a rule that you do not give blood if you’re for example just not feeling well, and that giving blood is not good for you if you’re feeling unwell, it’s not just about blood safety, it’s about patient safety.
The “concerns” that have been raised, were raised and unsubstantiated by a particular researcher with a connection to at least one doctor in a right-wing anti-vax organization, and the zine publishers already linked the issue to blood donor bans from the past stemming from a since disgraced doctor who was in the movie “Plandemic”. A doctor who went on to be a major anti-vax misinformation proponent. The article I originally saw citing this stuff curiously left out that part, so if you’re not familiar with the situation’s background most people reading it won’t realise all these connections to anti-vax right-wing weirdo stuff.
This also feels like a distraction for engagement farming using a hot button for people dating back to the HIV blood donation disasters. I am a little uneasy about how people compare the two diseases in medical ways that are not appropriate, especially as this almost seems to be a diversion to allow people to ignore the social comparisons that are applicable – such as stigma and the social determinants of health. I used to do photography at a local annual AIDS Walk fundraiser, in honor of a young AIDS activist and patient named Christopher Robinson, whose life was taken by HIV he contracted through a blood transfusion in the 1980s. That was a real horror. There were hard lessons learned about infectious disease since then that I really hope we don’t forget and go too far backwards into a Dark Age on infection control. There are always some risks with transfusions, and especially always risks with organ transplants, but also always some risk with any medical intervention — it’s always about the risks versus the benefits. And I see no reason to think there’s any looming scandal over Long Covid and blood transfusions. If there’s cause for concern, interested experts should be providing substantiated evidence, but yet that’s never cited. Nobody is pressuring Long Covid patients, or anyone else for that matter, to donate blood. And it’s already a rule that you can’t donate blood if you’re currently feeling unwell, have certain conditions (usually for the donor’s safety), or on certain medications (mostly cardiac care related).