"Long-Covid"

A personal story

(Note: I've written the following story to accompany my article on pollution and “Covid-19,” giving it a personal context…)

Toxicological Flu, Cyanide and "Covid-19"

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Photo by Chad Madden via Wiki Commons

John Bolecek is a bikepacker like myself and says, “If you see me out in the world, I may look normal, but just know I’m still suffering, as are many others experiencing long COVID.” Welcome to the club of those of us who suffer from invisible illness, John.

I’ve been suffering from “Long Covid” for 30 years, maybe more. It also goes by the names Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, fibromyalgia, and CIRS (Chronic Inflammatory Response Syndrome), among others—the distinctions are vague and the varying names generally serve to confuse doctors and patients alike. My decades old symptoms are very similar to the ones John describes in his story. I’ll talk about the name and diagnosis I’m most familiar with and that makes the most sense to me: CIRS.

CIRS is said to be most commonly caused by repeated, long-term exposure to water-damaged buildings (WBD), i.e. toxic indoor mold along with other biological toxins and inflammagens in WDB. But I think they're leaving out exposures to man-made toxins and inflammagens (pollution, outgassing modern construction materials, paints, synthetic perfumes and cleaners, toxin laden vaccines, etc.)

CIRS is closely associated with Environmental Illness or chemical sensitivity. 100% of chemically sensitive patients have the biomarkers of CIRS when tested. (This amounts to around 10% of CIRS patients overall.)

It’s a progressive illness - i.e. new systems (musculo-skeletal, endocrine, cardiovascular, etc) become affected with cumulative exposures. New symptoms—and blood markers of inflammatory processes—appear over time and can also subside with good care to avoid exposures and eliminate toxins.

Now, here’s my “Covid” story.

During the summer of 2021, I obtained new symptoms after getting sick with flu. These symptoms, which continued well after having recovered from the acute phase of illness, included severe depression that hung on for about a month and long-term changes in taste and smell.

I'd been camping for over a month at a paid campground that lay within the city limits of San Cristobal de Las Casas in Chiapas, Mexico's southernmost state. San Cristobal is a small but very polluted city as it lies crowded in a narrow valley high in the mountains, leaving pollution from heavy traffic trapped with nowhere to go.

It was the summer rainy season, which is cold in San Cris. Big dump trucks passed in front of the campground daily, belching puffs of thick black smoke on their way. Most days, I rode my bicycle into the city center to obtain supplies and eat at a restaurant.

When I got sick, I'd been stressing my body staying up late, with my iPad connected to WiFi that pervaded the campground, working on translating a magazine and at the same time doing research and writing for an article that had been requested by a friend.

There was a little girl at the campground with a cough, and I had played with her indoors one day for about 10 minutes. Even though my in depth research had convinced me of the non-existence of a "COVID virus", I still wondered if I had "caught" something from the little girl.

First I had a headache for about two days, and toward the end of the second day I could feel a sore throat coming on. I drank ginger tea with honey.

That night I had a fever.

The next day the fever subsided and I was left with fatigue and aching muscles all over that lasted a number of days.

I quit doing everything. Left my research article and translation unfinished. Left my iPad off and untouched and lay in my tent in the shade or on the grass basking in the sun, resting. For days. Just waiting to recover enough strength to pack up all my things and leave the city.

...

The whole thing reminded me of my early twenties when I lived in Matamoros, Tamps., a large polluted city on the border with Brownsville, Texas. I used to get a similar kind of “flu.” I mean it felt the same. The building we were living in then was damp and mold ridden as well.

Even further back as a boy and as an adolescent, I'd also had similar kinds of sickness. During that time, we were not living in a city but in trailer homes lined indoors with paneling and pressboard cabinets in the countryside. Paneling and pressboard outgas (release) formaldehyde into the air from the glue they are manufactured with. Looking back now, I can see that this may have been what caused my bouts of illness that sometimes included high fever and waking nightmares that left me frozen in fear. (I am now very sensitive to outgassing formaldehyde.)

...

Getting back to San Cristobal, usually I don’t stay in cities these days, and rarely stay indoors. I'm chemically sensitive. But the campground seemed innocuous enough.

I thought there must be something wrong with the limes in San Cristobal. They tasted no good.

I bought some oregano thinking might help, but it had no smell.

Peppermint that is my favorite scent started smelling strange.

Chocolate tasted strange.

I began to notice that perfumes didn’t smell so awfully noxious and strong to me. That was a good thing. I didn’t seem to be reacting as much.

But later, what I'd seemed to have lost in perception of synthetic perfumes was soon replaced with a horrible stench every time I was around woodsmoke or vehicle exhaust. I avoided the fumes whenever at all possible.

The horrible stench followed me for months after I recovered from the flu-like illness as I made my way north along Mexico's polluted byways until I finally reached the U.S. border the following March. The vehicles in the U.S. were more innocuous. But it would still be many more months before I could tolerate and somewhat enjoy the taste of garlic again.

When I consider all of it, it seems to me now I'd gotten sick from pollution at the same time my body was weakened from stress and EMF radiation. Upon returning to San Cristobal again two years later and staying for two weeks a bit farther out of town, I got sick again. This time to my stomach. Diarrhea or loose bowels held on for a week or two after I left. I finally decided it was toxic overload from pollution, and the experience left me convinced that the city's air pollution is indeed very bad.

Part of my reason for concluding my late "Covid illness" was due to air pollution is the extreme foul smell that vehicle exhaust and smoke of any kind obtained for me. My body was giving me a very clear signal: “Stay away!”

Smoke and exhaust contain varying levels of cyanide. Maybe too much.

Tobin Owl is an independent researcher/writer. The bulk of his investigative articles can be found on his website, cryfortheearth.mystrikingly.com