
ALT The condition is also known as chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS), a label Dobbin strongly rejects. As a former athlete who balanced working eight-hour shifts with training before turning professional, she says she has "known fatigue my whole life" and believes the term fails to capture the severity of the illness. "I wish it was just fatigue, that would be a walk in the park," she says. "It's so much more than that. If I thought of fatigue in my top 20 symptoms it might just make the cut." Instead, she says, it feels like her entire body "is shutting down; it feels like you are a few days from death". https://www.bbc.com/sport/athletics/articles/crd6dj26v4e4o

ALT Hart goes further. She writes of “the clear science” linking chronic stress to the onset of long Covid, ME and chronic fatigue syndrome. Yet the science on long Covid is very new and often divided. Hart says, of all these conditions, “the cause and the solution are in the brain’s heightened stress response.” She leaves no room for dissent. Where has this assertion come from? Without careful citation of sources, as, say, one finds in Dr Chris van Tulleken’s recent Ultra Processed People, we have to take Hart’s word for it.




























