Its done substantially better than more common diseases like ME/CFS which very few have even heard of let alone know the symptoms of and receives almost no funding at all. Alzheimer's received a further $100 million of NIH funding earlier this year (https://www.alz.org/news/2026/100-million-dollar-alzheimers-...). That is 6 times the total funding for ME/CFS federally which is currently just 15 million and planned to decline.
The research went awry in Alziemer's due to fraud but its being funded at a reasonable level, a level many with Long Covid or ME/CFS or Fibromylgia would be very happy to see but doubt will ever happen. Funding of diseases is not "fair", it isn't based on number of sufferers * quality life years lost and we should be spending more on medical research generally. Alzeimers is one of the better funded diseases in the world.
> long COVID is probably more accepted as a real thing by practitioners at this point than CFS
Isn't long covid just CFS that can be attributed to Covid?
If you accept that multiple viruses can cause "long <virus>" syndromes, of which long covid is just one example, it's plausible that CFS is really a cluster of syndromes, one category of which is these post viral syndromes. We just can't pinpoint the virus behind it every time because most viruses haven't been studied as much as Covid has.
It is understandable for being downvoted in an off-topic discussion about ME/CFS in an Alzheimer's hacker news post.
But I believe the reason he is getting downvoted is because much of it is objectively incorrect, and people who live with ME/CFS don't have energy to go in depth to give a detailed reply.
I appreciate your interest in this topic, but respectfully, many of your points are incorrect.
ME/CFS is real. [1][2][3] Alzheimer's is terrifying, but I don't believe it is fair to say that it is obviously more terrifying than ME/CFS. People with ME/CFS have an abysmal quality of life. [4][5] And finally, ME/CFS is significantly underfunded by an orders of magnitude across all metrics, even when you account for the some of the concerns you raised such as dollars per patient, dollars per year lived with disability, etc. [6][7]
For those who haven't heard of ME/CFS, let me give you a high level summary.
We are all fatigued in this day and age, but fatigue isn't sufficient to describe what it is like living with ME/CFS.
At mild severity you are so fatigued that you have to decide between showering or doing laundry as your one physical activity for the week. But if misjudge and overexert yourself, it can take days or weeks before you get some of your energy back, assuming it ever does. Overexertion risks permanently decreasing your energy capacity.
As ME/CFS progresses in severity, the more comparable your life becomes (subjectively) comparable to someone with Locked-in syndrome. You become unable to talk and walk. Even looking at colors and hearing loud noises can be too much exertion, leading many people to wear earplugs and blindfolds for all hours of the day for months/years at a time. You have no choice to lay unmoving in bed all hours of the day with nothing but your limited thought capacity to keep you company. ME/CFS is currently incurable and virtually untreatable, but usually isn't fatal. It is possible that the disease eventually gets so severe that breathing and beating your heart is too much exertion, but that is almost unheard of. You have to live like that for rest of your life.
You are surrounded by people who don't even believe in the disease, and getting disability benefits is borderline impossible.
This disease isn't even rare - estimates are between 1-3 million people in USA alone. That's roughly 1 in 100 to 1 in 300.
The research went awry in Alziemer's due to fraud but its being funded at a reasonable level, a level many with Long Covid or ME/CFS or Fibromylgia would be very happy to see but doubt will ever happen. Funding of diseases is not "fair", it isn't based on number of sufferers * quality life years lost and we should be spending more on medical research generally. Alzeimers is one of the better funded diseases in the world.