Let me correct…Stanford is not part of the NIH-funded Paxlovid study. According to @froggiiii above, Stanford was doing a trial that shut down. True, but not NIH funded (not sure what their deal was). RECOVER-VITAL Paxlovid trials didn’t start until after that. If you are interested in seeing if there is a clinical trial near you: https://trials.recovercovid.org/

I remember the AIDS epidemic very well; I remember reading the first article in Rolling Stone when it was called GRID. I see similarities. President Ronald Reagan denied all federal funding for AIDS research because it was ‘gay’. Nobody cared and there was no funding…until it started to show up in the non-gay population and they still didn’t care that much. Now, federal funding for LC is starting to bubble up pretty significantly, but remember the majority of LC patients are women. It only took about three years (heavy sarcasm here) to be taken seriously. If the majority of LC sufferers were straight, white men, there would already be a treatment and extensive study. Am I the only one to have been pretty definitively diagnosed at one time as ‘hysterical woman who needs Prozac’? Think a man would have been diagnosed that way?
Whew! I still have so much anger!

You are not an idiot.
Remember, somebody has to initiate a study, obtain funding, set up protocols, recruit and screen participants, etc etc. AIDS started in the early eighties and it was a leading cause of death until 1995, when it became a chronic treatable condition. By the way, there is another study coming up for another drug, baricitinib: https://classic.clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT05858515
https://www.healthrising.org/blog/2024/01/19/ely-long-covid-chronic-fatigue-baricitinib/
I’d like to get in on that one too.

I am so sorry that you are suffering. I know exactly how you feel.