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I've just found out that a friend of a friend is part of this group at Cambridge, so I'll ask the friend in the middle to forward the link to JE's Qeios paper.

Edited to add: maybe it's the other way round from their hypothesis. Maybe athletes with Long Covid are more likely to be able to still compete if they do a throwing or jumping discipline involving brief bursts of effort with rests in between, while those in endurance disciplines are less likely...

Covid isn't just over, it never existed.

Good to see they acknowledge the limitation that their cohort didn't include any severely affected patients.

To a lay person, this all sounds a bit circular?

I can't see anything in the quoted sections which makes that clear - though I could well have missed something. I can see repeated suggestions of referral for CBT to "improve function" and suchlike, which would give any uninformed person (or overworked GP skimming through the text in 30 seconds)...

Protests by patient groups aren't going to change the minds of people who write this stuff, because it just feeds their perception that the patients' negative attitude is the underlying cause of their problems. We desperately need informed medical professionals to speak up.

How did they identify PEM?

It'll be great if it's true, but seeing it breathlessly marketed on Twitter on the basis of "a couple of weeks" use doesn't give me a sense of enormous integrity.

Yes, same. I go through boxes and boxes of tissues. Including having to put tissues under my face when I sleep otherwise I wake up with a wet pillow.

I'd love to do a Rosenhan-style experiment sending 100 healthy people to these neurologists with a letter saying their GP suspects they have FND, and see 1) how many of them show "positive signs", 2) how many of them don't show "positive signs" but come away with an FND diagnosis anyway.

Some useful figures in this. https://coppolacomment.substack.com/p/the-people-most-affected-by-the-governments

On the other hand, seeking out sensory stimulation is also a common thing in autism - repetitive movements, rocking, fiddling, making certain noises, etc - sometimes to the extent that it becomes injurious e.g. if people pick at their skin so much that it bleeds, or pull hair out, or headbang...

Royal Society of Medicine livestreamed event on 11 July. 'Organised by Rheumatology and Rehabilitation' https://www.rsm.ac.uk/events/rheumatology-and-rehabilitation/2024-25/rrt52/

Maybe not any more. From the minutes of the APPG on ME and Long Covid last month: https://appgme.co.uk/meetings/minutes-for-appg-meeting-14-may/

This is where the faked-up data about sickness benefits enabling long-term sickness comes in, so that cuts can then be presented as "compassion", as "saving" people from being "cast on the scrapheap" and "trapped" in a life of dependency.

FWIW I've just asked a relative of mine who is a professional circus acrobat, her core muscles are steel. Answer: "we'd never do that many situps, they're not really optimal for abs".

Also with a mean age of 45.