Article: How long Covid’s scientific stalemate made it politically erasable — Stat News

Chandelier

Chandelier

Senior Member (Voting Rights)

How long Covid’s scientific stalemate made it politically erasable​

Attempting to force the condition into the biomedical paradigm was a mistake

By Steven Phillips
June 11, 2026

Phillips is vice president for science and strategy at the COVID Collaborative and a fellow of the American College of Epidemiology.
Article (paywalled) | Archived

I‘m currently lacking the energy to summarize without missing possible subtleties.
 
It seems to completely miss the point, claiming that the biomedical model has failed. It is just that the groups who rapidly bid for funding to study Long Covid were the usual also-rans with no fresh ideas that had failed ME/CFS with their lack of fresh ideas - unlike Chris Ponting.
 
Professor Steven Phillips pops up in previous threads.
David Tuller even wrote about one of his previous articles.

From our S4ME News Team in November 2023:
Trial by Error by David Tuller Column in Time Magazine Calls for Halt to Biomedical Long Covid Research
Tuller picks apart an opinion piece by Steven Phillips and Michelle A. Williams which argued against biomedical research into Long Covid. Tuller writes: "The authors provide no real evidence to support their assertion that there might be “nothing to find”—or at least, if there is something, that it cannot be identified with current technology. The latter sounds like this: “Gee, this is hard, let’s stop looking.” I have not previously heard this sort of defeatist view advanced as a reason to abandon biomedical research involving other complicated illnesses."
Article l Thread
The thread link seems outdated, probably supposed to point to here:
In the September 14 op-ed and an October 18 podcast, also with STAT, Williams and Steven Phillips, a Global Virus Network board member and vice president for science and strategy at the COVID Collaborative, noted that long COVID has the same characteristics as myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS). Also known as post-infectious syndrome, ME/CFS is triggered by an acute infection and can lead to a wide range of long-term physical and cognitive impairments. The co-authors said that just like ME/CFS, research into the biological causes of long COVID has made little progress so far, and that more emphasis should be placed on improving patient care.

“Although much about ME/CFS is still not well-understood, decades of experience and research into this condition could be productively and rapidly applied to long COVID,” Phillips and Williams wrote. “That approach could help avoid missteps, focus investment priorities, ground societal expectations regarding what is achievable, and improve patient welfare dramatically.”
Click to expand...
 
He makes some good points but then takes a bizarre, defeatist attitude.

His argument is that focusing on the pathogen, and treating LC as a continuation of the acute infection, has not yielded results. And that standard labs, testing, imaging, are not the right toolkit. I think that is a fair assessment. We are certainly being led down some dead-end paths.

But claiming the biomedical model has failed is a strange, premature, conclusion. And it's not clear exactly what he thinks we should be doing. "Patient-centered relief of suffering" is just words.
 
The article said:
Attempting to force the condition into the biomedical paradigm was a mistake
Click to expand...
There is no "biomedical paradigm". There is medical science, which can be called biomedical, and there is... the rest. Medical science does not explain many diseases yet, has no effective solution to many. That does not make it invalid. The "biomedical paradigm" of MS was not incorrectly forced until it was found to be caused by mononucleosis in a subset of people.

This whole premise is silly, and back-asswards. It's the psychobehavioral paradigm that has been forced from day one. It still lacks any validity whatsoever, which is why it has to be forced.

We seem to be reverting to a demon-haunted world. Where science does not offer easy answers, there must be demons. I have no idea how any of this is legitimately different from Scientology and its alien ghost possessions.
 
vice president for science and strategy at the COVID Collaborative
Click to expand...
Gee, I wonder why the mediocre efforts at figuring it out have failed when so many of the people working in it are opposed to its goal. "We put a coal executive in charge of our renewable energy sector, as a result coal is thriving and solar energy is failing". Smart stuff.
 
What a very peculiar article. I can't make head nor tail of it. He seems to be saying LC, as with ME/CFS is not biomedical and is biomedical at the same time, so we should give up on biomedical research and focus on patient centred provision of care.
Or is he simply fudging a belief that LC and ME/CFS are psychobehavioural but doesn't quite dare say it.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom