Exactly the word I was thinking @NelliePledge Saw a headline yesterday re article by his wife. Something like "What doctors need to know, How I overcame COVID...." Just reinforcing that those with strength/fight etc will recover and be fine. The smugness and superiority is nauseating.
That tweet quite took my breath away! What a punch in the stomach for all of us who have suffered and deteriorated under his "expertise" of the past 30 years. That was my life you threw away.
As WS Gilbert wrote: "A paradox, A paradox, a most ingenious paradox! We've quips and quibbles heard in flocks, But none to beat this paradox!"
Of course we shouldn’t be surprised he is trying to be seen to be saying the right thing and of course that makes all us PWME who say he’s a hypocrite just look like the terrible people picking on him he’s always had to deal with - poor sausage
I can't help but to think he's trolling. Nobody can have a blind spot that big. Or he's trying to influence the narrative to separate long/post covid from ME.
Classic. Arguing what his critics have argued all along, and he has never heeded. What a two faced chameleon.
EDit in response to Leila post It may be so, but it is equally possible that he does not know, and has never known, precisely what to think about this. I was recently looking at some papers from 1989 to about 1993. There seem to be two incompatible strands. It may have been that Wessely and David favoured one, and Butler and Chalder the other, but I have no evidence to support such speculation. The 1989 paper seems to support regular "exercise", involving a graded increase in exercise involving walking, swimming etc. This appears to be the regimen of Edwards from 1986, which was devised for "effort syndrome". However by 1991 talk was of increased "activity", which seemed much less stringent than exercise. I wasn't aware that he had ever previously endorsed "pacing" of whatever description.
Spot on. Simon can always sniff which way the political winds are blowing. It ensures him a share in the next tranche of taxpayers' money.
I don't find SW's tweet too shocking or surprising. "Pacing" probably means gentle exercise increased slowly (so GET really) and respiratory / cardiac function means cursory or basic testing that leaves post-Covid people with no negative results after x number of months and therefore with no explanation of their ongoing symptoms.
His email address is currently saying he is on holiday till 21 Sept, so maybe he's taking a well earned break.
The words themselves are not shocking. What is shocking in one sense is the effrontery of SW to make it look like he has believed and stood by this sort of thinking all along, when in fact he has done all he can to cast people as trouble makers when they have said the same for pwME. What is not at all shocking is SW's ability to pirouette on a sixpence when it suits him.
Ah, yes, of course the liar will lie about his lies. Predictable behavior from a charlatan. Thing is, it doesn't matter what he says now or said in the past, his actions are much more significant than his duplicitous use of language. And his lies were especially vile so that's quite a bar. But of course he will simply lie blatantly about his own lies. As one does in medicine. Apparently that's all good and normal and not a problem.
This is what comes to mind with SW. Could well believe he is aiming to get on the winning side re covid, but still insist he is right (as always!) re ME/CFS.
My motivation for posting these questions was primarily to draw the issues to the attention of doctors who follow him on Twitter, and particularly to the 39 doctors who wrote to the BMJ. https://twitter.com/user/status/1306196687082455040 https://twitter.com/user/status/1306196851474010118 https://twitter.com/user/status/1306225968185516038 https://twitter.com/user/status/1306242278026084357 SW has not replied to any of my questions yet but his co-author, Prof Anthony David, has: https://twitter.com/user/status/1306276024771112967
https://twitter.com/user/status/1306231375339626496 https://twitter.com/user/status/1306281962735308803
David's response makes no sense. Complete BS. It's not even true, even if it were true it makes no sense. The ME community has been begging for more research but these jackasses lobbied very hard to block it. Even today ME researchers are told by their colleagues that they are wasting their time, all thanks to the sabotage by Wessely and his psychosomatic ideologue peers. And neither does Wessely's BS answer to Dr Marsh. Also complete BS. These people are completely full of shit and have neither shame nor morality.
