BPS attempts at psychologizing Long Covid

Ironically, if you really do listen to the people who have recovered from Long Covid, and they are many and they do share their experience, they will mostly be adamant that pushing through and ignoring symptoms is the worst thing to do, that PEM is a serious beast that cannot be beat by force. What Henrik and the LP people are doing is literally the opposite of listening to long haulers.

A few report otherwise, but then most report recovering just fine within days so that tells us nothing.

 

I noticed that HV only posts recovery stories, and that ignoring pwME is the best therapy to recovery. Bizarre.

 

Moved post
I'm not sure where else to put this - I don't think merits the status of its own thread (so please don't elevate it thus!):
https://sebastianrushworth.com/2020/11/17/what-is-long-covid/

Mistakes were made in the late 80s and early 90s in not tackling opinions like these. Hopefully things will be different this time.

 

Would fit well on the psychologizing Long Covid thread*, but it's so inane and predictable in its mediocrity, given that it's posted on a personal blog it's not worth thinking about.

Typical "if I don't personally believe in it it can't be real".

* Note from the moderators - post moved

 

Unfortunately, these views seem to be gathering in prevalence.
meh.

 

If you read his other articles, it's part of his worldview to deny the impact of Longcovid. He supports the Swedish 'let it circulate' COVID policy. To admit that there are significant numbers of people with severe long-term symptoms (severe as in they cannot work) as a result of COVID means admitting that the policy has caused substantial societal harm.

 

Interesting blog by Coyne, includes the role of SMC in the promotion of the original paper.

No Tsunami of Mental Illness Accompanies Covid-19
Why did the media get a scientific study so wrong? Because they mostly relied on friends of the authors to interpret the peer-reviewed paper.

 

From the blog

It would be more accurate to say that patients & professionals convinced NICE to look at the evidence for GET in an unbiased manner.... Evidence which they deemed to be - without exception - of either low or very low quality. Therefore NICE have no basis for recommending it.
We didnt simply convince them to change the recommendations - to suggest so plays into the hands of the SMC who want the world at large to believe that NICE has caved to pressure from activists. We simply convinced them to look at the evidence properly, instead of listening to the spin & self serving promotion of shockingly low quality evidence thats been promoted over a couple of decades.

Moving forward, I hope the focus will be on the quality of evidence re long covid too, rather than opinion

 

Quite.

I took the same exception to Coyne's phrasing, especially as it plays right into the hands of the behaviorlists/BPS lot. We didn't do the convincing. The EVIDENCE did.

 

Henrik Vogt and colleague Andreas Pahle has written an opinion piece for a newspaper for health workers, Dagens Medisin.


The covid-19 infection pandemic now coincides with a global wave of frightening information that creates the expectation of long-term suffering, generated by doctors and researchers and spread by media and social media on an unparalleled scale.

...

Central British institutions seem to want to use the term "post-covid syndrome" . However, one may ask whether a completely new diagnostic category is necessary at all. We have already been diagnosed with post-viral fatigue syndrome / benign myalgic encephalomyeolopathy (G93.3) in ICD-10. The fact that one still chooses to create a new category may have something to do with the fact that an image of covid-19 has been created as something completely unique, a corona exceptionalism where previous medical theory with one stroke is considered inapplicable.

...

Many of those who are now examining symptoms after covid-19, belong to hospital specialties and research based on a reductionist ontology and epistemology - theory of knowledge.

In short, this means seeing man as a machine - without active thinking, interpretation and social context that shapes its reality - and a belief that symptoms can always be explained by similar defects in the body's subsystems.


Google translation: Health problems after covid-19: We need a holistic knowledge view

 

`

This strikes me as very twisted ideation and reminds me of anti-medical holistic cults I have encountered, like homeopathy, radionics, faith healing.

As I read this, he is not only disregarding proper medical practices but is trying to deny the existence of longcovid entirely.

Vogt is trying to imply that the reporting of medical truth is causing the thing it is reporting, i.e. causing longcovid by making everyone scared of covid aka hysteria which is a deeply misguided and unscientific BPS approach which we have seen before, e.g. McEvedy's PhD and BPS interpretation of the Royal Free Hospital outbreak.

He goes on to try to de-resolve the evidently real cause of longcovid i.e. covid-19 and to dismiss the research category of longcovid, which is not in our interests as pwme because covid is prominent in the public eye and justifies a proper research budget from government which de-resolved categories have not previously been given.

He then attempts to trash appropriately constrained medical processes of diagnosis and treatment based on presentation as inadequately unholistic while portraying longcovid as a psychological problem for which he, the holistically enlightened BPS leader, has the panacea.

His political gambit, it strikes me, is effectively an offer to save the cost of researching longcovid in return for being given funds to use BPS methods on patients, covering institutional apathy and neglect with a veneer of BPS mumbo jumbo.

Which we have seen before. The problem being longcovid is real and BPS does not address the reality, so not researching and then treating it effectively, when it may be within our power, consigns millions of people worldwide to untreated suffering, acting as economic sinks instead of producers due to enforced inactivity, which does not help anyone and costs way more than the research to mitigate and maybe fix it would.

 

I will be forever amazed that this guy says he's a medical historian. Seriously this guy's thinking is supposed to be informed by knowledge of the history of medicine. And here he is saying this dumb stuff that other dumb people were saying exactly as is well over a century ago, before the germ theory of disease that this nonsense is completely putting aside.

I especially love the causality-breaking nature of an illness inspired by reporting on previous cases of that illness. The linear passage of time is not just an abstract thing, folks. Violating causality is as unscientific as violating thermodynamics.

Really does not inspire confidence that health care is in good hands. Oh boy it does not. Frankly, health is looking out to be far too important to be left to physicians. At least as long as this level of ineptitude is common.

 

In the journal of the Swedish medical association:

Apropå! Autonom dysfunktion och covid-19
https://lakartidningen.se/opinion/d...-dysfunktion-kan-oka-forstaelsen-av-covid-19/

 

Yes, they don't want to admit that there might be huge excess long-term morbidity (in addition to mortality) due to their failure to restrict the spread of the virus in the community.

 

This post and the ensuing discussion has been moved from this thread: Possibility of ME or PVFS after COVID-19, Long Covid


Long Covid: ‘Is this now me forever?’ Article in the Guardian today OK at first, becomes depressing, distressing, awful.

 

From the article/link above:

"In 2018, the largest study to date on the causes of CFS suggested that the condition may begin as a result of an exaggerated immune response. CFS is often diagnosed when fatigue and other prolonged symptoms cannot be medically explained, but a “trigger” illness or event is commonly identified. The complex nature of CFS means that improved medical testing is only part of the picture for providing better help for those living with it. Exploring the emotional component is integral, because CFS is often informed by a person's underlying mental health and past experiences. Fatigue is compounded by catastrophic thinking. Patience, empathy and validation, then, are key to any successful care pathway, particularly in light of the well-established link between CFS and those who have experienced childhood trauma. The precise underpinnings of this link are not fully
understood, but it's clear".

 

PeeWee, I am just reading the article. It’s dreadful. Says large mental health component in CFS and implying long CoVid may be similar. From the article:

“The complex nature of CFS means that improved medical testing is only part of the picture for providing better help for those living with it. Exploring the emotional component is integral, because CFS is often informed by a person’s underlying mental health and past experiences. Fatigue is compounded by catastrophic thinking. Patience, empathy and validation, then, are key to any successful care pathway, particularly in light of the well-established link between CFS and those who have experienced childhood trauma. The precise underpinnings of this link are not fullyunderstood, but it’s clear.

Dr Jonathon Tomlinson is a GP in east London, caring for one of the most socio-economically deprived communities in London. His key interest is “medically unexplained” symptoms. Tomlinson believes that a vulnerability to developing long Covid may be rooted in trauma. “The evidence so far is unsurprising. If someone has a history of mental distress and develops long-term symptoms after infection, they may have less resilience. The symptoms may be much more anxiety-provoking, which in turn makes the symptoms worse.”