BPS attempts at psychologizing Long Covid

And here comes the Knoop.

ReCOVer: A Randomized Controlled Trial testing the efficacy of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for preventing chronic post-infectious fatigue among patients diagnosed with COVID-19

https://www.zonmw.nl/nl/over-zonmw/...acy-of-cognitive-behavioural-therapy-for-pre/

No description yet. Duration: 2 years. So basically zero chance this actually gets completed, it will look completely ridiculous by then.

Seems to be part of a €30M COVID-19 program. This actually got funding as part of COVID-19 research. Holy crap is medicine fiscally irresponsible with their resources.

 

How many millions for this crxp? And we think it’s generous when 2 or 3 M gets allocated to the disease/disease family/cthulu-forcefield we deal with.

 

That family member isn’t suffering from a terror/phobia, they’re simply a wretchedly bad human being.
..... this will probably offend someone, but it has to be said.

 

I was hearing some quacking noises as I read this :

Title : Covid-19

Link : https://peakstates.com/covid19.html

 

Given that these people are preying on others during, and using, a global health crisis IMO, and that their misinformation is a direct and present danger, not just to those who fall for their marketing, but to everyone they come into contact with, they should be shut down and locked up, preferably with prejudice.

A quick scan of that page suggests misinformation on a epic level.

e.g.

Ameba appears to be simply a different spelling of amoeba - so the virus, according to these people, isn't really a virus at all, it's a single cell life form - which according to them feels gooey to the touch.

 

I didn't know what they were talking about with the ameba.

 

They look to have "international clinics" in Australia, Denmark, Germany and Poland.

 

AmebaRegressionTherapy looks like a completely imaginary new age crypto-religion. Comes under freedom to worship IMHO but the slight danger is that it is pseudo medical as well.

The BBC just ran a story on the tragedy of a cherubic couple one of whom was in show business and died from cancer due to believing in detox / herxheimer beliefs etc.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/bbcthree/article/72396917-47b0-4aac-856f-e213c3a0c3fa
I lost my boyfriend to cancer 'conspiracy theories'

So people accept these projection / sympathetic magic based belief systems are potentially dangerous where they clash with reality and I wonder if there is a way to use that to keep the psychobabblers quiet on longcovid.

The Ameba type nuts are relatively easy to spot and do not scare me as much as those psychologists who deliberately try to ingratiate themselves with the establishment using pseudo science psychobabble, fudging experimental outcomes and doing real harm to individuals and sabotaging scientific research into ME in general, in collusion with insurers, by selling a wholesale fiction about the nature of the illnesses we face as a species but have not yet managed to understand. It has not even been 100 years since the discovery of penicillin, we are still crawling out of the dark ages after 65million years of primate evolution, of course we dont understand it all.

I think in the process of understanding the straw man of CFS will need to be dismantled and hope that ME will be radically and specifically redefined by experimental findings.
CFS is really the babblers best friend if not invention and acts as an unscientific catch-all diagnosis which the babblers use as a stereotype to catch the prejudice of the unwary and untrained and it is easier because they confound it with the stigma which the instinctive impulse to evade contagion creates i.e. the leper effect.

I think these psychologists barely know what they are doing, its just impulsive scamming, they are not masterminds, they are white coat criminals gaming the academic system. Freud was a tobacco marketer after the fashion of Anton Mesmer, not a scientist. They will continue to cause untold damage as long as they are allowed to and must be opposed. Which is why we should (and I certainly do) continue to value the work of @dave30th

But I fully expect the babblers to try to continue using the same trick of deresolving the specificity of longcovid and trying to fuzz the picture by adding it to the CFS bucket. We ought to watch out for that and oppose it IMHO and be pedants and sticklers for scientific accuracy.

 

Long after the fire of a Covid-19 infection, mental and neurological effects can still smolder

https://www.statnews.com/2020/08/12/after-covid19-mental-neurological-effects-smolder/

Some people can look at a bunch of trees and see their mother's scowling face, I guess? This sentence, it says one thing but somehow implies the opposite. I just can't. How do people think so brokenly? Yes, it is biological, of course it is, thus making "behavior and emotional problems" entirely superfluous.

I just don't understand the obsession with the unidirectional nature of psychological consequences of illness, always attributing them the other around. False attribution error syndrome is beyond silly. I think I can see the cognitive dissonance breaking things in the minds of people trying to put trauma in the causative part of the equation but the belief is so hard to displace.

It's clearly causing resistance to the inevitable fact that the arrow of causality is clearly in one direction alone but come on, epiphanize faster, please. The conversion disorder really was a massive catastrophic failure. Deal with it and move on, you finally have a real explanation for psychiatric illnesses, run with it, you can do it.

 

This was a dumpster fire article that did not mention MECFS even once, but did mention a bunch of psycho stuff. Maybe I will email her.

@dave30th ?

 

Not technically "BPS" attempts but since it seems to be a checkmarked journalist and it wouldn't make sense to do another thread for denial, might as well put it there.

One thing I do find interesting reading this however is exactly how mediocre the entire BPS thing is that it's basically the exact same stuff some drunk douchebag who thinks their opinion would solve all the world's problems would come up with. There is zero thought to denial-based contrarianism, it's just off-the-cuff ignorant BS.

The BPS folks have put decades of effort into putting some fiber in their BS and still, some douche with a 5 minute contrarian rant basically says the exact same stuff. I'm not a science expert or whatnot but when your leading "theory" is so insubstantial that a random jerk who didn't put more than a second's thought to it comes up with the exact same, displaying the same level of utmost confidence in the superiority of their judgment, you are not a scientist and should go home and not think about anything for the rest of your life.

https://twitter.com/user/status/1296278329172070403

 

The entire CBT/GET thing has reminded me for a while of the old 'double or nothing' chestnut.

It is possible to 'win' every time by simply refusing to accept defeat and with every loss doubling up the bet.

No matter how far behind you are at some point you will win, and be up your original stake.

It's inevitable - you literally can't lose (provided nobody messes with the laws of probability in any way).

Provided of course you have the resources to keep doing it.

CBT/GET seems to me to display the same mindset.

Keep doing 'whatever', and eventually it's inevitable that you will 'win' - as in 'recover'.

Anyone who doesn't must of course be a quitter, have no bottle.

But most living people have a finite, and not infinite, amount of resources, which means that even if they were so inclined as to keep going no matter the consequences, that at some point, they will run out of resources, and be unable to keep playing.

 

Major activity this morning, so watched ‘Escape to the Country‘ (easy, house hunting UK tv programme) and had a sudden revelation (/shock) when the late 70’s house hunter commented how he would enjoy exploring all the walks with his dog, surrounding the area. And I couldn’t say the same

I am a mere 60, former keen visitor to Austria, for Lakes&Mountains walking (always with an ‘Alm und ein bier’ in mind).

OK I didn’t have SARS, only Sepsis, but, according to this charming chap, I still seem to have disappeared into this “miasma of neurologic symptoms and fatigue...”.

 

Hadn't heard of him, did a quick google on him and turned up this quite enlightening article from April:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/ryancr...of-stem-education-my-classmate-alex-berenson/

 

I think you're overlooking the fact the charming chap has undergraduate degrees in history and economics, thus making him eminently qualified to propound on the possible post-infectious consequences of a novel coronavirus...

Meanwhile, Dr. Fauci, the head US the Coronavirus Task Force, said:

 

not necessarily on 'long-covid' but........
Webinar Sept 1st 2020
Covid: The Mental health toll to Society.

"Covid-19 is affecting all our lives in ways that are profound. Many aspects of the past are changing fast, and many of us are worrying about what this all means for ourselves and for our loved ones. Those of us already living with mental health problems are facing extra challenges too."
https://sapiencaregroup.com/webinar/covid-the-mental-health-toll-to-society/