BPS attempts at psychologizing Long Covid

Case in point:

https://twitter.com/user/status/1309148871730368518

 

Not a recommendation

https://www.psychologytoday.com/ie/blog/open-gently/202009/is-chronic-fatigue-in-your-head

 

Indeed, the journalistic version of the same drivel we got from Wessely and Sharpe.
In a way to see it written like this reveals just how pathetic the mind body story is. The whole 'psychology' story.
Some reasonable science is done under that label, but so much else is the antithesis of science.

 

This article is on the Psychology Today blogger platform, which provides individual blogs to hundreds of practitioners working in the field of psychology, counselling and therapy for promoting their professional practices, their publications, courses, online therapies etc. Edward Shorter's blog is on the same blogger platform.

Here is the US blogger platform Index: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/index

Although bloggers on these platforms are subject to Psychology Today's Terms of Usage, there is no editorial control of content by Psychology Today's editors and the articles on them are not commissioned by Psychology Today.

The owners of these blogs have admin access to edit already published content, take down posts entirely (as Shorter did a few years ago with his hate piece about the IOM Report and ME, CFS patients), set the comments to no comments, remove or edit existing comments, or close a post to further comments.

 

Tweeted today without any critical comment by this account:
https://twitter.com/user/status/1309368122625884160

 

Jørgen Jelstad has written an excellent reply referring to Fauci, Paul Garner and media articles from Science, Nature and The Atlantic.

"Donald Trump ville ikke høre på Anthony Fauci. Det vil ikke Jörgen Malmquist heller"
Google translation: "Donald Trump would not listen to Anthony Fauci. Neither does Jörgen Malmquist"

We do not yet know if covid-19 may be one of several infectious diseases that appear to be able to trigger ME. But both previous research on other infections, and the many stories of long-term illnesses that are now emerging, suggest that it may be possible.

Thus, covid-19 can be a unique opportunity to find out why some people become seriously long-term sick after certain infections.

Perhaps the tragic pandemic could at least lead to a long-ignored group of patients finally getting the research they deserve.

 

It certainly would be great if, failing to grasp the whole thing, medicine could at least acknowledge the reality of infectious diseases requiring longer than a few days' recovery, that in some cases it requires months and that recovery clearly cannot be precipitated (nor is there any evidence that it should, still obsessing over the absurdity of sudden magical deconditioning without cause). Without having to acknowledge the possibility of this being chronic and permanent, at the very least it could allow up to 6 months, or something to that effect.

But no, not even that. The tiniest of steps and there is still total paralysis, pervasive refusal one might even say. I've never seen a more dysfunctional field of expertise fare so poorly given every opportunity to succeed. Nascent industries have their affairs more in order than this, I just don't get how no one within seems to find flaws that require fixing.

 

And the copy-paste research machines copies and pastes on. The machine is also clearly deaf, as it is not listening to anything the patients are telling them. But all the machine does is copy-and-paste, and that is how the machine is judged, and so the machine is good, because it copies and pastes very well. The machine learns nothing from what it copies and pastes but it knows nothing else and thus will continue to copy-and-paste until the end of time.

Looks like a clone of FITNET on most aspects. It's quite notable that this makes no reference whatsoever to the identical body of evidence that the NHS asserts is effective at rehabilitating from this exact course of illness. As if it does not exist, even though it is claimed to be effective to the point of having virtually eliminated CFS (well, you don't hear much about it so isn't that the same? no? oh well). Kind of odd to use this PROMIS questionnaire when the MUS/BPS machine always uses the SF-36.


Rehabilitation Exercise and psycholoGical support After covid-19 InfectioN (REGAIN)

https://fundingawards.nihr.ac.uk/award/NIHR132046

But reading through this, it seems that the hypothesis is that since gyms are closed, people can't access gyms and therefore are unable to exercise (I guess I missed the UK passing a law that forbids exercise outside of gyms) and thus are paralyzed by not being able to exercise in a gym, even though most people do not exercise in gyms.

https://twitter.com/user/status/1310851811042045953

 

from email:

 

So it seems like donkey medicine, assumptions-based evidence, has been normalized enough to now be a standard, with unblinded trials with no objective outcomes and vague goals. Poorly assessing cost efficacy without controls based entirely on assumptions that rehabilitation must be effective. Still not a single person has yet argued on what grounds they believe rehabilitation is needed.

It seems to be entirely based on the assumption that this is classic deconditioning. What is being rehabilitated? The exertion intolerance manifests itself in the first few days and most patients are never bed-bound, this is not how deconditioning works at all, there is clear anchoring on the severe ICU patients here. This clearly cannot be deconditioning, it fluctuates too wildly and is present at onset. Just because they waited months for it to magically go away doesn't mean they can use those months to retroactively explain the symptoms present initially.

https://twitter.com/user/status/1312753763048882176


https://twitter.com/user/status/1312754440756170763


Evidence-based medicine is a disaster, a gigantic loophole for low-quality science to launder people's personal opinions.

 

Only mildly related but it should be said that Henrik is a very silly person who projects a lot and immediately attacks anyone who doubts the perfection of his silly belief system / MLM / cult:

https://twitter.com/user/status/1312833062988906497


https://twitter.com/user/status/1312834481104056325


https://twitter.com/user/status/1312828892638568449

 

Classic. Could not be more plain to see that this trial is neither blinded nor controlled. Of course the primary outcome is questionnaire; the description of secondary outcomes is so garbled that one can't be sure as to how they are being evaluated/\.

 

I think Vogt is doing a fantastic job - of demonstrating exactly the kind of zealotry we're up against.

Someone makes a reasonable criticism and instead of arguing the point Vogt becomes personal while telling the other person to take that back.

The guy's like a bad caricature of.....something.

 

The exploitation of Long Covid

https://www.spiked-online.com/2020/10/06/the-exploitation-of-long-covid/

 

The subtitle of the above link is :

I still haven't worked out why anyone rich or poor or middling would want never-ending lockdown. Can anyone give me some theories?

 

I've just found a reason why its good for the rich:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-54446285

Title : Billionaires see fortunes rise by 27% during the pandemic

 

This whole anchoring with ICU patients on ventilators is really getting boring. This is very easy to falsify and people just don't bother because they want to believe.


'Brain fog' following COVID-19 recovery may indicate PTSD

https://www.uclahealth.org/brain-fog-following-covid-19-recovery-may-indicate-ptsd

Bodies do not max out at one specific disease. It's possible to have brain fog with PTSD or no PTSD and PTSD with no brain fog. The science on PTSD is not exactly on a high bar.