Fading Fatigue – A Self-Management App for Supporting Long-COVID Patients with Fatigue, 2023, Schmid et al

Abstract

Fatigue is the most prevalent Long-COVID symptom. Individuals who are affected have to learn to organize and manage daily activities according to the subjectively perceived energy reserves. Our objective was to develop an application, Fading Fatigue, that supports patients in their energy management, in particular after an initial therapy guided by health professionals. Fading Fatigue was developed in an iterative approach and implemented as a client-server application. Interviews and a literature search were conducted to identify limitations and challenges of the current treatment. Fading Fatigue offers several tools for energy management: a daily energy planner, a documentation aid for well-being and a progress view. Future work should study usability. Inclusion of additional features increasing the adherence such as providing feedback could be considered.

Open access, https://ebooks.iospress.nl/doi/10.3233/SHTI230013

 

Psychologist from Uni Sports Psych Dept teams up with computer wonk from the Engineering dept, overseen by the latter's Prof, to create an app.

 

"...limit their activities out of prudence due to a potential fear of tiredness".

It's not fear of exertion or activity here, but "fear of tiredness". "Tiredness", which is a downgrade from fatigue. Minimization.

It seems these app developers are saying if you LC people would get organized by using the app you'd recover. What about other diseases? Maybe all most people need to enjoy robust health is to just get organized.

 

Clueless. As usual.

 

Apps are just a delivery format, a medium. It's the substance that's the issue, the "thinking" involved. Really here, the belief system.

The underlying belief is that we need coaching and encouragement, or whatever. We're no longer able to do what we used to do, so we just need a little encouragement to regain confidence in doing it, in a friendly format and environment. Like children. Like toddlers, really. We just need to practice it a bit and understand that we're not limited by our doing, but by our thinking. Or whatever.

Whether it's a speech, a group discussion, a pamphlet, or an app, the medium isn't the problem. It's the complete lack of reasoning and adherence to blatant BS.

And really, it's not thinking, it's lack of thinking. There isn't a single intelligent thought behind the premise that we need coaching to do basic stuff, it's just mindless nonsense. The lack of thinking traces back to the 19th century. It may take the form of a modern medium, but really it's just a dumb belief system.

I assume we will see the equivalent of VR apps and other modern media. At least until the end of this rotten ideology.

 

It is just disability bigotry being justified isn't it by someone convinced, utterly to the contradiction of not being able to see facts or what is in front of their nose anymore, their presumptions which stop them from subsuming knowledge must be correct - based only on 'I must be smarter than them because they are disabled, and I'm simple so I simplify their issues in order that I can understand them and pretend they are solvable'.

How can this be allowed, it is just branwashing and propaganda into bigotry surely, there must be equality courses noting this sort of stuff - it isn't even mild or accidental it's really bad tropes.

The whole thing sounds worryingly hurtful for someone. Like having a robot troping you everytime you push a button. As if we don't have enough of that in real life. And sadly the worst thing is the idea I suspect these people aren't the worst types and genuinely went at this thinking they had good intentions and something to offer. Which shows how badly the BPS bigotry has infiltrated what might be normal, perhaps intelligent thinkers who would otherwise never dream of other types of insensitivty to minorities or being bigoted.

It's sidestepping the 'disability' bit utterly to pretend there is no problem because they don't see it. And thinking that makes them 'smarter' instead of 'stupider'. 'have you thought about trying to be less disabled and see if you feel better'? 'have you somehow been on this planet for decades and not heard about the idea if you aren't active you'll be less fit'? I mean one of my most hated tropes which basically says 'I think you are thick and dluded, even though I am' is the "lying in bed all day" one and that really is perpetuated via the medical profession. I find that one weird as I'm unsure with their silly inference-based non-science many of them have clocked that they never proved that 100% of those who weren't ill who lay in bed all day for no reason ended up dead within a certain timeframe, in fact I'm sure most healthy people I know are lazier than I've been in my life getting to watch them closely now - and ... yes they are all not suffering like me so... but at least this stuff makes them feel special and pretend that real truth isn't the case and they are well because somehow we must be doing something wrong compared to them.

And it is very much drawing on the idea that if you are haughty and rude enough to another person then somehow the balance of who is better, more correct and talking sense somehow switches to follow that.

Someone needs to tell these people that choosing to be ignorant isn't a privilege or a right that they have and the presumption that someone with an energy-limiting condition or a bad leg suddenly dropped so many IQ points they are beneath them and their choosing not to read about anything before they speak on it is ... bigotry. And they can put their 'fake positive' voice or words on it but it is still callous rudeness opportunitistcally taunting a disabled person simply because they think they can't/won't fight back (pick on the smaller kid) and because they think the BPS rumours mean people will assume them calling them what they are is 'ME/CFS people having an attitude' not 'that's an understatement of what you should have been called'.

The fact that these populists believe they should actually be paid to do this under some fake inversion where they claim the opposite as if they are making the world a better or more informed place is the most horrifying part. This should be utterly socially unacceptable to even say in polite company lest you lose your job because people think you are bad for the company reputation etc. But people are pretending to take it at 'face value'.

These aren't caring people, just arrogant ones who assume what they've thought of in minutes isn't completely missing the point if disabled people who are more tenacious than them often having completed harder lives better than them with less energy didn't find them useful. It is so warped I really do struggle with it. And find it even more astounding these people now try and use the term 'mental health' when it is the opposite in all ways.

 

Yep, if this was actually an app being used to show how distorted thinking happens, and was being used to show how bigotry occurs - and then unpeeled people's bigotry and distorted thinking ie to wake them up to what they were doing then it would be a great start. It seems that bad.

I mean you could use this as the demonstration for 'day in a life of' just to describe the 'added disability loaded on by bigotry' if you were doing an experiential course that was e.g. like a course people got sent on if e.g. they bigoted at work or something and needed to be retrained.

How have things got so bad they can't see this?

 

Good description/definition of BPS people, @Hutan.

ETA: Pablum purveyors.