The German late night talk show ZDF Magazin Royal hosted by Jan Böhmermann did a full episode on long COVID and ME/CFS. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5qhFdouWSaE Some quotes from an AI translation: So in the Jon vs John race to cover ME on their show, amazingly the winner is Jan.
Mentioned in the transcript is some dude named Kleinschnitz, a German neurologist who has pretty much taken the mantle of nastiest psychosomatizers of all. He reminds me of Sharpe but with even worse people skills and a 7-8 drink minimum. Some of the things he said genuinely belongs being screamed on a street corner, although most pwME wouldn't know much about that since he's taken the same habit as as our other BPS overlords and blocked most of us on twitter, so unless you can read German screenshots it's hard to see it. He's said these things on TV and has been quoted for years saying all the same nasty stuff. The deniers love him just as much as those in the UK loved Wessely, but Kleinshnitz is far less politically saavy. Now thanks to some strong sunlight disinfectant, his nastiness is on full display and although he's been happily ranting absolute insane stuff for years, no doubt seen by many MD peers who think he's doing great, bullying sick people rarely goes well with the general public. So anyway he's been scrubbing many tweets since the show was aired, 95 according to this screenshot taken yesterday: Which is a bit funny since like I said he has been happily giving quotes to reporters and news anchors in public for years. All the same stuff. Some reminder of how even though all this nasty bullying may have always been all out in the open for years, from him and the others, it looks terrible when you remove the context of "let's laugh at those pathetic well-worriers" and a friendly audience willing to throw their own rotten veggies. As Long Covid affects more and more people, it becomes less about 'others' and more about people they know and love. One day, the best way to present all of this will be through a lot of dark humor. It works. It's clearly easy to punch down on us, but that's only as long as no one objects to it. Punching down is always ugly, and the entire psychosomatic ideology is nothing but punching down.
Lots of posts and comments about this video on Mastodon from people who aren't the regular LongCovid hashtag crowd. Seems to be cutting through.
I wonder about his motives. A BPS point of view I can accept. Snarkiness..ok. But why this public display of just pure..nastiness. I haven't seen it to this extreme before from any other psychiatrists that disregard ME. I also wonder why his employer hasn't reacted yet. Kleinschnitz is not on Twitter as a private person but in his role as a neurologist. Maybe they have now and that's why he's swiping his Twitter clean. Has anyone ever saved his old tweets?
Well that was brilliant. I gave up on Jan Böhmermann a while ago because he seemed to be running out of ideas, but when he's good he's very good. Germany is full of Wesselys, which is why I have been hiding from the health service for about 8 years now. These satirical news shows all watch each other, often the German ones copy ideas from the Americans, but hopefully things might go the other way this time. It's a subject made for Jon Stewart or John Oliver, and ridicule can be very effective. With any luck Kleinschnitz will be provoked into making an even bigger ass of himself in public by this.
That is very telling. Threads for some of his previous publications — Post-COVID-19 Syndrome is Rarely Associated with Damage of the Nervous System: Findings from a Prospective Observational Cohort Study in 171 Patients (2022, Neurology and Therapy) Cytokines IL1β, IL6, TNFα and serum cortisol levels may not constitute reliable biomarkers to identify individuals with post-acute sequelae of COVID-19 (2024, Therapeutic Advances in Neurological Disorders)
There's still a lot of a "No True Scostman" vibe that fantasizes about a version of psychosomatic medicine that never existed, very similar to people who fantasize about some period in time when the world was simple and at peace, which just happens to coincide with the time when they were children, but this still interesting, given who: Psychosomatic was never, ever, progressive. It was always a completely regressive set of beliefs, never saw people as a whole, and the beliefs in the 1980s were not significantly different than they were in the 1880s. People seem to have this idea about psychosomatics where if any of it were true, it would be fantastic, revolutionary. But of course that was always a complete bunch of BS, not significantly different from Tarot or any other weird pseudoscience construct. Posted here because of the #Frauenticket tag that I'm not sure what it means but comes from Böhmermann's show.
Someone asked on Twitter. It seems to be a term Kleinschnitz used, referencing a public transport that is cheaper for women, in order to help address the pink tax / pay inequity. https://twitter.com/user/status/1830921161150001400 According to responses —
Well ain't that guy a natural charmer. And "woke medicine". LMAO. The overlap between psychosomatizers, the misogynistic alt-right and Internet trolls is a perfect circle. Even the completely fake appeal to freedom of speech, from people who systematically silence and bully others. Peas in a rotten pod.
#Frauenticket There was considerable interest from non-native speakers in the latest TV show on #LongCovid, #MECFS. As YouTube's autotranslator misses many, if not all nuances, please find a kind of transcript here: https://ms-spo.de/file_download/15/MCFSvideoSummary.pdf
