NZ: The 2020 Brain Health Research Centre Lecture - Professor Warren Tate - 23 November 2020

Split from the NZ News thread


The 2020 Brain Health Research Centre Lecture
Emeritus Professor Warren Tate will present the 2020 BHRC Lecture, entitled "Understanding the biological basis of Myalgic Encephalomyelitis/Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (ME/CFS) and its sudden increase in public profile with COVID-19"

Monday, 23 November 2020
Time 2:00pm - 3:00pm
Audience Public,All University,Alumni,Staff,Postgraduate students
https://www.otago.ac.nz/news/events/otago746991.html

 

I contacted the university to find out if they're recording the lecture. Unfortunately the answer was no.
However, they are planning to live stream via zoom. It's not mentioned on the website but if you contact Emily (email address on the website linked) she can give you the login details.

 

I've been given permission to share the details for joining the lecture virtually via Zoom.

[Edited: Removed zoom login details. While I was given permission to share I've since heard from other people that they're are now being asked not to share due to concerns about capacity on the zoom call (are they fielding more enquiries and interest than they'd anticipated? That would be good.). So I decided on a compromise action here: remove the details from the public thread but happy to answer if you DM me.]

Also, it now looks likely that the lecture will be recorded after all. To be confirmed and link to be advised later.

 

This was on today.

I'll have to wait for the recording myself but in the meantime my personal undercover spies report attendance of at least a hundred in the room. Most of them apparently looked like students or scientists (not sure how you tell, easy familiarity with the venue maybe?). Plus an unknown number of people on Zoom, some of whom were asking questions. So some pleasing interest.

The first part of the talk was a general introduction to ME which didn't contain much that was new to the better informed spy but the less well informed one found it very interesting.

The second part got very scientific and both my spies' brains imploded

Will keep a lookout for the recording.

 

The talk made it onto page 5 in the printed edition of the local paper, that probably hasn't happened since the Tapanui Flu days in the 1980s. Small steps... the headline starts with 'Chronic fatigue syndrome'. Sigh.

https://www.odt.co.nz/news/dunedin/chronic-fatigue-syndrome-poorly-recognised-nz-despite-evidence

 

the newspaper article gets an f why even print it if the journalist has zero interest and cannot be bothered to do any real research the who has classified M E as biological since the fifties .it is only vested interest that have insisted on the psch bullshit .

 

Haven't watched yet but here's the recording:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Xx7jVwCfjU

 

I think you're being overly harsh here. The article is not supposed to be an in-depth feature on ME, it's just reporting on an event. Sure there are many more points that could have been mentioned but I think the journalist did ok and managed to stuff quite a lot of information from an 80-minute talk into some very limited column space without getting anything major wrong (the Chronic Fatigue headline was likely somebody else's fault). And he did very well in cobbling together something about ME that actually got printed which is a feat in itself; the ODT has a long history of ignoring ME.

Even if you didn't enjoy the article, at least you clicked on the link. That's helpful. The more people do the same and thereby signal their interest in the topic the more likely we'll eventually get some more in-depth reporting by their main health writer.