Paul Garner on Long Covid and ME/CFS - BMJ articles and other media.

Talking as if Garner sounds brainwashed seems weird to me.

To me, it sounds as if he was someone within British medicine who got post-viral symptoms in the middle of a pandemic, ended up in a public advocacy role that led to him getting a range of conflicting and confusing advice during an emotionally fraught time, got overly caught up in some of it, recovered while taking more time for himself and being able to increase his activity levels, and views that experience in a way that reflected well on himself and fit with the views of the culture he was a part of (and may be an entirely accurate view of what happened to him - it's probably impossible for anyone to really know).

None of this sounds particualrly surprising to me. Nothing I've seen from him makes it sounds like he's been scammed. I expect most of us will have seen the other patients who recover from ME/CFS and blog that it was because of some diet/supplement/intervention/etc - it seems like this is a pretty normal response. I don't really understand why anyone would think anything particularly weird has happened here. edit - Though it does seem like he's in contact with Recovery Norge sorts encouraging a particular narrative. But how different is that to patients who've recovered while being in contact with some alternative therapist promoting a particular narrative?

At the moment, has Garner even mentioned LP?

 

The article even uses language from the Recovery Norge website. It's pretty obvious.

 

Not everyone on Recovery Norge uses LP though.

 

Exactly. They've also gotten him to burn all bridges and cut himself off from the ME/CFS (and many in the long-covid) community. No doubt they told him he had to remove these "negative voices" from his life if he was to recover. I suspected this was going to happen when he stopped tweeting some months ago.

link

ETA: Another red flag was his announcement that he'd quit his unofficial long-covid pacing group.

 

I think LP being endorsed by doctors and people in posistions as Helland, Fattorp and now Garner, is the reason the fad has been able to stick around for so long. It makes it so hard for patients to escape this mistreatment. Parents will want to send their children on LP because of these high position people endorsing it. What can their sick children say in defense?

 

As I have said before, it seems that those who make a living out of touting evidence quality assurance are exactly the people who do not understand how to judge evidence. They are there because they have hidden beliefs they want to justify.

 

If I remember rightly Garner did not quote heated responses, he quoted the people who over-egged the 'physical' side with mast cell activation and whatnot. That is what I think needs to be avoided and nobody here is making that mistake.

As far as I can see nobody here is saying Garner is evil, in the way that perhaps has occurred in the past. It is more that we think he is demonstrating incompetence in his professed field.

 

I was just thinking that what Garner had been doing right up t the time he had some tablets handed down from Norway was pacing according to the advice of PWME.

So should he not use the n=1 to argue that pacing made him better?

 

It's interesting that now he has 'recovered' he claims he met the ME/CFS criteria. Prior to this, he was quite resistant to the idea that he might have a post-viral syndrome let alone ME/CFS.

 

I feel some sympathy with Garner despite the horrible ableism in the article. I also did a lot of weird therapies and had the irrational belief I could somehow control the course of the illness with a positive attitude. People tend to believe these things because magical thinking is part of human nature. The remedy is education and experience. He hasn't been ill long enough to understand his own illness and if he is now recovered then he might never have the chance to do so.

We should listen to patients because in general patients aren't being listened to enough, but patients aren't infallible and can misunderstand their own illness quite badly too.

 

We can sympathise with garner as a person but not as a self-satisfied professional.

Let's be straight about this, what he says is the equivalent of saying 'don't listen to all the patients whose cancer has spread and is incurable, they just can't cope, listen to those who got better by stroking crystals'.

I may well write a response. I think he should retract this and apologise.

 

This is an important point. We shouldn't confuse preliminary findings, non-replicated papers, leads, and hypotheses with established facts and scientific consensus. Some people make that mistake in social media. It will ultimately backfire and have negative consequences for all of us. Just like Jonathan, I am also sure that nobody here makes that mistake, but it is important that we all try to moderate exaggerated claims in social media.

 

It seems a liitle strange that the nature of the recovery is not made clear. We hear that he goes off to play at soldiers in the park with his friends, which in these days of restricted meetings and social distancing is odd. We hear nothing about resumption of his normal work routine.

I expect that there are many of us here after thirty or forty years who, after 10 monhs or so thought themselves over the worst and on their way to recovering. After all, what could go wrong?

 

Hes describing meeting Live Landmark and what he claims made him recover is the essence of the Lightning Process

Since he is currently applying the LP method of ignoring symptoms he is currently being brainwashed and scammed. That, regardless of him potentially already being recovered due to a fading acute post viral syndrom.

Lets call a spade a spade here please.

 

+, Jonathans contributions are always on point.

 

Please do! Your voice has the weight ours hasn't.

 

One things for sure, other Long covid folks are now going to try this, when your life is slipping away you'll try anything. In 6 months we'll hear how it went. Garner makes the classic mistake of thinking other people haven't already tried this. I've been surprised when talking to other folks with M.E. how many have done all the 'therapies'. Long Covid folks are going to be the same they'll try what's on offer get better anyway or get horribly damaged.