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

Well Charles Shepherd was giving him advice. Must be nice to be having the VIP treatment, only to dismiss it a few months later.

 

I see. So put that down to MEA leading people with ME a stray not for the first time.

If CS wanted to give PG medical advice in a personal capacity, then that’s his own, as it happens unfortunate, decision to make. But he didn’t have to profile the guy for other people with ME to read about and take as an endorsement, in either direction.

 

https://twitter.com/user/status/1851527543066685614

 

https://www.bbc.co.uk/contact/complaints

 

Great summary @Hutan Thanks

PG comes across confused and talking outside of things he understands. Nocebo is 100% PDW.

Good to hear lots of dissent and push back from across the other speakers.

It doesn't help credibility if the doctors are talking about unproven evidence as if some of these things are fact or treatments too.

I wish there would be less overreach from the available evidence - from PG (from psychobabble perspective) and the other doctors (presenting things as facts where there are none).

How is it so hard to say, "We dunno".

 

He's very selective in what he chooses to believe. He wrote this on one of his numerous blogs:

"I have learnt so much. I became well by listening to someone who had recovered from ME/CFS" "You believe you can recover? Then recover you will"

Then threw the unrecovered under the bus and complained about 'unsolicited emails"

 

Excellent summary, @Hutan

Between that and the clip posted by @Adam pwme a few posts up, where Garner is again introduced as a 'COVID expert', I do wonder who told these news outlets that Garner is a 'COVID expert', when he is so clearly out of his depth. Am really pleased that on the Nicky Campbell show, they allowed the other doctors and therapists on the show to speak up to say his views are nonsense and unscientific. Kudos to them.

 

Given the context of the discussion and clipping only some parts of Garner's, this is truly impressive propaganda. It rarely gets any more in-your-face even in dictatorships with regime-friendly media owned by friends of the dictator. This is the opposite of serious news media.

 

Yeah. I never know if it’s that people have really bought into there being already proven biological mechanisms or validated treatments having been convinced by the research available so far, or if it’s wish fulfilment, where you want so much for us to have already arrived at a place of reliable biomedical treatments?
Like how so many people are committed to pretending that we aren’t living through a pandemic because vaccines solved it for us or because it never existed in the first place.

Also language can be slippery. People with long COVID require medical treatment. You can provide people with long Covid with medical treatment. As of always, ever since Covid. Whereas you can’t yet treat long Covid as the condition itself medically.

It’s an absolute catastrophe that the two options on the table are self experimenting whilst probably not in the best condition for scrutinising one’s options, what with the cognitive disadvantages and or not being medically trained, or else putting yourself into the ‘Don’t worry about it, it’s nothing you’re imagining it, get back to work.’ psych program.



Edit:removed irrelevant paragraphs. + added a couple of essential words that were missing.

 

I assume he did. His credentials are good enough to sound convincing to someone who doesn't know better. Which all really cheapens out the value of those credentials, makes them in fact pretty much nil, but that's a problem for later. Just like the problem with all the lying about immunity debt and hybrid immunity and so on. Effective short-term, at the expense of long-term loss of credibility.

 

Is he trying to tell us that his sister isn't a good listener?

 

This was most likely the the reason he was given 2 interviews on CNN during the time he had Covid. Included high drama too.

 

On the one hand, it’s good to have him on a panel of experts as it exposes him. Luckily the Beeb have taken the “balance of views” thing in the right direction here.

On the other hand, he has certainly made a lot of media appearances which gives us a fascinating history to look at - members of the public might remember him, he was on the likes of GMB during lockdown.
The “public” are much more aware that “ME and LC are real” (as in, not just psychological) thanks to media coverage particularly of Maeve Boothby-O’Neill’s inquest, and because they or someone they know got ill. So some of the public will be seeing him pop up again and think “what’s he on about?” I don’t think it’s just us who think he’s talking nonsense.

So altogether, let him crack on and expose his views, I think he’s shouting into the void. Being silenced isn’t the same thing as nobody being interested in what you say. At best he has “internet haterz” as do any people who appear on western mainstream media.

 

$100 says he won't be invited on CNN again.

 

I’d like to think he won’t be back on Good Morning Britain either. Can’t see Kate Garraway having a chat with him, although I guess Derek Draper died from Covid, rather than he had LC.

 

Why was he introduced as a “Covid expert” (whatever that is) and not as Emeritus Professor of Epidemiology?

 

when PG or any of the BPS lot start going into this or 'dualism' etc people should simply call them out and say, so you're not saying that LC or ME are psychosomatic?

One look at the group he belongs to, where they are all 'experts in psychosomatic medicine' (but with the exception of Garner) , not to mention their ties with the journal of psychosomatic medicine etc etc would pretty much suggest otherwise.