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

Well, Baron von Munchausen had some good stories too. Like tying his horse to a post in a blizzard and finding in the morning it was tied to the top of a church steeple.

 

Well, quite.

 

Indeed even he doesn’t seem to have wanted to put himself through the actual mind manipulation programme he is suggesting. And I doubt it’s either an access or affordability thing for him as he is probably on the get it free list, so he chose not to

Despite him claiming it’s ok recommending to those around other sick people in order to cause coercion through misinformation insinuating they are ill due to not trying hard enough when they do end up still ill even after/due to doing it etc.


The only thing that we really now for sure about Garner is that he decided to take up Twitter around the time the pandemic hit? - we don’t even fully know why etc on that.

and I guess as someone’s age doesn’t change unpredictably, so that just happened to coincide with a time when he was thinking about retirement options becoming open to him etc

 

Most long haulers who recover do nothing and don't attribute it to anything. Some do. Some later recant because relapses. It's very obvious that no such thing is needed, but the narrative for decades has been that, yes, sure, recovery is rare, but that's because those people aren't using the magical ingredient.

The fact that this is common and yet we still have fairytale narratives like this, especially when even the best case scenario out of pragmatic trials is lower than the natural rates we observe, is about as solid evidence as it gets that we live in the bad place.

 

My guess is that in a recent whine he mentioned how people went poring through his past postings that this is what he meant. How he was obviously fine enough to jog, scuba dive and vacation and all that.

So clearly exposing this bothers him, as it destroys his narrative.

 

I suppose if you were very clever, Emeritus Professor level, you wouldn’t need to do the whole LP, you could just assimilate the information and apply it to yourself with your brilliant, insightful brain.

 

Shouldn’t have done it in full view of people with eyes, in public places then. Whilst being on national telly complaining about being so unwell.

 

Ah, because great men are able to impose mind over matter quite easily. Especially when they are not being misled and misadvised by feeble-minded and neurotic somatising patients. It’s the rest of us who require some kind of intensive course to retrain our inferior brains.

Hence the answer to that question also explains his remarkable hostility toward patients who are less persuaded of the efficacy of this approach. We are not only thickos who need remedial brainwashing but also the reason why this genius was unable to heal himself until he escaped our malign influence.

 

Obviously we made him ill; when he got rid of all the ME people he got better!

 

I've just noticed that his wikipedia page is called Paul Garner (doctor) , and that is what appears in the title of the search listing too: Paul Garner (doctor) - Wikipedia

and the first summarising para about him is:

which isn't too different to his X/twitter summary:

So given that he wouldn't be construed as necessarily therefore speaking just as Joe Blogs who had covid once and it took him a while to get over it in these and in the BMJ article - which had been clearly designed to charade it appearing as the opinion-based piece only it was - making it also seem that way then I think there is a point to be made on that.

 

I notice from going through his WIki entry something called REAd-it was listed: READ-IT | Research, Evidence and Development Initiative
which turns out to be something to do with the foreign and commonwealth office

and involved Cochrane somehow.

and ended Dec 2024.

 

yes I've just had a look at it and can see why it would be flagged as inappropriate.

All of these assertions about pwme - an illness he never had or experienced himself - justified by a reference to the Liverpool Post article, which is ... well, just pretty out of hand as far as sensibleness goes.

I can't help but think back to the Feb 2023 timing of that and what he might have wanted to distract from at that point in time


And it certainly makes for an abrupt break, despite it being glossed over using soft terms like advocate for 'the recovered', when the top half of the article paints an impression of a medical doctor.


Reading through some of the 'references' - some of which are publications most wouldn't know and/or are local vs eg the BMJ - I can't help but start to get a picture of a co-ordinated media strategy. In order to provide 'references' for things that couldn't be 'evidenced' other than by that because in essence they are just someone's story so I don't know what wiki accepts etc?

Particularly when you imagine the prep going into getting the following out of Charles Shepherd: The ME Association fervently refutes the psychosomatic model of causation applies to ME/CFS or indeed Long Covid - The ME Association it feels like it was going to be used and I don't know what provocation was involved to prompt that wording etc.

 

Much like the infected blood scandal, the post office scandal - which had the justice system involved as people went to prison, Hillsborough, which had the police and mainstream media complicit.

It is all based on people's need to disbelieve other people's reality and think themselves superior. Whereas we are all unique, just like everyone else.

But the above were brought to light and the truth unpicked the complicit structures, so it is not impossible...I hope....

 

When we get cured, some people should do a tally of the amount of known suicides among pwME/CFS. It’s going to dwarf the post office..

 

Garner is a really interesting character.

As mentioned before in this thread and written down by himself in this BMJ Blog titled "Covid-19 and fatigue—a game of snakes and ladders" :

I also find it quite interesting how deliberately he seems to mix his opinions with work by READ-It by hosting a collection of interviews and writings about his Long Covid recovery there:
https://web.archive.org/web/2024052...r-discusses-his-experience-of-having-covid-19


But what irritates me by far the most: Why does his name popup on newer "studies" of the lowest possible quality?
"Interventions for the management of long covid (post-covid condition): living systematic review" https://www.bmj.com/content/387/bmj-2024-081318/rapid-responses

Here‘s an excerpt from a review:

 

A lot of recent posts are covering things that were raised/discussed way back.

I really recommend that if people 'newish' to the forum or ME, are able to, that they have a read from the beginning as the whole thing unfolded.
It is an eye opener to see how Garner changes his tune, although @Esther12 did pick up quite early on his unease with associating whatever he was suffering from with ME.

 

There are ~2500 posts in this thread, so reading everything might be difficult.

 

As best as I can tell, in all of his 100+ media appearances and interviews, no one has ever asked him about any of this, so it's not as if it matters.

That's how easy it is to push an establishment narrative, no one ever asks anything awkward or looks into blatant contradictions. Meanwhile we basically have to account for every time someone threw a cup in anger at being unfairly ejected.