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

The PG quote that most stands out to me is this one:

Why would anyone want to shut down research just because they think a disease is permanent? It doesn't make any sense at all! I guess it's all part of the smokescreen they are creating.

 

I had a very quick look at that paper in this post: https://www.s4me.info/threads/paul-...les-and-other-media.15629/page-57#post-337451

As you said, it didn't seem that relevant and I couldn't find the exact figures quoted in the report either. It was only a very quick look though so I may have missed something. It seemed a strange thing to bring up, other than in the hope it might be useful for PR spin.

 

The spin is that only BPS research is valid. As usual the problem is that no one points out or cares about it being false and absurd. They obviously know that we are behind most of the research, either in directly funding it or forcing institutions to fulfill their obligations, and that is precisely why they try their hardest to shut down all research. They also know that our number one demand for decades has been research funding. And as bullies go, they DARVO and accuse us of the very thing they are doing, simply because they can get away with it without being challenged by anyone.

 

BBC Complaints page

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

You need the name, date and time of the programme you want to complain about.

[Added I tried to add a link that took you to further on into the process to where you start complaining about a specific programme but that didn’t work]

 

That is an interesting point because, if that was the study referred to, it was used in such a way it reinforced Garner and Singh's GET statements but was out of context when applied to a discussion of long covid which was the point of the piece which started with "how do you treat long covid?"

 

Very good @Trish.

 

Is it just me, does this even make sense? It appears to be self contradictory, garbled.

 

So...just because he doesn't have one of the cardinal symptoms, exercise intolerance, and presumably he doesn't have PEM either, as you can't beat PEM by fighting it, I know, I tried for years, and years, he thinks that still means that he had ME, regardless.

The man is a ........

 

Was he ever clinically diagnosed, or was this all self-diagnosis?

 

https://blogs.bmj.com/bmj/2021/01/25/paul-garner-on-his-recovery-from-long-covid/

"I wasn’t depressed, but mentally low, and relapses were more common. Then an article in Nature linked me personally to ME/CFS. I fulfilled the Canadian Consensus Criteria for CFS/ME. Seven months after the initial covid-19 I was referred to a CFS/ME specialist".

 

So he doesn't say he was diagnosed then, he implies it but doesn't say it.

 

An inquiry into why pwME are frequently maligned, the lack of research funding, the lack of medical training re this disease etc., is a very good idea. However, from what I've seen of inquiries, they're good for expense accounts, and may produce important info, but do they improve things in a meaningful way?

On the other hand, there does seem to be a concerted effort to keep pwME under control, negatively portrayed, streamed into one form of treatment, restrict in-depth testing etc.

 

Yes, this is important. the other groups "caught up" in essence, at least in terms of how everyone answered the questionnaires. So no differences were apparent at follow-up. But that doesn't stop these investigators from then deciding that the most important outcome is that the benefits were "sustained" for their interventions--even tho as a clinical trial the results were null. Like the GETSET follow-up--null results but they reported a success because of "within-group" results. it is hucksterism.