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

BBC failed to be impartial a long time ago.
They follow a line these days with occasional blips.
Given the very slow traction on a number of fronts with BBC I don't think they are currently capable of better.

 

ME Association Statement re: BBC Newsnight report on Long Covid & ME/CFS

"BBC Newsnight on Thursday 8th April entered controversial territory when it discussed the treatment of Long Covid and ME/CFS. The programme focused on the use of incremental and graded exercise programmes, which as we know are something that many people with ME/CFS find impossible to accomplish without harm.

While the broadcast was interesting, Dr Shepherd (Hon. Medical Adviser to the ME Association) had briefed the producers and pre-recoded a comprehensive review of activity and energy management in both ME/CFS and Long Covid. However, only a very small part of his contribution to the discussion was actually broadcast.

The ME Association has concerns about how Newsnight covered this controversy and how it failed to balance the discussion as well as it should have done. We also objected to the inappropriate Long Covid survey results and the way in which they were used to support the claims being made about exercise therapy in both ME/CFS and Long Covid."

https://meassociation.org.uk/2021/0...re-bbc-newsnight-report-on-long-covid-me-cfs/

 

"Our audience on 'Newsnight' is accustomed to complex stories that present conflicting points of view and we don’t believe they would have taken from this piece any idea that Professor Garner’s views were being endorsed."
gone from patient blaming to laming the complainant for not understanding the complexity .

 

A letter in response to Kjöller's editorial was published today. It's written by a physician with long covid (8 months and counting).

”Svårsmält att bli kallad ’kultursjuk’”
https://www.dn.se/insandare/svarsmalt-att-bli-kallad-kultursjuk/

Google Translate, English

(ETA link to Google translated version of the article.)

 

Speaking of Hanne Kjöller, in a talk today -- arranged by the Swedish Ministry of Social Affairs and their scientific advisory board Forte -- Kjöller claims to see militant influences on research by the Swedish Covid Association, and argues that patient organisations shouldn't be involved in illnesses that can be classified as cultural illnesses (ie psychosomatic) or when there is social infection (ie people getting the illness through reading about the illness on social media and/or talking to others about it).

https://twitter.com/user/status/1389625076102926338

 

Very sad and frustrating to see that the publisher of evidence based reviews SBU (the Swedish Agency for Health Technology Assessment and Assessment of Social Services) is tweeting/endorsing the event
https://twitter.com/user/status/1389519344690937858


The Swedish Covid Association have responded to some tweets, reiterating that they are simply asking for good quality research, "We have worked for public education about long-term covid, encouraged the interest of researchers and worked for research funding. All in a democratic patient association.", maintaining that Hanne Köller actively opposes patients' ability to organize and participate in the democratic debate and that her claims are not substantiated at all. And that they believe that all researchers should be able to participate in the debate, regardless of their views, "But government organizations that claim to promote research and knowledge development should not create arenas for unsubstantiated witch hunts on the sick."
https://twitter.com/user/status/1389531806517579776

Déjà vu...

 

Seriously, health is way too important to be left to medical professionals. This can't work, all that power with no accountability. What cruel, barbaric nonsense.

Also: this is solid evidence for future class-action lawsuits. It's mindless drivel, there is zero evidence behind this ideology. Medicine may not have to justify anything they do, it's not accountable to anything, but governments do, and there is no defending this horseshit. No one can claim they seriously thought this is credible, extreme gullibility is not a defense and this clearly informs government policy.

 

It's pretty astounding just how weak or non-existent the evidence base for these ideas about cultural illnesses and social infection are - but how they seem to be accepted and spread by people that should know far better. And there's such a lack of appreciation for the effects this has on people who've had their lives ruined and just want help.

Maybe the fact that Sweden has taken a lax approach to covid means there's a lot of people that want to downplay that long covid is an actual consequence of that. I just don't understand the thought process of people that are trying to spread these ideas.

 

https://twitter.com/user/status/1389650294091522056

ETA:

 

https://twitter.com/user/status/1396857872059969539


This post has been copied and responses about the Nuffield program moved to this thread: UK LongCovid clinics

 

I wish I understood what sort of things go on in the heads of people like Garner.

 

Today I received the following reply from the BBC in response to my escalation of my complaint about Gerada’s comments on BBC Breakfast:

I was particularly disappointed that the BBC seem to think that Gerada and Garner are different to people with other chronic illnesses because they were both healthy before they became unwell.

I’m probably wasting my time but I will escalate it to the ECU. I have also referred it to Ofcom (which the BBC informed me I could because they were taking so long to respond.)


[Edit: I’ve not managed to keep up with this thread so apologies if this BBC response has already been posted.]

 

Wow. They've totally misunderstood, haven't they.

There was nothing in your original complaint that suggested that you "feel the fact they had no pre-existing medical conditions should have been much clearer for viewers to take into account, given their later advice on the general benefits of graded exercise".

It's as if they have wrongly concluded that people with ME (or other exercise intolerance) had some kind of pre-existing medical condition before they got ME and weren't completely healthy. But maybe that's a myth that needs to be tackled?