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

It's not just getting Long Covid though, it's attacking the current treatment of post-viral conditions, attacking and complaining about CBT and GET, saying health services are prejudiced against people with ME and doctors dismiss Long Covid, going around telling everyone he had a condition caused by damaged mitochondria, and having and saying he had symptoms consistent with ME/CFS.

Even I as a patient with ME/CFS thought the way he came across in some of his initial articles sounded a bit naive.

And I'm sure doctors generally openly show sympathy for fellow medics with long covid, but given the attitudes we know are present towards long covid and ME/CFS, I struggle to believe there wouldn't be some silent judgement or mutterings going on. Or, at least, he would look back at what he wrote and feel embarrassed about it, because he would anticipate how it would be perceived.

 

As someone whose primary instinct is to understand and empathize with any fellow human, I find myself much persuaded by @TiredSam and @Trish. Paul Garner is a medical doctor, a supposed scientist, and has chosen to use his exalted position to actively and persistently do harm to us and to others with ME. He has, in effect, chosen to make himself our enemy and to go at it without restraint.

I haven't been able to keep up with @dave30th's activities, but this seems a perfect opportunity for some hard-nosed reporting, and strong pushback by S4ME. These people know what they are doing.

 

Ah, yes, that would be a different issue and a reason for people to whisper behind his back.

But attacking the system and others' treasured dogmas is called standing up for what you believe in. Anyone with any backbone does that with pride and takes the backlash on the chin - I have been at it for decades!

And I agree with you that right at the start Garner seemed naîve. I cautioned on here that Garner did not seem to understand the background to ME and was unlikely to be a useful friend.

 

He is also naive. A few months of illness and he feels ready to dismiss the patient community and give lessons on how to recover.

Does it ever occur to such people that maybe others have tried the trivial solutions they propose are the cure, like "just stop being afraid", or "gradually do more" or "eat more vegetables"?

 

This.

He reminds me of those celebrity chefs who go on tours abroad, exploring the dishes of the region and being treated with generosity & courtesy by their hosts. By way of thanks said chef then serves up their own twist (improvement) of a local traditional dish. Arrogant.

 

It’s worse than that! If he were a chef, he’d now be telling all the traditional chefs they have been completely wrong all these years, and they must now cook all their foods in the way McDonalds do it!

 

Have the fingerprints of the SMC yet been found? He is clearly not organising this media access without assistance, even allowing for the lemming-like instincts of the media.

 

Yeah, I listened, it was quite infuriating. Hard to tell what other listeners without our insight might have made of it. To me, it sounded very much like just another anecdotal story and the absence of any evidence to support his claims was obvious. The interviewer did suggest that people who are really sick in bed literally unable to lift their head might not like his words. He glossed over that.

It definitely seems that he suffered a lot mentally with the post-viral fatigue he experienced and did a lot of worrying and panicking. I think this was obvious to many of us watching. I remember thinking, 'he's 1 month in, why is he spending so much time on twitter etc., why doesn't he just take a bit of time off and rest'?! He seemed to be (understandably I guess) in a spiral of anxious catastrophizing and depression. Thinking positively helped to solve this for him. Apparently, he's unable to see how his experience might be different to other people's. But, nothing that we didn't already know.

 

Trouble is, when a healthy person goes down with a virus, be it lightweight or hard hitting, in most of those instances the person will not be harmed by pushing themselves pretty hard, and will be able to work their way through it. I and plenty of others I know have done that and got away with it many times; I don't have ME/CFS, and am much more cautious these days. My wife, who does have ME/CFS, used to do exactly that and always pushed really hard through any illnesses, and she always got away with it ... until the time when she didn't! I suspect that many people here also did the same thing and got away with it plenty of times ... until the time it went badly wrong instead of OK.

For all the times that it works for people, the positive thinking pushing through mindset is half the battle. The belief becomes entrenched that it is the pushing through mindset that helped you win through, that it was actually part of the remedy. My wife always believed that until she got ME/CFS. I always believed that until my wife got ME/CFS. Until something like ME/CFS bursts into your life, the positive thinking pushing through mindset is part of a person's survival instinct. It still is for us both, but not quite the same. Most people here are very positive I find, within sane limits.

So thinking how many times my wife must have had viruses in the past, and how this approach seemingly "worked" for her all those time, compared to the one - but disastrous - time it didn't, that presumably means the population is loaded with mostly healthy people who are convinced this strategy is "right" and "works", just the same as my wife and I once believed.

So it only takes one high profile professor, for whom the strategy was not disastrous, to push his n=1 experience as if it must be right and safe for all, and the majority of people - for whom the strategy still works so far - will be totally convinced.

 

You're right. Plus it's probably an opinion a lot of people WANT to believe because it gives them a feeling of safety - 'it wouldn't happen to me because I'd think positively and be okay'. It's a seductive story.

 

People want to feel like they're in control, and pushing themselves gives them a feeling of accomplishment.

I pushed myself in the earlier years of ME, but it didn't turn out so well.

 

https://twitter.com/user/status/1408071268558020612

 

LSTM contributes to India specific guidelines for the treatment and management of COVID-19

https://www.lstmed.ac.uk/news-event...uidelines-for-the-treatment-and-management-of

 

Perhaps we should add a new emoji for the PG thread from banging our heads?

 

maybe for now, but having established his credibility on covid-19 it's highly likely that he will advise them on LC, whether they ask for it or not.

 

.... he ought to go on the stage as he is so fond of the limelight!


https://www.history.com/news/where-did-the-phrase-in-the-limelight-come-from
Wow, this is SO interesting and 'scientifique'!
Something strangely lacking in PG deliberations and murmurings..........

My husband's great Grandfather Eli Ward, was one of the first to use this with his traveling vaudeville show in the North. He was also a phrenologist and a publican and optician and an inventor....... You can learn a lot from history!!! He also published two books called "Women's problems'... and one called 'Men's problems'....
We have copies here. PG could learn a lot from Eli Ward;s CV...! But I digress... sorry mods!