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

Researcher Turned COVID Long-Hauler
— A story of knowledge and recovery
by Paul Gardener, MD October 29, 2021

it's actually Paul Garner!

https://www.medpagetoday.com/podcasts/anamnesis/95332

hmm no mention of the diving trip to Grenada.

 

I'm hearing that he found exercise made him worse and that he rested more after that and then felt better than he did when he exercised. Oh and he thought happy thoughts.

 

I'm hearing that having enough gold to be able to take totally ad hoc trips scuba diving was very 'helpful'.

Along of course with having enough gold to enable him to stop work for months, other than the media blitz obviously.

Gold, may cure ME?

 

Georgina Downs https://twitter.com/GeorginaDowns43

Multi award winning Journalist Campaigner. Exposing public health scandals. NO protection from: #pesticides; #organophosphate flame retardants; + now #Covid19
#PlagueIslandpesticidescampaign.co.uk


2 hrs ·
It is simply abhorrent what so many people - not only with ME but other similar long term physical neurological conditions - have had to endure over many decades.
Neurological conditions affect all parts of the body and in my case (confirmed neurological damage and injury from over 30 years exposure to cocktails of neurotoxic pesticides, including organophosphates) throw in a catalogue of diagnosed injuries to various parts of the body to boot and all the ongoing symptoms involved and it really is hell!
Am very proud of my steel balls and having very robust mental health but ask anyone with any neurological condition what the worse thing of all is and they will tell you it's the lies, misrepresentation, false narratives and false accusations from others due to the failure (or often point blank refusal!) to understand what they actually have and suffer from. As a result of this people with ME and other neurological conditions have often had no understanding, recognition, compassion, kindness, or support of any kind from others and that often includes friends and family. Instead sufferers have been very wrongly treated by others as 'all in the mind' 'imagining' their symptoms, neurotic, hypochondriacs and other such appalling dismissals when they actually have some of the EXACT same symptoms as other recognised serious physical neurological conditions such as MS, MND, Parkinson's etc.
The prejudices so many of us have suffered have been long, unbearable and is often designed to tear us down, as don’t even get me started on the obscene gaslighting so many of us have had to endure and for many, many years. It is highly offensive and just adds insult to injury!
But for what all of us with such health conditions lack in physical health we damn well make up for it with resilience, determination and steel balls to ensure that the truth and facts are known and that such injustices (not only medical and societal injustices but those related to public health policy failings such as in the absence of any protection for rural residents and communities from exposure to cocktails of toxic agricultural pesticides) simply will NOT be tolerated!!
In solidarity with all those who have suffered this!
And a special mention to Sheila Barry who was featured on my pesticides sufferers video in 2003 who had to witness pretty much all of the above when her daughter Carly suffered ME and Carly always said that not being believed nor recognised for the physical condition she had was the worst part of it all. It is bad enough being ill but the validity being doubted is truly appalling!
Carly took her own life after years of living with ME and Sheila has always been a superb advocate for those suffering ME and other such neurological conditions and the impacts it has on ones health, career opportunities, relationships, and all aspects of ones life. As the campaign says there really are #MillionsMissing from our society many of whom are housebound and even bedbound.
For all those affected by this we must fight on!!
Xx

 

He really hasn't grasped how lucky he is. He's 65 and he appears to have spent the vast bulk of his life as a well man. Most sick people on this forum can't say that.

I do agree with the piece posted by @Suffolkres above that one of the worst aspects of any illness, particularly long-term illness, is the disbelief, the gaslighting, the insults, the accusations of malingering and lying and laziness, the smirking, the scowling, much of it from doctors, but also from parents, siblings, relatives, school friends, teachers, bosses, colleagues.

 

Arnie, may I copy this to Georgina please (anon if required)? She has a thread on her FaceBook page and needs lots of support atm.?

She is a very effective public health campaigner and feisty with it, but even she has limits on what one can endure on occasion ......
She is also a member of the RSA, an award winning journalist ,,, but most of all, she is a fellow sufferer (Just like Margaret Mar!)
http://www.pesticidescampaign.co.uk/

Recent articles
NEW - See Georgina raising the residents pesticides scandal in TRT World's new discussion program "Roundtable"

NEW - See Georgina's latest article in the Ecologist entitled "Expert panel identifies unacceptable toll of food and farming systems on human health"

NEW - See Georgina's latest article in Counterpunch entitled "Poison in the Fields: Agriculture as Chemical Warfare"

 

I don't mind if you copy it, but I would prefer to be anonymous - even though Arnie Pye isn't my real name!

@Suffolkres - who gets a mention in my post - might want to be anonymous too.

 

??

https://twitter.com/user/status/1468012253798707205

 

CIDG end of year message 2021
CIDG Co-ordinating Editor's message

https://cidg.cochrane.org/news/cidg-end-year-message-2021

https://www.futurecochrane.space/

 

CIDG = Cochrane Infectious Diseases Group

 

I found this podcast from 2014, Paul Garner explaining what Cochrane reviews are:

Did a transcript of the first 5 ish minutes.

https://cidg.cochrane.org/news/professor-paul-garner-discusses-his-work-cidg-coordinating-editor

 

Doesn't seem to work as intended when they allow the people who did the original 'research' to determine how good the evidence, of their own research, is.

Or when the organisations values have been supplanted by dogma and belief rather than the critical thinking and evaluation they state should be there.

 

Meh, it's all just PR. Many of their reviews fail at most of those principles, and the CBT and GET ones fail every single one of them, plus a few extra ones for good measure. Add to that their ridiculous policy of "no backsies", I genuinely have no idea what this organization even exists for, why it has any credibility at all. It seems mostly because they allow people to pick and choose what version of reality they want, that's the essence of EBM anyway: it's all judgment, so make up your own, no one cares.

 

This post has been copied and following discussion moved from this thread:
Possibility of ME or PVFS after COVID-19, Long Covid


Paul Garner interviewed (yet again) in The Times. Though much of the interview is with Danny Altmann, professor of immunology at Imperial College, Resia Pretorius, from Stellenbosch University and Douglas Kell, from the University of Liverpool. Perhaps the journalist, Tom Whipple, interviewed Garner as well out of some misplaced sense of bringing 'balance' to the article.



You can read this Times article even if you don't have a subscription, because the person who posted it used a (legitimate) Times 'Share Token' which allows anyone to read the article, it remains accessible for a couple of weeks. You may be able to Comment on the article too with this link.

'Covid leaves wave of wearied souls in pandemic's wake'

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/...vX2x9MTrX0F3aHkl0Q-oZBLEwIPNihIZhh778ahzO58kw



Garner has resorted to quoting an early 20th century text on Neurasthenia -

'When Professor Garner thinks of long Covid, he has his own preferred historical example. Jamieson Hurry was a Cambridge-educated GP in Reading. In 1915 he wrote a book titled The Vicious Circles of Neurasthenia. It covered the “morbid irritability and fatiguability of the nervous system” — and its link to our own thoughts.......

The problem is, he argues, that particularly in a situation of high perceived danger — such as a pandemic — sometimes you stay shut down. Your brain sends the wrong messages, your body says it’s still ill, and the two feed on each other. Slowly, with difficulty — with accepting that his thoughts were themselves part of the problem — he got better.

Garner knows how he sounds.'


I really don't think Garner does know how he sounds. Unfortunately his gibberish is still fueling casual disease denial and gaslighting. If I read one more comment promoting the supposed "mind/body connection" my brain will explode - and ME research can have the remains.

 

Garner sounds like a person that fled into a fantasy world because reality was too scary.

Helped by "mental health" experts who seem to have a screw or two loose themselves.

 

"Just months ago Garner was, he said, in a tunnel of darkness. “I couldn’t sleep. I couldn’t do much.” He spoke to people suffering from ME, a condition many believe is a post-viral symptom. They told him this was his life now. “I got frightened. And then the fear fuels the illness.” It was, as Hurry said, a vicious circle".

*M.E is a post-viral "symptom".

It's weird how PG blames M.E pts for his anxiety/emotional disorder. There is a difference between emotional and physical disorders.

 

I've never observed this "fear fuels the illness" phenomenon.

 

I understood early on that my symptoms were viral related and out of my control. I didn't lose any sleep or blame my neighbour who shared her lupus experience with me.

 

Me neither.

I'd say it's more the opposite . . . fear of the scope of this illness fuels disbelief.