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

It's a UK thing!
The Waddell test in relation to pain assessment in personal injury claims

https://www.sleeblackwell.co.uk/legal-articles/waddell-test


https://www.rightsnet.org.uk/forums/v/viewthread/15425/#72988
Information and advice resources - Age UK
7 January 2016

In preparing this paper we systematically went through the 2010 publication looking for the evidence that Waddell and Aylward used to underpin their claims and found many other examples where the citation seems to be inappropriate. For example, when Waddell and Aylward assert that the common health problems (low back pain, mental health, cardio-respiratory) are ‘often “nominal”, existing in name only, not real or actual, they are simply labels’ (2010, 7), they cite in support a review of ‘functional somatic syndromes’ by Barsky and Borus (1999). Yet the original paper discusses Gulf War Syndrome, multiple chemical sensitivity, sick building syndrome, repetitive stress injury and chronic whiplash (Barsky and Borus, 1999, 910), which are mostly not the ‘common health problems’ under discussion.

 

Such common chicanery of these people. Claiming evidence of one thing also counts as evidence for another, supported by nothing but supposition, prejudice and axe grinding.

 

All of which is common out there in the real world. People are whiny and petty all over.

The big question is how all of this is normal in medicine? Encouraged, even. Promoted, praised, rewarded, funded, beloved. Petty charlatans exist everywhere, only in politics, business and medicine are they richly rewarded for it.

How, of all places, is medicine on this list? And if people point out how broken it is, all it does is bring foaming at the mouth about how perfect and infallible it all is.

 

My feeling is that power mongers naturally migrate to wherever they can have power over others. No matter what the domain.

 

He is literally promoting life changing harm with his beliefs.

 

Could PG be held accountable in some way from the harm he is promoting on social media?

Just recently the Ontario's College of Physicians and Surgeons temporarily suspended a physician whose social media comments promoting misinformation during the pandemic landed him before a disciplinary committee.
He had 40,000 followers on Twitter and also had his Twitter account suspended.

I don't see this as any different from what PG is doing. He holds a level of responsibility in his position.

 

As best as I can see, fault is almost always over compliance, harm doesn't actually factor into consideration. It's physicians who deviate from what they're told to do who get blamed, unrelated to the nature of what they're promoting. If complying is harmful, it can't be faulted. If not complying avoids harm, it's still at fault because it doesn't comply with the script.

So his advice to think happy thoughts and exercise, which is the paradigm the UK healthcare system recognizes, would be compliant. So even if it's harmful, as long as it complies with instructions it probably can't be considered harmful, as this would acknowledge the current paradigm, and what the NHS is doing, is harmful.

The main impact I have see of how "do no harm" is interpreted is simply: if we're doing it, it can't be harmful, because we don't do harm, therefore nothing we do is harmful.

 

Definitely not a recommendation:

From:
NeuroCOVID-19: a critical review
NeuroCOVID-19: uma revisão crítica
Bruno Fukelmann GUEDES
https://www.arquivosdeneuropsiquiat...s/2022/05/ANP-2022.S136-final-normalizado.pdf

[..]

Psychiatric syndromes showed a much less robust association with acute disease severity . A study by the HCFMUSP COVID-19 Study Group showed a composite of ‘mental and cognitive impairment’ was very common in hospitalized patients after six months, but was not related to baseline disease severity81. The partial dissociation between acute disease and neuropsychiatric symptoms suggests contextual psychological stressors play a major role. These include social isolation, confinement, post-traumatic stress, and regional characteristics, including a response to the striking neglect of the pandemic promoted by the Brazilian government84. This contrasts with fierce claims of universal organicity from journalists85 and patients online, as clearly demonstrated in an enlightening episode: in January 2021, Paul Garner, a professor of infectious diseases at the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, reported his own experience in overcoming Long COVID. He emphasized the similarity between Long COVID and Myalgic Encephalomyelitis/Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (ME/CFS), the role of self-help groups, refraining from seeking disease information on the internet, and “by retraining the bodily reactions with my conscious thoughts, feelings, and behaviour”86. The blog post and an accompanying tweet were met with intense discussion and overwhelmingly negative reactions from Long-COVID patients. One user wrote: “It’s a great shame that Prof Garner, who was a beacon in the early days of covid last Spring, when no-one of any note was validating the experience of ‘long covid’ sufferers, has chosen now to suggest it can all be cured by positive thinking”86. Several comments criticized Gardner’s comparison of Long-COVID and ME/CFS, frowning upon a possible suggestion of Long-COVID sharing the status of non-organic disease that many attribute to ME/CFS55. This explains why some skeptical doctors fear vilification as “medical gaslighters”87.

 

Interesting PG calls out physicians as patients and never reflects on his own LP conversion…

 

Merged thread

Event: A valedictory by Professor Paul Garner: Truth not Triumph: backstage at Cochrane Infectious Diseases - 8th Sept 2022

https://www.lstmed.ac.uk/news-event...arner-truth-not-triumph-backstage-at-cochrane

 

In hindsight, the fact that Garner was a Cochrane founder says so much about both.

 

I'm sure it will be a talk just bursting with powerful manly thoughts.

 

it will pour forth like a gushing tap

 

I saw him described recently as emeritus (retired) professor and here it's talking about a farewell address.

Realistically, he's probably as retired as Wessely is. But it would be nice not to hear from him again, though I doubt it.

 

He's retiring? Interesting.

 

Thank you John. And no thank you. Garner says 'Brainfog' is tiredness, and a fear response. Garner misinforms the interviewer so much that the interviewer ends up defining brainfog as "A primitive response in the brain" - a fear response. People believe Garner's disinformation because he's at the Liverpool School of Tropical Diseases. He's told the country that brainfog is trivial, fear induced, and not a disabling part of any biomedical disease.

Garner's trivialising, gaslighting disinformation is pure poison for LC and ME patients. His disinformation is monstrous.