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

Brainfog is a terrible name for significant cognitive disfunction. The term is increasingly being used by members of the general public who say they have brainfog too, describing being a bit 'foggy' or hungover. Brainfog makes cognitive disfunction sound vague and unmeasurable.

 

The interviewer totally bought into Garner's 'fear response' narrative and proceeded to be a mouthpiece for Garner's nonsense, emphasising fear and anxiety to the callers.

 

The pathogenesis of the inability to stand upright for long periods of time and process information is not 'brain fog'.

It's not new or 'mysterious', it's been around for a long time.

 

Was watching out for something like this. One might almost imagine he wasn't well enough to carry on with a full time demanding job or something.

 

Many years ago experts in AIDS dementia said that there was an ME dementia which was transient. Dementia is the only way to describe some of our experiences like not being able to think how to get home or what carrot is. It is a much better word for even if it is frightening. We have minimised out disease over the years to our detriment. ME Association policy in the 80s was to not mention how serious the disease could be in case it worried new sufferers. (Though, in fairness, at this time it was believed that people would just give up if they were told they had a serious disease. My father was not told he had cancer for instance)

ME has measurable cognitive deficits which get worse as we become tired but they are not a symptom of tiredness. Fatigue and difficulty thinking are both from the same biological failure to produce enough energy not cause and effect.

 

Not surprised to see this. We’ve seen other LP advocates who claim to have been cured drop out of mainstream employment and become public spokespeople for the alleged cure.

 

Isn't Garner around retirement age anyway?

 

I've been trying the powerful manly thoughts protocol.

First I became a builder. Then I became a soldier. Then I became a biker. Then a police man. Then a cowboy and a Native American.

I was in the navy. I had fun staying at the YMCA. I went West, but the Petshop Boys were copying me and even they weren't having any luck.

I tried my hardest to be a macho, macho man. It just didn't work.

Note to the editor: It's spelled "tiring".

Or maybe you meant he's being tiring again?

 

I watched some of this until I had to go and make dinner, and then the news about the queen was announced. At about 36 mins in he had a not very subtle dig at "patient activist groups" adding them to the list of types of people who spin and spread misinformation to hide the truth...so they can triumph....or something. I wonder which patient activist groups he was referring to? He then spoke admiringly of his "friend and colleague" from Norway Vegard Wyller...the author of the retracted and republished music therapy study. https://bmjpaedsopen.bmj.com/content/4/1/e000620ret. I expect there was more about patient activists later, but I missed it. It was recorded so we can all check it out later.

 

Surely there can't be many people who could keep pace (no pun intended) with this lot --- spin and spread misinformation to hide the truth... covers it pretty accurately. Surely he should be pointing out the strategies they've used and telling the ill/those representing them to keep up/learn from the masters!

 

think this might be an ad for his job:

https://www.cochrane.no/aggregator/sources/1?page=0

 

now on youtube

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SNDTRLfh-Vo

 

1st speaker Paul Garner: "he loves controversy...........any chance of getting on the television, he's there".
2nd speaker slide "Are academic institutions corrupt" published in the Lancet Vol 342
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PII0140-6736(93)91738-8/fulltext
(need registration to access).
Paul Garner said the editorial on the article was written by him.
Also mentions this paper

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/jrsm.1599?af=R

Paul Garner starts speaking around 19:00

 

title of talk taken from ' a friend in Norway'


found this on FB

 

his personal experience of covid starts 57:00

 

Yeah is it just the transcript that makes him sound incoherent, or maybe he didn't quite recover fully? Because this is a word salad with hefty "huhs" as toppings and a meandering of extra sour vinaigrette.