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

[bobbler]

Garner is now retweeting Science Denier in Chief Toby Young claiming POTS is basically social contagion/hysteria and attention seeking.

in a way kind of relieved because Garner is showing his hand on what his true 'beliefs' underlying this supposed 'crusade' (not to save but because of his beliefs in certain kinds of people) are based in.

This one only reeks as propaganda based on a certain type thinking certain nasty ways about young females doesn't it?

 

[bobbler]

There's some discussion about Toby Young beginning here (and links there to more). The connection between him and Garner seems to go back a bit.

Might be worth one day pulling these connections out into its own thread.

If there is now a strong circle identified between free speech union/daily sceptic/that right wing circle and Coffi/Oslo fatigue consortium(who mostly aren't from Oslo but a place for a lot of eg Brits involved with PACE to join after that got overturned?)/Garner/LP

then it would be good to have a clear thread just posting each connection point? and maybe ones that describe what some of these associations/orgs or whatnot are?

 

[Adrian]

Not many clearer signs of professional failure when right-wing grifters agree with you, for the same reasons and using the same, uh, reasoning. It's like a giant red flags made entirely out of medium red flags, which are all entirely made of small red flags, and so on down several levels. Also trolls and people who enjoy making other people mad.

There seems to be lots of money in rightwing politics so perhaps he is after this.

 

[Utsikt]

So bit more about those emails, I went through most of it.

Basically he is obsessed with the notion that this is a fear/nocebo response, strictly psychological, and doesn't care about any of the traditional GET stuff. To him this is 100% mind-body delusion, treated by CBT or other brain retraining woowoo. He clearly doesn't agree with the deconditioning nonsense, to him it's strictly mindset and beliefs, so the original version Wessely and his gang pushed.

He is speaking almost entirely based on his personal anecdote, and many times is pushing for other anecdotes, as well as commercial programs. Many places he admits there is no evidence for any of it, strictly anecdotal, and for sure they need to keep away all the nasty activists (he means those who don't recover) with their anecdotes about not recovering. They need to hear from recovered people. Especially him. He has trouble finding some, he will try to find some more.

In some places he speaks of how there is good evidence, mainly the awful Knoop CBT study, and that there are good trials taking place. In other places he speaks of how nasty activists are making it impossible to hold trials, and we are terrible, terrible people who harsh his vibe. Or something like it. I don't know what it says about all the trials that happened before, especially SMILE. I guess either they didn't happen, or they were not good.

Frankly this is massively embarrassing for everyone involved. I'm thinking that is one reason why everything about us happens in secret, behind closed doors. This makes us look like serious professionals by comparison.

I kind of feel like writing to this group, how they look like a bunch of completely unserious clowns. This is one British person speaking anecdotally, along with the scientific [sic] director of Norwegian medical research (IIRC, Flottorp),on behalf of a group of mostly European quacks. This is a Canadian-funded thing, which has taken comments from the public for many years now, none of these people have any business being involved in this.

Not that I've seen anything good out of this awful program. I doubt this is the reason, they seem like a bunch of unserious clowns, and this only confirms it.

I don’t understand how anyone can receive an email from him and take him serious. And what is Flottorp doing trying to lobby another country’s guideline? Talk about activism.

 

[rvallee]

Still, the most absurd thing here is that while Garner is pushing relentlessly with his personal anecdote, pointing at other anecdotes and commercial programs as support, admitting there is no medical for any of this, while using his credentials as an expert in clinical evidence synthesis, talking with other experts in evidence-based medicine, in an official process to produce guidelines, is a massive indictment of the catastrophic state of the medical profession and how it deals with medical evidence.

While the thing he's pushing is blatant pseudoscience, completely unserious magical stuff.

It says far less about him than about the profession. The intellectual and ideological corruption is extreme, and almost no one cares. The medical profession generally thinks this is fine. Other experts in clinical evidence think it's great. Absolutely insane stuff.

 

[rvallee]

Might be worth one day pulling these connections out into its own thread.

If there is now a strong circle identified between free speech union/daily sceptic/that right wing circle and Coffi/Oslo fatigue consortium(who mostly aren't from Oslo but a place for a lot of eg Brits involved with PACE to join after that got overturned?)/Garner/LP

then it would be good to have a clear thread just posting each connection point? and maybe ones that describe what some of these associations/orgs or whatnot are?

There seems to be lots of money in rightwing politics so perhaps he is after this.

There have been hints for a long time when Wessely published his "9/11-related illnesses are mass psychogenic" in Spiked. There is a lot of right-wing politics behind COVID denial. In the US, you have some of the main signatories and pushers of the "Great Barrington Declaration" literally running the health research institutes. They are all funded by or work directly for dark right-wing money.

In the emails, Garner positively mentions Vidnay Prasad, who is an especially hateful character, and recently made #2 at the FDA, IIRC.

It would be illuminating for someone to investigate this, but it would be difficult to pull off considering how influential those dark money groups are right now. They are pretty much in overall control of the US and the UK, and have huge influence here in Canada.

George Monbiot would be especially great at this, but it would be a long investigation, would take years, and no publication would pay for it. Too controversial, And it'd probably get canned because of pressure anyway.

But for sure the alignment of the same political forces pushing regressive anti-science and eugenicist policies, the same people behind the rise of the "alt-right", is the same we see acting against chronic illness. Those politics clearly play a huge role.