Simon Wessely on Covid-19

Sean said:
What, no mention of his baby, the thing he made his name on, ME/CFS?

Wouldn't be trying to avoid attracting attention to that, would you, Sir Simon Says?
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And on the terrorism bit, no mention that he dismissed the 9/11 WTC health problems as mass hysteria. He's basically the right person to ask for those things, as long as you generally do the opposite of what he thinks is a good idea. That's his talent: he is a genius at being wrong. No idea how being wrong turned into a respectable career as a medical reverse seer. I guess that's the persuasion bit. Dude would have made a killing selling timeshares or hyping MLMs.
 
“There is a long history of infections as a trigger but other factors contributing to longer term disability,” adds Wessely. “If the virus is found to enter the brain, this might increase the risk.”

A nice example of a completely groundless piece of personal opinion.
 
rvallee said:
And on the terrorism bit, no mention that he dismissed the 9/11 WTC health problems as mass hysteria. He's basically the right person to ask for those things, as long as you generally do the opposite of what he thinks is a good idea. That's his talent: he is a genius at being wrong. No idea how being wrong turned into a respectable career as a medical reverse seer. I guess that's the persuasion bit. Dude would have made a killing selling timeshares or hyping MLMs.
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I didn't know about the WTC victims! Didn't that cause a major backlash from Americans scientists?

If he got away with this on such an emotional and traumatizing issue, I don't see why he wouldn't in post covid patiens.
 
Leila said:
I didn't know about the WTC victims! Didn't that cause a major backlash from Americans scientists?

If he got away with this on such an emotional and traumatizing issue, I don't see why he wouldn't in post covid patiens.
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To clarify, he meant this about the subsequent health problems, mostly cancers, that the survivors still experience to this day. It took years until those problems were accepted, in part because of people like him dismissing them, so having made those claims in 2003 was not super controversial. Now it's old history I guess. Being wrong about pushing stuff like mass hysteria somehow never gets anyone in trouble, even though people and institutions do act on this advice and so it has real-world consequences but never on those making the extraordinary claims.

Psychosomatics is like the eternal loser favorite kid that always gets in trouble but never faces consequences. Much harm, zero foul. It's extremely broken but people just can't quit it, it's like a drug.
 
rvallee said:
And on the terrorism bit, no mention that he dismissed the 9/11 WTC health problems as mass hysteria. He's basically the right person to ask for those things, as long as you generally do the opposite of what he thinks is a good idea. That's his talent: he is a genius at being wrong. No idea how being wrong turned into a respectable career as a medical reverse seer. I guess that's the persuasion bit. Dude would have made a killing selling timeshares or hyping MLMs.
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It has seemed to me that some BPS-type commentators have done their utmost to get out ahead of the Coronavirus situation by saying exactly what is most convenient for 'experts' to have said, from the position of politicians who wish to claim no responsibility.

Which is to imply that the traumatizing effect of social distancing and immediate-term economic fear and strain is roughly morally equivalent to the potential casualties of more or less allowing the virus to spread. So this just helps them justify acting in a half-assed manner, taking credit for any benefits and hedging against any shortcomings or negative consequences. Anybody who complains is irrational and uncaring somehow.

This seems par for the course for the BPS career. Their whole bit is designed to remove responsibility from health systems and insurers, directly onto patients. If you disagree with them, you're some anti-mental-health bigot crazy. This course of action has been strongly incentivized for decades so why not keep on the gravy train.
 
Tomorrow https://www.rsm.ac.uk/resources/rsm-live/

https://www.rsm.ac.uk/events/rsm-studios/2019-20/pen65/

We invite you to join us as we continue the COVID-19 series. Tune into our free, interactive webinars to keep informed and stay connected with health professionals, leading experts and decision makers, wherever you are.
Episode 6 - Policymaking on masks for the general public: evidence-based or eminence-based medicine?
Date: Tuesday 21 April 2020
Time: 12:30pm - 1:00pm

Professor Trish Greenhalgh, Professor of Primary Care Health Sciences, joins Professor Sir Simon Wessely to explore the impact of COVID-19 on primary care services, now and in the future. They will also discuss the evidence surrounding face masks, policy, innovation and change in the response to COVID-19.
Professor Trish Greenhalgh
Professor of Primary Care Health Sciences, Nuffield Department of Primary Care Health Sciences, University of Oxford

Free to watch on Zoom, join us at 12:30pm tomorrow.
 
The Greenhalgh one had some stuff about covid being so complex that it's difficult to run useful RCTs, which are much more useful for testing drugs.

Maybe if she thought about the complexity of testing forms of biopsychosocial rehabilitation on condition like 'CFS' she might realise that was pretty complex too?

Youtube's dodgy transcript (anyone interested is probably better off heading to 4:40 in the video (though there is the usual shudder of Simon chatting with his old friend Trisha):



I'm passionate
04:40
advocate of ebm I'm a cancer survivor I
04:43
owe my life to a randomized controlled
04:45
trial I totally understand that
04:47
methodologically they are extremely high
04:50
quality for testing drugs now what we've
04:55
got here is a complex system I think
04:57
everybody realizes that the knock-on
05:00
effects of one aspect of the covid
05:03
crisis are often quite unexpected and
05:06
you know that's why we've all got our
05:07
kids running around the home because the
05:09
schools ended up being closed all sorts
05:12
of things that you know oil now suddenly
05:14
they're paying you to take the barrels
05:16
of oil away that the price of oil is now
05:18
a - number did we anticipate that so
05:21
what we've got here is a complex system
05:23
with all sorts of effects firing off all
05:26
over the place
05:27
and that is not really the kind of
05:30
setting where you can do a controlled
05:33
experiment now there have been RCT's of
05:36
mask-wearing and they've come up with
05:38
different answers the methodology of
05:41
those studies has been questioned some
05:43
of the studies for example have been in
05:45
university halls of residence where some
05:47
halls of residents have been told to
05:48
wear masks and some haven't and guess
05:50
what after students didn't wear the
05:52
masks that they were supposed to wear
05:53
that's no surprise but does that mean
05:55
that you and I wouldn't wear a face
05:57
covering in the current pandemic given
06:00
the huge implications of this pandemic
06:05
for getting on with our lives and and
06:07
also for our own actually eyes on our
06:10
relatives lives so I think it's all very
06:13
very complex so the kinds of evidence
06:15
that you need in a complex system and
06:17
not necessarily statistically
06:20
significant effect sizes that you would
06:23
see in an RCT so you might for example
06:25
stack up a bit of evidence from the
06:27
buret tree science a bit of evidence
06:29
from mathematical modelling a bit of
06:31
evidence from material science you know
06:34
firing things at and through different
06:36
kinds of fabrics and if you point all
06:39
that evidence if you put it all together
06:41
most of it points in the direction that
06:45
face coverings
06:46
the public will be will have some effect
06:49
and of course we're talking about what
06:51
we call the effective are not in other
06:53
words the number of people that each
06:55
individual with covid might infect and
06:58
we've got to get the effective are not
07:00
below 1 which means that we've got to
07:02
reduce the amount of virus circulating
07:05
in droplets particularly on places like
07:07
the tube or in supermarkets where
07:09
there's not a lot of people breathing
07:11
and coughing
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Apologies for cross-posting, but what I posted on the coronavirus - worldwide spread and control thread probably belongs here:

Wessely’s name appears on a number of publications that have been used as evidence for “SPI-B” who are the SAGE subcommittee on behavioural and social interventions. Rubin’s name crops too.

SPI-B Evidence List 6th March 2020
A summary of the evidence used by SPI-B in providing expert advice to Government.

PUBLICATIONS SO FAR
a. Webster RK, Brooks SK, Smith LE, Woodland L, Wessely S, Rubin GJ. How to improve adherence with quarantine: Rapid review of the evidence. Public Health (under review)
b. Brooks SK, Smith LE, Webster RK, Weston D, Woodland L, Hall I, Rubin GJ. The impact of unplanned school closure on children’s social contact: Rapid evidence review. Eurosurveillance (under review)
c. Brooks SK, Webster RK, Smith LE, Woodland L, Wessely S, Greenberg N, Rubin GJ. The psychological impact of quarantine and how to reduce it: Rapid review of the evidence. Lancet 2020, https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(20)30460-8
d. Rubin GJ, Wessely S. The psychological effects of quarantining a city. BMJ 2020; 368. doi: 10.1136/bmj.m311
e. Michie S, Rubin GJ, Amlot R. Behavioural science must be at the heart of the public health response to covid-19, BMJ Opinion, February 28 2020. https://blogs.bmj.com/bmj/2020/02/28/behavioural-science-must-be-at-the-heart-of-the-public- health-response-to-covid-19/
f. Michie S, West R, Amlot R. Behavioural strategies for reducing covid-19 transmission in the general population. BMJ Opinion, March 3 2020. https://blogs.bmj.com/bmj/2020/03/03/behavioural-strategies-for-reducing-covid-19- transmission-in-the-general-population/
g. Smith L, Yardley L, Michie S, Rubin GJ. Should we wave goodbye to the handshake? BMJ Opinion, submitted
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https://assets.publishing.service.g...t_data/file/873741/09-spi-b-evidence-list.pdf

I found out about this in the following article in the The Guardian:
https://www.theguardian.com/comment...wing-the-science-coronavirus-advice-political

https://www.s4me.info/threads/coronavirus-worldwide-spread-and-control.13287/page-137#post-256819
 
I wish someone would ask him whether he believes that Imboden et al's conclusions as to the factors leading to perpetuation of symptoms after Asian flu will hold good for Covid 19, and, if not, why he thought them relevant to ME, and how he distinguishes them.
 
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