Trisha Greenhalgh on ME/CFS and Long Covid

It looks like establishment “scientists” are already laying the groundwork for controlling the media narrative when the tsunami of new disability claims hits them.

 

Anyone NOT blocked by T. Greenhalgh who can see the tweet H. Vogt refers to?

ETA: The tweet appeared when I linked it here! How neat!

Had nothing to do with Long Covid, but I'll leave it anyway as threats also seems to be part of a useful narrative for some.

 

If a person feels that in order to keep their ego in the limelight they need to Tweet about wearing masks then they can expect to get idiots replying.

I think Greenhalgh needs to ask herself why it is so important for her to be tweeting such things.

 

There is no shortage of morons who react in such ways, and TG is far from unique in being targeted by such people. If she is trying to make a point that she is being singled out, then it fails.

 

Is getting death threats is a quick way to elevate your status in UK academia?

 

There was that example of Greenhalgh describing an ME patient politely describing his concerns about a presentation she gave as 'abusive', but unless people have really looked into the details of this case I don't think that it's right to be facetious about her reporting receiving death threats. There are lots of nasty people of social media and it seems that female academics can attract particularly weird comments from a certain sort. She could have a fair reason for restricting who replies to her tweets and letting people know of this.

 

So why does a female, or male, academic go tweeting about their terribly important opinion in relation to some topical disease? As an academic it wouldn't cross my mind to tweet ny opinions. What makes TG think she is entitled to splurge her opinions all over everyone? This behaviour has nothing to do with being an academic. It is entirely related to wanting to important. We all know perfectly well that if we make a public statement about something we consider of real ethical or social value we will get some numpty making ghastly remarks.

I just think she should grow up.

 

You're posting your opinions here. Is twitter that different? I don't really understand the different ways different people use different forms of social media, but I don't see why using twitter is that different to posting on a forum, or a blog. Different forums have different rules on commenting and twitter lets people decide who can reply to their tweets. I prefer more of a free for all, with all sorts able to say whatever they want, others prefer more restrictions.

 

Yes, @Esther12 , there is no comparison, either in the medium or the message.

 

I don't know why people boast about getting death threats on twitter, it's hardly an achievement, anyone can do it. I reckon if I suddenly got the urge to receive a few death threats twitter is the place I'd go. I'd just foist some annoying opinions on people and wait. Can't beat a cesspit full of nutters for garnering death threats. I don't think S4ME would do at all, I don't think anyone's ever managed to get a death threat here. It wouldn't get past moderation for a start.

Maybe we should start a "death threat challenge" - which would involve members going to twitter and seeing how many death-threats they could get by tweeting annoying bullshit at people. We could have a league table, and actually document and publicise the threats received. In the interests of fairness only verified death threats would count. Any member of the BPS brigade could join in of course, although judging by their performance so far they'd be right at the bottom of the table, boasting about an unspecified number of unverified threats just wouldn't cut it in a properly organised competition.

 

This sounds like a terrible idea.
There are plenty of (what should be) innocuous topics by which to attract threats (that aren't annoying bullshit). Posting about how motorists endanger the lives of cyclists for example.

 

Moved posts

Something that I'm finding interesting is that, whilst Sharpe and Wessely and Gerada have either stayed quiet or supported the government and PHE's approach to the pandemic, Trisha Greenhalgh has been very vocal in criticising recent policy decisions. Regarding masks, restrictions etc.

Greenhalgh is currently, on Twitter at least, moving in the same circles as excellent voices like Deepti Gurdasani, Christina Pagel and Nisreen Alwar.

Her new friends are going to get a nasty shock when they realise that Greenhalgh won't support them on Long Covid.

 

Earlier in the pandemic Trish Greenhalgh was one of the most outspoken people on twitter about long covid. She tweeted about it constantly, and she seemed genuinely sympathetic towards the patients and angry they weren't being recognized. Then she defended PACE and talked about a small vocal group of patients in a webinar, or something those lines. Then she got criticized, and used this software that mass blocks people, which inadvertently led to blocking almost everyone with ME/CFS on twitter. She then kept complaining about abuse and shared Garner's piece about curing himself, and stopped tweeting about Long Covid as much.

I think she does genuinely care about long covid, and recognize it. However she does also seem to fall into the BPS camp at the same time, and support GET (she says she doesn't but she still basically describes it in her guidelines for long covid). It's possible she stopped being as sympathetic to long covid when she realised a lot of people with it basically have ME/CFS, although that's very speculative.

In my opinion though, she does genuinely care about long covid and people with it, she just also happens to support GET and a BPS view. It's very much possible for both to exist at once.

 

When you have had a profesional lifetime with certain constructs in place, cognitive dissonance is a coping mechanism.

 

The timeline of events strongly suggests that once she understood that most of LC is basically whatever she believes MUS/CFS is, she completely lost interest as a medical matter, especially not relevant to her focus on general practice. I may be wrong, can't verify as she blocked me, but I have not seen her name mentioned at all in probably 6 months, other than the odd mention like this one of how she used to be interested and isn't anymore. Which is quite a contrast compared to her earlier bullyish advocacy, the good kind, hence why the turnaround is so remarkable.

 

I suspect she reduced her "exposure" as a result of getting rid of lots of followers who posted about or had an interest in ME/CFS. Since she cropped up here yesterday I went and looked her up last night. Since I don't have a Twitter account I can't be blocked from reading her public posts. She is still writing about Covid, masks, lockdown, the "rules"etc, and, although I doubt many people here will be interested, this is her latest article for the BMJ :

https://blogs.bmj.com/bmj/2021/06/30/health-and-wealth-in-pandemic-times-not-a-zero-sum-game/

 

Greenhalgh has her name to a new article, among many authors, which vaguely mentions "long-term illness". It's getting good coverage.

https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(21)01589-0/fulltext

 

How convenient

 

I assume that this is a joke, but it kind of falls flat when she has seriously made the exact argument over Garner's tall tales and the "power of positive thinking", especially as it's basically the same issue, which she treats as a joke here, but seriously in the context of ME/LC. Hard to take someone like that seriously when they can have multiple positions on the same thing.

 

Callous and context-free.