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Oh no. :(

Personal anecdote about taking valacyclovir, raised in this thread (I have ME/CFS and long covid): I have been taking valacyclovir for 6 years now. (I had an initial EBV onset when I was a teenager but became much more ill later in my mid 20s, and have been sick for the past 13 years, don't...

Unfortunately people seem to be ignoring or not really hearing this part of what she said, whereas I saw it as the key quote. I fear she is managing to sound reasonable to too many people, who are missing the key point. I do hope people come to understand that this is absurd, but it would...

The Guardian really should have told them their "opinion letter" was actually more of a tweet, and referred them appropriately.

Disgraceful. Why does the Guardian seem to go out of its way to give airing to these views?

Has anyone pushed back on TG's comments to the effect that "nobody gets long flu"? (!!!) I couldn't bear to try to follow it in real time. This shouldn't be the sort of thing someone in her position can claim and get away with? :( Sadly I saw people agreeing with her.

Can someone explain some of the context here? I would appreciate it; I am unaware of it. I did not know that! I have been sick for well over a decade and haven't always followed what is happening online; recently I came back after a while and all I saw was spine/structural causes content. I...

Does anyone have any sense of whether this will go anywhere? Seems unlikely; is anyone helping her with her efforts? I admire her determination but she seems a lone figure. I hope she is getting good advice somewhere, as things have seemed somewhat impractical in the past.

Plea from BMJ editor to listen to a "community" of one: Paul Garner, who beat illness through grit and strength of character - they could have used that instead

I thought I was paranoid. This is a little over the edge for me. It's hard to believe, yes! To be honest I find this development liberating. I'll throw away my conspiracy whiteboard now.

Just seems like disingenuous framing, trying to co-opt language of social activism for political end of promoting BPS agenda. The actual "community" he's defending seems to be a small number of researchers who use recovery stories as part of their pseudoscientific narrative. What I found odd was...

I would really hope that his colleagues see what he wrote re: listening only to the patients who recovered as unscientific and frankly absurd. "We need to listen to communities of people who have recovered from illness, says Paul Garner" - the subhead, which he presumably did not write. Did an...

Re: homeopathy I have seen it claimed that its use is justified because of the placebo effect. I have seen it framed as an ethical quandary - i.e. we know it's BS but the placebo effect is real. So shouldn't we do it? (Please note I am not agreeing with this line but have heard this from quite a...

It is striking how mild much of the criticism is - you really have to go through so many fairly measured replies to find anything that might be classed as particularly aggressive toward individuals - in the case of the one cited earlier, the offending tweet talked about "the c word". It did not...

To be fair, who would believe them?

While Garner's recent posts have seemed deliberately provocative and potentially partly designed to elicit a sharp response, I'm afraid I don't see the "vitriol" or "abuse", "harassment", etc in the replies. There are one or two that seem off base, but, really - genuine question - is this...

Thanks @John Mac I appreciate it - and I really try to have hope about the research, although things can seem fairly grim! I don't want false hope, and I am not sure what is realistic. I really appreciate this forum. <3

I have had ME/CFS for over a decade (20 years if you count the first time I was diagnosed as a teenager). 11 months ago I got sick with likely covid (no testing available). It was a very mild acute infection. I am still sick, however; a lot worse than I have ever been. I had improved a lot prior...

I didn't see it this way - I thought she was using this to try to influence and control the agenda, taking the opportunity having cloaked herself in the issue of "the mental health of doctors" recently. (As an aside, I have read some of her views on this topic. They are quite non-standard, it...

I have been wondering about this a lot as well, especially as I have long covid which has now turned into a major relapse of my ME/CFS. I can no longer go out anyway and live alone. I am just scared about getting worse with long covid and MECFS. If you can still get long covid after being...