Article in the i: The long Covid ‘treatments’ to avoid, 2024, Clare Wilson with Garner and Busse

[Sly Saint]

Long Covid has been puzzling doctors almost since the start of the pandemic.

The condition is defined as when people have persistent ill health lasting at least three months after their initial infection. But five years after the first Covid case, we still don’t know the cause, there are no diagnostic tests, and there are no approved medicines.

Into that void have sprouted many competing hypotheses about the biology of long Covid, as well as connected ideas about potential treatments. But most theories are still at an early scientific stage.

Doctors are warning that some desperate patients are getting stuck in a quagmire of pseudoscience that has developed around the condition. So what do and don’t we know about the best treatments for long Covid?

One reason for the range of different experiences may be the label of long Covid is being used as an umbrella term for several syndromes with different causes, a report from the UK’s National Institute for Health and Care Research has said.

These syndromes include people whose initial infection was so severe they needed weeks of intensive care in hospital, as well as the more puzzling outcome of people getting lasting symptoms when they had a mild initial illness.

For the latter group, there seem to be similarities with myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS), another mysterious syndrome of persistent tiredness and other symptoms that often seems to be triggered by a virus. Some people think that, in this group, long Covid is essentially the same as ME/CFS – but this theory has not been proven.

The NHS website can only offer general health advice. It says people should try to eat a balanced diet, stick to regular sleep patterns, and stay active if they can, for instance, by taking short walks – although, confusingly, they should also “listen to their body” and not do too much.

The popularity of unproven high-tech remedies for long Covid is ironic because over time, doctors at NHS clinics have found that more commonplace therapies can give some benefit. Professor Busse’s recent review found that physical and mental health rehabilitation programmes raise the chances of patients experiencing meaningful improvement or recovery.

But other long Covid patient representatives say rehab techniques have helped them get better. One such person is Professor Paul Garner, an infectious diseases specialist at the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, who caught Covid in March 2020 and was ill with fatigue, “blinding” headaches and muscular pains until November. He made a complete recovery after gradually increasing his activity levels.

Professor Garner believes that his symptoms were caused by an overactive stress response, which disappeared when he stopped expecting that physical activity would make him worse. “It’s incredibly exciting that we’ve got some evidence that these approaches seem to help,” said Professor Garner, who was a co-author on Professor Busse’s paper.

The long Covid ‘treatments’ to avoid

 

[Mij]

"Professor Garner believes that his symptoms were caused by an overactive stress response, which disappeared when he stopped expecting that physical activity would make him worse. “It’s incredibly exciting that we’ve got some evidence that these approaches seem to help,” said Professor Garner, who was a co-author on Professor Busse’s paper".

 

[Sean]

Doctors are warning that some desperate patients are getting stuck in a quagmire of pseudoscience that has developed around the condition.

Then proceeds to promote the worst of it from doctors.

 

[Trish]

God I wish Garner would shut the f*** up. He's doing so much harm.

 

[josepdelafuente]

God I wish Garner would shut the f*** up. He's doing so much harm.

preach Trish!

 

[rvallee]

An article about the treatments to avoid and it manages to recommend the two treatments that are the most avoided by patients, precisely because they don't work and keep getting pushed despite zero evidence that they make outcomes any better, which we would know after 5 years. And on the basis of pseudoscience, no less. They even talk about "commonplace therapies" while it's widely acknowledged that there are no treatments for LC, a statement that explicitly looks at those two with a very angry stare.

Amazing.

 

[rvallee]

I mean, just look at how ridiculous it is to write this stuff when this was published just last month by UCL.

Long Covid could cost the economy billions every year
https://www.ucl.ac.uk/news/2024/nov/long-covid-could-cost-economy-billions-every-year

As part of their NHS treatment for the condition, the patients used a mobile app to track their symptoms.

Patients were asked to complete questionnaires on the app about how long Covid was affecting them - considering the impact of the condition on their day-to-day activities, levels of fatigue, brain fog, health-related quality of life, relationships and ability to work.

The study found that on average, all the individuals who had been referred to long Covid clinics in the UK reported little improvement in their ability to perform day-to-day activities, fatigue, quality of life and ability to work over the first six months after seeking help for their symptoms.

Almost three quarters (72%) of the participants who reported loss of working days when they first started to use the app, and remained engaged in the mobile app, continued to report working days lost at six months. And over a third (36%) of these were unable to work at all.

The whole point of modern propaganda is to destroy the very idea that there are trustworthy sources of information, that no one knows any better so you might as well give up because everyone lies. This here is doing exactly this, and the source is the health care systems themselves. Or at least some of them.

You can't have medical professionals engage in this on such a mass scale without causing catastrophic problems. And, really, you can't! It does cause catastrophic problems. Tens, possibly hundreds, of millions of people have had such absurd experiences that we simply can't trust what medical professionals tell us. About anything. Because they tell those lies on the same basis that they tell real facts, but since we can't tell which is which we have to assume that anything could be another lie. Or not. We generally can't know!

And this translates into distrust of all experts, even though in my case I do know better and that medicine is uniquely corrupted by this. But this is horrible for so many reasons, not the least of which that it completely destroys most of the claims of credibility from the medical profession. Which is insane, all for absolutely zero benefits.

 

[Sparkly Unicorn]

Garner has the fanaticism of an over zealous convert - it's not normal or helpful!

 

[Sean]

God I wish Garner would shut the f*** up. He's doing so much harm.

Garner has the fanaticism of an over zealous convert - it's not normal or helpful!

The one thing you can never get those who have seen the light to do is shut up about it.

 

[Trish]

It's odd that Garner doesn't seem to have noticed that he doesn't have thousands joining him and signing petitions supporting his approach to Long Covid being provided on the NHS. The fact that he alone is quoted repeatedly should give him a clue that his theory is bunk.