BPS attempts at psychologizing Long Covid

In the coming months, the BPS brigades will attempt to promote their alternative model to people suffering from post-COVID-19 illness. There will be papers and editorials, but also less formal attempts at promoting various treatment approaches and a "different" way to think about long COVID. Whereas the formal stuff will have their own threads, it's worth keeping tracks of those swings-and-a-miss, if only for the sheer entertainment value.

I begin this thread because I found one in the wild and it went about as well as could be expected. Take a guess who went first, I think many will guess right.

 

Yes I think they will, but they've also been surprisingly quiet. Maybe this pandemic is also helping them understand how wrong they've been.

 

And a wild Henrik appears

(adding quotes since many will no doubt be blocked)

https://twitter.com/user/status/1285664074299310087

https://twitter.com/user/status/1285666406886002688

https://twitter.com/user/status/1285668203256000512

https://twitter.com/user/status/1285674580049354753

https://twitter.com/user/status/1285674967678488579

https://twitter.com/HenrikVogt/status/1285677105209053184

https://twitter.com/HenrikVogt/status/1285667897394835456

https://twitter.com/HenrikVogt/status/1285668752554688515

https://twitter.com/HenrikVogt/status/1285674159876579331

https://twitter.com/HenrikVogt/status/1285678926069669888

https://twitter.com/HenrikVogt/status/1285685713036615681

https://twitter.com/HenrikVogt/status/1285686115022843905

https://twitter.com/HenrikVogt/status/1285707817748398083

What a jackass.

 

I echo this. I think they have been very quiet of late. It's making me wonder if the messages are getting through or if they are scheming away ready for a bit of a wee comeback. And from past performances I suspect likelihood favours the later rather sadly.

Joan

 

Another doctor who gets it! I mean Trisha Greenhalgh of course.

 

It sounds like he's panicking.

 

They're already under attack over GET:

"The large number of patients experiencing post-viral fatigue after covid-19 has now shone a spotlight on the controversial technique again.

Among this number is Paul Garner, professor of infectious disease at the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine and director of the Centre for Evidence Synthesis in Global Health. Early in his recovery Garner realised that he was experiencing post-exertional malaise, as every time he did any exercise that increased his heart rate, such as cycling or yoga, he found himself back in bed.89

Garner, who is coordinating editor of the Cochrane Infectious Diseases Group and one of the founders of the Cochrane Collaboration, said that he was “furious” when he read the 2007 NICE advice and the conclusions of the Cochrane review, which also support exercise therapy and mention uncertainty about the side effects of adaptive pacing.10

“Obviously, I know that if I increase my exercise I will be thrown back to bed,” he said. “What I struggle with as a highly driven medic is stopping myself overdoing it. That’s what I need help with—I don’t need help to increase my exercise.” "​

https://www.bmj.com/content/370/bmj.m2912

 

@rvallee I think you ought to tell us what you have against jackasses.

 

Oh Henrik! How can you be so insensitive to caution against taking patients too seriously, while they are figuratively screaming for help as loud as they can. And then follow up with a recommendation for a think yourself well in 3 days therapy.

I don't know what's wrong with you but I hope it's nothing serious, and just an innocent lack of experience.

 

Vogt can only continue to say what he does because he conflates a self-limiting though longer recovery from PVFS (a recovery that does not require any intervention) and ME/cfs which does NOT resolve with any treatment. He simply will not hear it.

Perhaps there are people out there who have had PVFS and who recovered with no treatment?

 

https://twitter.com/maxwhd is finding interesting stuff on this and previously ME in general. It's a pity they don't post the stuff somewhere where it can be found easily as things can get lost or easily missed on Twitter.

 

I do know some, but one in particular got glandular fever in her late 40s. After seven months she was referred to a CFS service, as she just wasn't recovering. She went for one appointment, where she was given a CFS diagnosis; having known me for several years and learned a bit about the NHS approach, she decided not to make any more appointments.

After another couple of months she began to improve, though, and within 11 months she was well enough to go back to work. This was in 2014 and she's never had any health problems since, so it looks as if she just had a particularly long-winded version of PVFS rather than ME. She was lucky in that they could manage on her husband's salary, so there was no pressure to resume her self-employed practice until she was ready.

 

As long as PACE was limited to patients with ME, they may have felt that they could handle the criticism, but now... Would they really want a big Covid-19 spotlight trained on the PACE trial?

 

He's involved in the new LP trial in... Denmark? With Wyller? So very much part of the BPS brigade. He's a quack but just as much as the other quacks.

And anyway the "official" BPS brigade has formally promoted the SMILE trial so they are very much in favor of the LP for ME.

 

I mean that's pretty much most, as best we can tell. That's one of the things Wessely loves to laugh about, "they recover all on their own", which is equally true of a flu that lasts a week or a month, no reason why it would be different for longer term. It's also true of some cancers, though much less frequently.

But that actually tells us something. Just as the massive difference in symptoms with COVID, not only the difference in symptom presentation but that some people have no symptoms at all. This is all relevant information that is simply hand-waved away.

So yeah any silly thing will have people who "recover". Exact same thing as ancient remedies for the cold, you take it and it just goes away by magic. But that's tiger-repelling rock logic, it's juvenile nonsense.