BPS attempts at psychologizing Long Covid

And here comes the Knoop.

ReCOVer: A Randomized Controlled Trial testing the efficacy of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for preventing chronic post-infectious fatigue among patients diagnosed with COVID-19

https://www.zonmw.nl/nl/over-zonmw/...acy-of-cognitive-behavioural-therapy-for-pre/

No description yet. Duration: 2 years. So basically zero chance this actually gets completed, it will look completely ridiculous by then.

Seems to be part of a €30M COVID-19 program. This actually got funding as part of COVID-19 research. Holy crap is medicine fiscally irresponsible with their resources.
 
I think another part of it is that our diagnosis is highly stigmatised and therefore very low status. People, consciously or not, don't want to be associated with that in any way.

In addition, doctors are taught during training that if you ignore "functional" symptoms, they improve. Any "attention" from other people or mobility aids or disability payments are thought to be harmful and reinforcing of the condition (so-called secondary gains).

Family member of mine is a doctor and she won't even bring her kids (who like me and ask to see me frequently) over to my place more than once a year max. It's always "you should come over" when in fact everyone knows well that's impossible. When we're in the same room she interacts with others but never says a word to me and pretends I don't exist. We've never had an argument or even discussed my condition; the cold shoulder came out of nowhere. She even ignores clear-cut, non-ME/CFS related medical issues I get like having an infection or surgery. This is the sort of person who runs to urgent care for every minor symptom when it affects her and her nuclear family whereas I'm the bad one even though I always hide and minimise my very serious symptoms, never discuss them with anyone IRL and don't seek medical attention even for "real" illnesses unrelated to ME/CFS until the last possible moment.

The terror/phobia is real. I suspect that the MDs who have contracted long covid will face total ostracism from their colleagues. Many of them won't admit it but on some level they feel inherently superior to the rest of us, superhumans who shouldn't get sick, let alone with something so shameful (in their view) as this.

That family member isn’t suffering from a terror/phobia, they’re simply a wretchedly bad human being.
..... this will probably offend someone, but it has to be said.
 
I was hearing some quacking noises as I read this :

Title : Covid-19

Link : https://peakstates.com/covid19.html

Do you know someone with COVID-19?
We're now looking for currently or recently ill COVID-19 patients to volunteer to test our non-drug, psycho-immunology approach to treating the disease. (The informed consent and liability form can be downloaded from here.) If you are interested in participating, please contact our medical director Mary Pellicer MD by phoning +1-‭509-965-4502‬ or clicking on the contact button below:

A psycho-immunology approach
For readers who are not familiar with psycho-immunology, it has several unique features. Theoretically, a treatment using this approach should allow us to both (1) eliminate any of the symptoms (and pathogens) currently in an infected person, as well as (2) make people immune to getting the disease in the future. The most important feature is that symptom relief is immediate and occurs in the office during treatment, allowing one to have immediate confidence in the technique. This webpage explains psycho-immunology in more detail.

Article continues ...
 
Given that these people are preying on others during, and using, a global health crisis IMO, and that their misinformation is a direct and present danger, not just to those who fall for their marketing, but to everyone they come into contact with, they should be shut down and locked up, preferably with prejudice.

A quick scan of that page suggests misinformation on a epic level.

e.g.
Amebic Carriers
To our great surprise, so far we haven't seen the coronavirus directly infecting humans. Instead, we see two different carriers for the coronavirus. Both appear to be ameba (both have a nucleus) and feel 'gooey' to the regressed patient. Each species infects the person quite differently:

Ameba appears to be simply a different spelling of amoeba - so the virus, according to these people, isn't really a virus at all, it's a single cell life form - which according to them feels gooey to the touch.
 
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https://www.peakstates.com/forum/discussion/875/snake-oil-or-the-real-deal
For goodness sake this is as bad or worse than LP. The founder and chief researcher is an electrical engineer.
"Aha!", you say. "But where's the evidence that anything worked? Where are the double blind studies? How about the journal articles you've published?"

"Fortunately, we don't need those things you mentioned", we reply. "We have something better. It is called 'pay for results'."

Below are just a few of the reasons people have for automatically rejecting our work:

Lack of a specialized background: the introductory concepts that I cover in talks are not familiar to most non-professionals, yet they are common knowledge in various sub-disciplines of psychology. Yes, a person can regress to birth, womb, sperm or egg; that prenatal trauma exists and can be healed; and so on. These are all topics you can find in the internet or go to any school library and read up on if you are curious. True, they are outside of some people's belief systems, but are still real.
Amusing in a way, but an awful waste of time too, and looks like complete nonsense. Their forum seems to be inactive as far as I can see without joining.
 
Given that these people are preying on others during, and using, a global health crisis IMO, and that their misinformation is a direct and present danger, not just to those who fall for their marketing, but to everyone they come into contact with, they should be shut down and locked up, preferably with prejudice.

A quick scan of that page suggests misinformation on a epic level.

e.g.


Ameba appears to be simply a different spelling of amoeba - so the virus, according to these people, isn't really a virus at all, it's a single cell life form - which according to them feels gooey to the touch.
But only gooey if you’re regressed :wtf:

eta tripe alert!!!!
 
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AmebaRegressionTherapy looks like a completely imaginary new age crypto-religion. Comes under freedom to worship IMHO but the slight danger is that it is pseudo medical as well.

The BBC just ran a story on the tragedy of a cherubic couple one of whom was in show business and died from cancer due to believing in detox / herxheimer beliefs etc.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/bbcthree/article/72396917-47b0-4aac-856f-e213c3a0c3fa
I lost my boyfriend to cancer 'conspiracy theories'

So people accept these projection / sympathetic magic based belief systems are potentially dangerous where they clash with reality and I wonder if there is a way to use that to keep the psychobabblers quiet on longcovid.

The Ameba type nuts are relatively easy to spot and do not scare me as much as those psychologists who deliberately try to ingratiate themselves with the establishment using pseudo science psychobabble, fudging experimental outcomes and doing real harm to individuals and sabotaging scientific research into ME in general, in collusion with insurers, by selling a wholesale fiction about the nature of the illnesses we face as a species but have not yet managed to understand. It has not even been 100 years since the discovery of penicillin, we are still crawling out of the dark ages after 65million years of primate evolution, of course we dont understand it all.

I think in the process of understanding the straw man of CFS will need to be dismantled and hope that ME will be radically and specifically redefined by experimental findings.
CFS is really the babblers best friend if not invention and acts as an unscientific catch-all diagnosis which the babblers use as a stereotype to catch the prejudice of the unwary and untrained and it is easier because they confound it with the stigma which the instinctive impulse to evade contagion creates i.e. the leper effect.

I think these psychologists barely know what they are doing, its just impulsive scamming, they are not masterminds, they are white coat criminals gaming the academic system. Freud was a tobacco marketer after the fashion of Anton Mesmer, not a scientist. They will continue to cause untold damage as long as they are allowed to and must be opposed. Which is why we should (and I certainly do) continue to value the work of @dave30th :)

But I fully expect the babblers to try to continue using the same trick of deresolving the specificity of longcovid and trying to fuzz the picture by adding it to the CFS bucket. We ought to watch out for that and oppose it IMHO and be pedants and sticklers for scientific accuracy.
 
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Long after the fire of a Covid-19 infection, mental and neurological effects can still smolder

https://www.statnews.com/2020/08/12/after-covid19-mental-neurological-effects-smolder/

“We would say that perhaps between 30% and 50% of people with an infection that has clinical manifestations are going to have some form of mental health issues,” said Teodor Postolache, professor of psychiatry at the University of Maryland School of Medicine. “That could be anxiety or depression but also nonspecific symptoms that include fatigue, sleep, and waking abnormalities, a general sense of not being at your best, not being fully recovered in terms of the abilities of performing academically, occupationally, potentially physically.”
Maryland’s Postolache thinks Covid-19 infection might act as a “priming event” for problems to resurface in the future. Psychological stress could reactivate behavioral and emotional problems that were initially triggered by the immune system responding to the virus. “What we call psychological versus biological may actually be quite biological,” he said. “We don’t really say this is permanent … but considering all complexities of human life, it’s unavoidable.”

Some people can look at a bunch of trees and see their mother's scowling face, I guess? This sentence, it says one thing but somehow implies the opposite. I just can't. How do people think so brokenly? Yes, it is biological, of course it is, thus making "behavior and emotional problems" entirely superfluous.

I just don't understand the obsession with the unidirectional nature of psychological consequences of illness, always attributing them the other around. False attribution error syndrome is beyond silly. I think I can see the cognitive dissonance breaking things in the minds of people trying to put trauma in the causative part of the equation but the belief is so hard to displace.

It's clearly causing resistance to the inevitable fact that the arrow of causality is clearly in one direction alone but come on, epiphanize faster, please. The conversion disorder really was a massive catastrophic failure. Deal with it and move on, you finally have a real explanation for psychiatric illnesses, run with it, you can do it.
 
Not technically "BPS" attempts but since it seems to be a checkmarked journalist and it wouldn't make sense to do another thread for denial, might as well put it there.

One thing I do find interesting reading this however is exactly how mediocre the entire BPS thing is that it's basically the exact same stuff some drunk douchebag who thinks their opinion would solve all the world's problems would come up with. There is zero thought to denial-based contrarianism, it's just off-the-cuff ignorant BS.

The BPS folks have put decades of effort into putting some fiber in their BS and still, some douche with a 5 minute contrarian rant basically says the exact same stuff. I'm not a science expert or whatnot but when your leading "theory" is so insubstantial that a random jerk who didn't put more than a second's thought to it comes up with the exact same, displaying the same level of utmost confidence in the superiority of their judgment, you are not a scientist and should go home and not think about anything for the rest of your life.

 
The entire CBT/GET thing has reminded me for a while of the old 'double or nothing' chestnut.

It is possible to 'win' every time by simply refusing to accept defeat and with every loss doubling up the bet.

No matter how far behind you are at some point you will win, and be up your original stake.

It's inevitable - you literally can't lose (provided nobody messes with the laws of probability in any way).

Provided of course you have the resources to keep doing it.

CBT/GET seems to me to display the same mindset.

Keep doing 'whatever', and eventually it's inevitable that you will 'win' - as in 'recover'.

Anyone who doesn't must of course be a quitter, have no bottle.

But most living people have a finite, and not infinite, amount of resources, which means that even if they were so inclined as to keep going no matter the consequences, that at some point, they will run out of resources, and be unable to keep playing.
 
.... displaying the same level of utmost confidence in the superiority of their judgment, you are not a scientist and should go home and not think about anything for the rest of your life.


Major activity this morning, so watched ‘Escape to the Country‘ (easy, house hunting UK tv programme) and had a sudden revelation (/shock) when the late 70’s house hunter commented how he would enjoy exploring all the walks with his dog, surrounding the area. And I couldn’t say the same :(

I am a mere 60, former keen visitor to Austria, for Lakes&Mountains walking (always with an ‘Alm und ein bier’ in mind).

OK I didn’t have SARS, only Sepsis, but, according to this charming chap, I still seem to have disappeared into this “miasma of neurologic symptoms and fatigue...”. :banghead:
 
Maybe some of these vile twitter comments about long Covid not being real...
There are a lot of active bad-faith players on social media, and they are not all just random idiots and ignorant arseholes who now have a global soap box to spew their prejudices and hatreds.

I am talking high level, well resourced and organised, and deliberate manipulation and poisoning of the whole notion and possibility of sane public debate, including by nation states.

We are firmly in the era of information warfare.
 
Not technically "BPS" attempts but since it seems to be a checkmarked journalist and it wouldn't make sense to do another thread for denial, might as well put it there.

One thing I do find interesting reading this however is exactly how mediocre the entire BPS thing is that it's basically the exact same stuff some drunk douchebag who thinks their opinion would solve all the world's problems would come up with. There is zero thought to denial-based contrarianism, it's just off-the-cuff ignorant BS.

The BPS folks have put decades of effort into putting some fiber in their BS and still, some douche with a 5 minute contrarian rant basically says the exact same stuff. I'm not a science expert or whatnot but when your leading "theory" is so insubstantial that a random jerk who didn't put more than a second's thought to it comes up with the exact same, displaying the same level of utmost confidence in the superiority of their judgment, you are not a scientist and should go home and not think about anything for the rest of your life.


Hadn't heard of him, did a quick google on him and turned up this quite enlightening article from April:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/ryancr...of-stem-education-my-classmate-alex-berenson/

Alex Berenson has been in the news this week as the “King of COVID-19 Contrarians,” (Vanity Fair) and “The Right’s Favorite Coronavirus Truther” (Vice). These headlines followed various and sundry appearances on Fox News, prompting additional Fox coverage of Alex’s clashes with the mainstream media.
 
OK I didn’t have SARS, only Sepsis, but, according to this charming chap, I still seem to have disappeared into this “miasma of neurologic symptoms and fatigue...”. :banghead:

I think you're overlooking the fact the charming chap has undergraduate degrees in history and economics, thus making him eminently qualified to propound on the possible post-infectious consequences of a novel coronavirus... :rolleyes:

Meanwhile, Dr. Fauci, the head US the Coronavirus Task Force, said:
"Even after you clear the virus, there are postviral symptoms. I know, because I follow on the phone a lot of people who call me up and talk about their course. And it's extraordinary how many people have a postviral syndrome that's very strikingly similar to myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome."
https://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/933619#vp_2
 
not necessarily on 'long-covid' but........
Webinar Sept 1st 2020
Covid: The Mental health toll to Society.
upload_2020-8-22_12-29-55.jpeg
"Covid-19 is affecting all our lives in ways that are profound. Many aspects of the past are changing fast, and many of us are worrying about what this all means for ourselves and for our loved ones. Those of us already living with mental health problems are facing extra challenges too."
https://sapiencaregroup.com/webinar/covid-the-mental-health-toll-to-society/
 
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