German late night comedian Jan Böhmermann covered ME/CFS and Long COVID

forestglip

forestglip

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The German late night talk show ZDF Magazin Royal hosted by Jan Böhmermann did a full episode on long COVID and ME/CFS.



Some quotes from an AI translation:

Muscle pain, fatigue, anxiety - that's not a new disease, that's just whining. I trust real Long COVID experts the most, like Professor Dr. Christoph Kleinschnitz, chief neurologist at the University Hospital Essen, who says, "Too much panic is being made about Long COVID." So, you Long COVID losers, chill out and read Bild.

Long COVID expert Professor Kleinschnitz says, "It's medically rather unlikely that the symptoms of a viral disease persist for years."

If Freddie Mercury had known that... If Freddie had listened to Dr. Kleinschnitz, he'd be headlining Rock am Brocken today. But oh well, live and learn.
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Aha, and Long COVID isn't a ticket for psychologically unstable people, but a serious organic disease. The most severe form of Long COVID is called ME/CFS - Myalgic Encephalomyelitis/Chronic Fatigue Syndrome.

Is that the same as Long COVID or is it an extra disease or what? Of course, the fat-studded fasting crowd is out again when it gets complicated.

So, ME/CFS is a really shitty chronic disease, usually triggered by a virus - flu, Epstein-Barr, or COVID. And most of those affected are - surprise - women. They don't have enough with endometriosis, lower salaries, the end of Lars Eidinger not understanding that beach mat isn't a personality replacement, and now ME/CFS too.

It kicks like a really godless hangover, only without having Korn crumble tea beforehand. Even Elotrans, pickled herring rolls, and half a liter of cucumber water don't help. And no, just sleeping it off doesn't work either.
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With ME/CFS, you feel more like this colleague [likely referring to an image or gesture], and all the time. Getting up, going to work? No, I don't think so. A quarter of people can barely do anything but lie in bed, but not in a cool lazy Sunday way, more in a "life sucks" way. And if you overexert yourself, there's a crash. Then it gets even worse, sometimes forever. Going for a walk, brushing teeth, making breakfast - crash, crash, crash. And even vital things can trigger the crash: watching "Bares für Rares" [a German TV show], or finally breaking up with Lars because he only thinks about himself, doesn't wash his ass, and makes this noise when brushing his teeth [likely mimicking an unpleasant sound].

More symptoms of ME/CFS: circulatory disorders, balance problems, racing heart, sleep disorders, dizziness, sensitivity to light, sensitivity to noise, severe pain in muscles, joints, nerves, head, and shoulders, knees and toes, knees and toes. Another symptom: brain fog. No, not rain fog, brain fog. Fog in the brain, my God.
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But why are you so screwed with ME/CFS and what can you do about it? Well, we don't know exactly because for decades, no one gave a damn about the disease. What we do know now is that it looks something like an autoimmune disease, something's also wrong with the blood vessels, and that both mitochondrial dynamics and glycolytic metabolic pathways are disrupted.
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Anyone who gets infected with Corona can develop Long COVID, and those who have Long COVID can also get the severe chronic disease ME/CFS. In Germany, the number of patients before the pandemic was estimated at about 250,000, including 40,000 children and adolescents. Meanwhile, it's probably almost twice as many. As data from the National Association of Statutory Health Insurance Physicians shows, in Germany alone, probably half a million people have ME/CFS.

And ladies and gentlemen, and everyone in between and beyond, you can also pass this on to your family doctor, because few doctors are familiar with it. To this day, ME/CFS is not a mandatory part of medical education, although the WHO has recognized this disease since the 1960s.

ME/CFS isn't a new disease, but could it be that many doctors are only now, for the first time, seriously considering it in a Gugu Gaga show on ZDF on Friday evening? Yes, Pascal, I think probably so. Many doctors are not familiar with ME/CFS, and that is, to put it mildly, not so good for patients.

[The speaker then shares a patient's experience]: "I sought help from my family doctor due to my post-COVID or ME/CFS illness. There I was told that I was merely suffering from depression, that other people were much worse off, that there were worse diseases, and that I shouldn't make such a fuss."
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So in the Jon vs John race to cover ME on their show, amazingly the winner is Jan.
 
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Mentioned in the transcript is some dude named Kleinschnitz, a German neurologist who has pretty much taken the mantle of nastiest psychosomatizers of all. He reminds me of Sharpe but with even worse people skills and a 7-8 drink minimum. Some of the things he said genuinely belongs being screamed on a street corner, although most pwME wouldn't know much about that since he's taken the same habit as as our other BPS overlords and blocked most of us on twitter, so unless you can read German screenshots it's hard to see it. He's said these things on TV and has been quoted for years saying all the same nasty stuff. The deniers love him just as much as those in the UK loved Wessely, but Kleinshnitz is far less politically saavy.

Now thanks to some strong sunlight disinfectant, his nastiness is on full display and although he's been happily ranting absolute insane stuff for years, no doubt seen by many MD peers who think he's doing great, bullying sick people rarely goes well with the general public. So anyway he's been scrubbing many tweets since the show was aired, 95 according to this screenshot taken yesterday:
GWRJ2ErWwAEKbOv
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Which is a bit funny since like I said he has been happily giving quotes to reporters and news anchors in public for years. All the same stuff. Some reminder of how even though all this nasty bullying may have always been all out in the open for years, from him and the others, it looks terrible when you remove the context of "let's laugh at those pathetic well-worriers" and a friendly audience willing to throw their own rotten veggies. As Long Covid affects more and more people, it becomes less about 'others' and more about people they know and love.

One day, the best way to present all of this will be through a lot of dark humor. It works. It's clearly easy to punch down on us, but that's only as long as no one objects to it. Punching down is always ugly, and the entire psychosomatic ideology is nothing but punching down.
 
I wonder about his motives. A BPS point of view I can accept. Snarkiness..ok. But why this public display of just pure..nastiness. I haven't seen it to this extreme before from any other psychiatrists that disregard ME.

I also wonder why his employer hasn't reacted yet. Kleinschnitz is not on Twitter as a private person but in his role as a neurologist. Maybe they have now and that's why he's swiping his Twitter clean.

Has anyone ever saved his old tweets?
 
Well that was brilliant. I gave up on Jan Böhmermann a while ago because he seemed to be running out of ideas, but when he's good he's very good. Germany is full of Wesselys, which is why I have been hiding from the health service for about 8 years now.

These satirical news shows all watch each other, often the German ones copy ideas from the Americans, but hopefully things might go the other way this time. It's a subject made for Jon Stewart or John Oliver, and ridicule can be very effective.

With any luck Kleinschnitz will be provoked into making an even bigger ass of himself in public by this.
 
rvallee said:
So anyway he's been scrubbing many tweets since the show was aired, 95 according to this screenshot taken yesterday
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That is very telling.

Threads for some of his previous publications —

Post-COVID-19 Syndrome is Rarely Associated with Damage of the Nervous System: Findings from a Prospective Observational Cohort Study in 171 Patients (2022, Neurology and Therapy)

Cytokines IL1β, IL6, TNFα and serum cortisol levels may not constitute reliable biomarkers to identify individuals with post-acute sequelae of COVID-19 (2024, Therapeutic Advances in Neurological Disorders)
 
There's still a lot of a "No True Scostman" vibe that fantasizes about a version of psychosomatic medicine that never existed, very similar to people who fantasize about some period in time when the world was simple and at peace, which just happens to coincide with the time when they were children, but this still interesting, given who:
President of the Austrian Health and Nursing Association ÖGKV and the Health Professions Conference GBK said:
When psychosomatics became fashionable in medicine in the 1980s, I thought that was progressive. Finally, people were being seen as a whole. When I read what has been made of it here under #Frauenticket over the last few days, I have to change my opinion.
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Psychosomatic was never, ever, progressive. It was always a completely regressive set of beliefs, never saw people as a whole, and the beliefs in the 1980s were not significantly different than they were in the 1880s. People seem to have this idea about psychosomatics where if any of it were true, it would be fantastic, revolutionary. But of course that was always a complete bunch of BS, not significantly different from Tarot or any other weird pseudoscience construct.
https://twitter.com/user/status/1831333337375326329
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Posted here because of the #Frauenticket tag that I'm not sure what it means but comes from Böhmermann's show.
 
rvallee said:
Posted here because of the #Frauenticket tag that I'm not sure what it means but comes from Böhmermann's show.
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Someone asked on Twitter. It seems to be a term Kleinschnitz used, referencing a public transport that is cheaper for women, in order to help address the pink tax / pay inequity.

https://twitter.com/user/status/1830921161150001400


According to responses —

It was originally an allusion from the harmful doctor to "Deutschlandticket", a new and affordable ticket in Germany for public transports. Something women can get by a cheap price and have a 'profit' from (yes, I know, terrible, but that are the kind of nice things he says).
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Kleinschnitz used it to mean something like an easy pass. He used „tick the gender box“ in a similar way. He hates women for talking about systemic issues, he also used the term „woke medicine“.
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Well ain't that guy a natural charmer.

And "woke medicine". LMAO. The overlap between psychosomatizers, the misogynistic alt-right and Internet trolls is a perfect circle. Even the completely fake appeal to freedom of speech, from people who systematically silence and bully others. Peas in a rotten pod.
 
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