Impacts of the 2024 change in US government on ME/CFS and Long Covid

Jonathan Edwards said:
What does Kennedy say about Ostrom's work I wonder?
The blurb for Ostrom's book indicates that it is misleading pseudoscience - very nasty stuff indeed in fact.

Edit: judging by the quote he likes it?
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I’m skimming through Kennedy’s book right now, but he seems to use the neglect of ME as an argument for his hatred of Anthony Fauci.

He seems to see ME as a biomedical illness, and says it’s chronically underfunded, but also spouts baseless claims about it being “HIV negative AIDS” and being linked to the “HHV6” virus.
 
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Jonathan Edwards said:
I am amazed that the Ostrom book came out in 2022, when all the CFIDS stuff had largely died down.
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It's self published, and presumably just one individual's ideas.

Yann04 said:
I’m skimming through Kennedy’s book right now, but he seems to use the neglect of ME as an argument for his hatred of Anthony Fauci.

He seems to see ME as a biomedical illness, and says it’s chronically underfunded, but also spouts baseless claims about it being “HIV negative AIDS” and being caused by the “HHV6” virus.
Click to expand...
Those claims seem to come straight from the Ostrom book.
 
Yann04 said:
I’m skimming through Kennedy’s book right now, but he seems to use the neglect of ME as an argument for his hatred of Anthony Fauci.

He seems to see ME as a biomedical illness, and says it’s chronically underfunded, but also spouts baseless claims about it being “HIV negative AIDS” and being caused by the “HHV6” virus.
Click to expand...

This is getting quite confusing!
Kennedy thinks things are overmedicalised and too much money spent but he thinks ME is an underfunded medical problem?
He talks of an epidemic of chronic disease that just needs diet and exercise but presumably that doesn't include ME?
He is against big Pharma despite their having found very good solutions to AIDS?
He talks of defunding all post-infective illness research.

It reminds me of Knoop and Ehlers Danlos.
 
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Kennedy seems to see HIV as a sort of “manufactured” culprit for AIDS, apparently there is a broader movement behind this called “HIV denialism”. Kennedy thinks that research funding was then wrongfully nearly solely invested into HIV and therefore marginalising what he calls “non-HIV AIDS” which he includes ME.

He believes there is a sort of broad crisis of immune deficiency, which was hidden by the government with “HIV”, he thinks many chronic illnesses (especially ME) are caused by this “immune deficiency ” and that there must be some culprit, he seems to varyingly blame pharmaceutical drugs, vaccines, environmental pollutants as the cause of this “immunodeficiency crisis”.

It’s a very weird, conspiracy convoluted idea.
 
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Yann04 said:
Kennedy seems to see HIV as a sort of “manufactured” culprit for AIDS, apparently there is a broader movement behind this called “HIV denialism”. Kennedy thinks that research funding was then wrongfully nearly solely invested into HIV and therefore marginalising what he calls “non-HIV AIDS” which he includes ME.

He believes there is a sort of broad crisis of immune deficiency, which was hidden by the government with “HIV”, he thinks many chronic illnesses (especially ME) are caused by this “immune deficiency ” and that there must be some culprit, he seems to varyingly blame pharmaceutical drugs, vaccines, environmental pollutants as the cause of this “immunodeficiency crisis”.

It’s a very weird, conspiracy convoluted idea.
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He's still an AIDS denier?!
 
Well I don’t know exactly how to say this.

But despite the fact he’s an anti-science conspiracy theorist who will make things worse in general, if ME advocates effectively reach him and lean into his message a little too woo him and his aides, we might be able to get a boost in funding out of these dark times.
 
Yann04 said:
Well I don’t know exactly how to say this.

But despite the fact he’s an anti-science conspiracy theorist who will make things worse in general, if ME advocates effectively reach him and lean into his message a little too woo him and his aides, we might be able to get a boost in funding out of these dark times.
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We must try to get our voice heard no matter who is in office, even if they're wrong on a bunch of science issues like RFK. He's expressed a desire to take ME more seriously in some of his books, so you never know.
 
Exactly. I really hope some of our advocates who have enough energy are willing to bite the bullet and try to get us what the funding we deserve, even if we fundamentally disagree with the views of the person we are pleading to.
 
This all suggests that things will continue to be bad, just slightly differently. So, another spin of the crank wheel. It's not as if there's any real differences between the cranks pushing out the psychobehavioral woowoo or... whatever this is. It's two sides of the same bullshit patty.

Clowns to the left of me
Jokers to the right
Here I am, stuck in the middle with you
 
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Dr. Jonathan Howard is a neurologist and psychiatrist who has been interested in vaccines since long before COVID-19. He is the author of "We Want Them Infected: How the failed quest for herd immunity led doctors to embrace the anti-vaccine movement and blinded Americans to the threat of COVID."

LINK
 
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