Lancet letter: Long COVID has exposed medicine's blind-spot, 2021, Burke and del Rio

As many others have pointed out, the clusters of symptoms reported by patients post-COVID-19 are not unique or specific to long COVID. Patients with similar assortments of chronic symptoms are commonly encountered in neurology, rheumatology, infectious diseases, and other subspecialty clinics. Some patients will have similar post-infectious onsets, whereas others report other potential triggers, and, for some, there are no identifiable triggers at all.

https://www.thelancet.com/journals/laninf/article/PIIS1473-3099(21)00333-9/fulltext


Encountered but completely mismanaged and largely dismissed with prejudice, that's kind of a big thing to overlook here. It's disappointing how difficult it is for people to make even minimal leaps in thinking, that the large number of asymptomatic people developing Long Covid should be a major clue on the issue of "identifiable triggers". The blind spot remains blind as long as people refuse to look at it.

But this being published in the Lancet is irony, amplified by the fact that this comment is completely vague about how this blind spot has operated, actually finding it pertinent to present it as a "both sides" issue, urging people to be "open-minded", which we all know to mean accepting psychosomatic ideology unless compelling evidence otherwise.

And of course not even naming it, because chronic illness remains so taboo they won't even name it, like it's some Candyman that can only hurt if you give it attention.

 

"Alternatively, contemporary neuropsychiatry models present this polarisation as a false dichotomy and highlight the potential importance of predisposing factors, including genetic and psychosocial factors, that might result in dysfunction of brain or brain–body circuits and networks that then interact with a potential triggering event."

Glad contemporary neuropsychiatry is here to clear up this "controversial" and "mysterious" (as per the article) subject. Notice the word "might". Speculative but made to sound as though they are rising above the debate. Also "brain-body circuits" - what is meant by this? Concerned that many people read this and it simply becomes conventional wisdom, unchallenged.

I saw this as an attempt to carve up the subject area in a politically convenient way in which various factions are placated whilst tip-toeing around important issues.

Science is not coming to a consensus viewpoint based on a flawed and politically convenient framework.

As @rvallee said, the article also does a "both-sides" manoeuvre in an attempt to sound balanced:

"Unfortunately, instead of humbly embracing the complexity of these interactions and encouraging collaboration, contrasting opinions are often ferociously defended, creating deep divisions."

This is a misrepresentation of the subject area. There is nothing "humble" about accepting opaque claims about "brain-body circuits".

 

One problem they have as I see it is that psychosocial issues must apply then to all illness.

Yet so many illnesses are made better or cured with purely biomedical means.
The only nod to pyschosocial would be as support.

The Lancet is being disingenuous. Which is not at all helpful except as a shield for the BPS cabal.

 

It basically also pretends that this is all new stuff, never-been-tried and must be researched all anew, we must be willing to try it all over again while also accepting that there is evidence for it, two mutually exclusive realities that must be accepted, just because. As if the current dysfunction is not the very product of decades of this wretched ideology having complete stranglehold on this "blind spot", which is exactly what kept it in the dark.

I can't stand this much disingenuousness. It's so vile and blatantly political.

 

Yes, its apologia, attempting to launder the non-credible hocus pocus which psychs have been trying to foist on patients and the medical profession on behalf of insurance lobby etc.

"Come on it doesnt matter who is wrong as long as we are all in it together mateys." It might as well say, the antithesis of verifiable science.

They are due for a roasting and they know it and I do so hope they get it because it will mean that PWME will be treated more appropriately.

The BPS "neuropsychiatric" rhubarb is not even the same class of idea as immunological theories, does not even qualify as testable science and has no precedent in empirically derived physiological knowledge. Just made up, might as well be a new kind of science fiction cult like scientology.

Emory are usually pretty good. The way I see it this guy Burke is using del Rio to bolster academic credibility and I would warn del Rio not to be suckered in by mealy mouthed careerist handwaving.

To quote Abe Lincoln.
“You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you can not fool all of the people all of the time.”

Though the wind blows ill for their house of cards, the BPS lobby continue to try to fool some of the people, with PR exercises like this, enough to keep them in the political loop. We need to kick them out as they are parasitically diverting the resources the good guys need to do a good job, to fruitless even harmful endeavours.

 

Blind spot? More like a blind iceberg