My wife and I did not catch all of this, but my wife caught part of it where a 45 year old woman says she has had to give up work and struggling to get by, because she just feels so ill and shattered all the time. And that when she goes to her doctor he just gives her anti-depressants and tells her to keep herself moving.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0dxqqx0
Interesting because Melissa Heightman is a specialist in respiratory, just like Benita Kane - but of course Benita has direct experience from a daughter with Long Covid.
This seems to flag the one-dimensional focus of someone in respiratory running a service and the issue of them 'fixing the bit in their area' then shoving off to wherever - which always seems to be physio or psych for no good demonstrated reason.
I'm not sure she didn't need to resort to a bit of answering a different question to that answered re: HELP apheresis. She described the German stuff as
research ie trials, and then said 'in drug-thinning meds' and then said it wouldn't be useful to offer
as treatment due to it needing a trial. WHich is basically circular? Isn't it?
Then of course a lot of banging on about their preferred territory of evidence-based bla bla - yet didn't answer why aren't they trialling it here?
And not really answering it by fibbing about saying physio is effective. But she must know - as she made a point of saying at the start the clinic has a very mixed sample of patients with ME-type long covid as well as those with 4 weeks after or breathing issues - that isn't true for the same condition, so isn't it naughty to cite effectiveness for respiratory when it is talking about those for whom the same treatment isn' effective and could be harmful?
Yes her tone/tactic is patronising - I think the host was trying to keep it on topic and ask her whether they are actually deprioritising and helping people properly. Lots of cliches in reply with buzzword galores like measuring, evidence-based - which makes you wonder why they aren't following the stats and doing the measuring to pick up on it not working for PEM/PESE. 100% agree
@Ash that she kept citing 'people really do benefit from' and then citing generic things like support with mental health, pain fatigue but all empty - no stats and no specifics. Disappointing really, but I guess she'd been prepped to give nothing - so noone could disagree with nothing etc
well done on Benita for noting PEM/PESE, tho a shame she couldn't point out how many/what a proportion that is - rather than it being an anomolie or unusual. It's a shame to have the two-speed element created by having the droning party-line having to intersperse the reasonable questions from someone who was at least as expert in the same area as the woman she was asking. Stuff like this highlights the issue of the 'balance' line when only one side is playing ball of answering questions put to them and staying on topic as it is having someone whose objective is to keep it off a debate about the topic derailing the point of something.. but hey ho, seems to be the common issue nowadays
EDIT: also sad on Melissa for stopping learning because Benita has the knowledge about the area Melissa doesn't at all (both have the same in respiratory), and yet she closes her ears as if it doesn't exist. I'm not sure her condescending tone works when you are trying to talk down to someone who is at least on your level with what you do know and way above you on what you don't. She should, if she had enough humility to be capable of learning, feel silly for that. It's clearly a new technique of 'if you adopt the tone' people will forget the 'knowledge difference' is the other way around?
