News from Australia

Art Vandelay said:
Who can forget this:

Click to expand...


Are they that stupid that they don't realise the fact that their very first word was 'Some' [health services contact covid patients] makes the rest of what they say laughable BS

unless they are citing a study proving that 'all the rest who didn't contact them had no long covid patients'

Even if you were just going by a sentence needing to fit with the laws of logic?

EDIT: and I hate the fact I have to add 'had no long covid patients' doesn't mean when they just refuse to investigate or acknowledge anyone to pretend long covid didn't exist.
 
SNT Gatchaman said:
Sydney Morning Herald goes with: `Long COVID’ doesn’t exist as we know it, according to new research





Fortunately they sought comment from Jeremy Nicholson.
Click to expand...

Interesting. So does Gerrard have the same worries when he is giving out Public Health information about eg STDs or heart problems

or .. what else is it that he does as part of his job as a campaign area?

I'd be interested to see someone posting a comparison of what he says on another area vs this as a comparator side-by-side with each other

For example is he that bad he still believes in the 'type A personality' causing heart attacks type thing too?
 
rvallee said:
I don't really like this framing of "years behind". Behind who? No one is ahead when everyone is behind. So that's not behind, it's just wrong.

It's not even fair to say that the guidelines reflected the evidence at the time, the evidence was never there, it simply came from assertions that have been fully debunked since, a fact that has not been acknowledged. Those are two very different things. As different as imprisoning someone on genuinely flawed evidence such as false testimony that a witness later recanted vs. on evidence made-up by the prosecution and lack of ability to prove innocence. One is a passive failure, the other is active and plain wrong.
Click to expand...

Yep they've made it seem like a country-based comparison rather than a condition-based one.

And of course that is the classic reframe the set technique - look there are those who have the same thinking issue in the UK too rather than 'compared to what you'd expect from something that calls itself medicine or a science..'
 
Trish said:
Which is exactly what patients and decent scientists have been saying for decades. The so called paradigm was indeed developed, as they say, with a step in the scientific method missing, there was no attempt at falsification. They made it up and set out to 'prove' it in trials carefully designed without objective primary outcome measures that do falsify their hypothesis and without proper means of collecting evidence of harms.
It's so sad to see 30+ years on from the rise of BPS, that people are having to go through all this again. The paradigm shouldn't need shifting if scientific methods had been used in the first place.
We need more people like this to join us on S4ME to help with the fight against anti science and with supporting good science.
Click to expand...

To ask the obvious question - and this applies to UK as much too:

of the professions that we've ended up being landed dealing with, which of them are actually taught this compulsorily at the start and then throughout their courses and vocational training?

Is the issue that they are some of the few degrees and training areas that critical thinking and critical evaluation are not built in as a requirement? ANd the few non-arts degree areas that have not been required to inhale and always remember to keep returning to these principles of logical thinking and what makes something science or truth or fact eg Kuhn?
 
SNT Gatchaman said:
Merged thread

ABC News: Queensland's Chief Health Officer says it's time to stop using the term 'long COVID'

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-03...d-chief-health-officer-john-gerrard/103587836

(Does not mention "ME/CFS")
Click to expand...

The ABC's Norman Swan commented on this issue yesterday:

Why it might be too early to stop saying long-COVID

(I haven't got the cognitive capacity to listen to it, however some people have said that it's not nearly as ignorant and offensive as Swan's usual contributions on Long Covid and ME/CFS issues)
 
Last edited:
A balanced report. Norman Swan is a bit dubious about the Qld survey for reasons he explains.

He is open to ME/CFS being similar to long 'covvid' and hopes that covid research will help but he also says that the big difference is that the number of organs affected is greater in long covid, so they are not the same.

He casts doubt on ME being legitimate if it can't be linked to a viral infection.

It's heartening that he seems to have changed his tune. (Maybe he had already and I didn't know.)
 
A sympathetic article about severe ME and the lack of support and research funding in Australia:

Parents of son with myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome want more research into disease

It has been four years since 35-year-old former builder Dan Harris has been able to get out of bed.

He lies for 24 hours a day in the dark, in silence, wearing an eye mask and earplugs.

Any variation to this is a strain on his body, incredibly fatiguing and painful.

Dan has the neurological disorder myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS).

The disease affects many parts of the body — from the brain and muscles to the cardiac, nervous and digestive systems.

About 250,000 Australians have the disorder.

Most are women, and 25 per cent end up housebound or bed-bound.

Dan can no longer speak.

His mother Lynne, who is his primary carer, cannot touch or hug her son to comfort him — it's too much sensory information for his brain to process.

In the 1,400 days Dan has been confined to his bed, his parents Lynne and Michael Harris have watched their son lose his will to live.
Click to expand...

His mother is apparently a tenacious advocate. She managed to get a story published a year ago when bushfires hit their farm and they were unable to move their son due to his severity.
 
Last edited:
Daniel has Long COVID. It has cost him more than $100,000
Australia's struggling Long COVID community say the government’s financial support is inadequate.

Over the past year, Daniel* has calculated he has racked up more than $100,000 in bills from hospital visits, medical tests, specialist appointments and medication — all because of Long COVID

The 25-year-old takes up to 20 tablets a day, regularly feels fatigued, struggles with cognition and focus, and often experiences chest pain and fluctuating blood pressure.
Click to expand...
 
SNT Gatchaman said:
I wish it had been just regional to Australia, but it got picked up round the world.
Click to expand...
The people who promote antivaccination and insist that Long Covid = Long Vaxx especially love it. That's the kind of company our biopsychosocial overlords love to keep around, doesn't seem to bother them one bit that people who are always wrong about everything love their ideas.

They also seem entirely clueless that they are essentially handing out stockpiles of nuclear weapons to the antivaccine movement. Even as they are "baffled" by how strong antivaccine sentiment is growing. Especially now that all other measures to control respiratory diseases have been made politically and socially unacceptable.

With experts like this...
 
It's a very good article but there are some errors. It falls into the 'research proves a whole range of biological abnormalities' trap.
Advancing research confirms the presence of diverse biological abnormalities spanning various body systems, including neurological, immunological, gastrointestinal, metabolic, mitochondrial as well as cardiovascular and cardiopulmonary.
Click to expand...

Both the US Centers of Disease Control (CDC) and the UK National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) have adapted their guidelines to reflect evolving understanding, notably by removing GET in 2017 and 2021, respectively. Similarly, New Zealand revised their guidelines in 2023, highlighting three treatments to avoid: CBT, GET, and the contentious Lightning Process.
Click to expand...
Also, very sadly, New Zealand has not revised our guidelines. The link there is to paper by ANZMES.

Good to see Andrew Lloyd's conflicts of interests set out.
 
Last edited:
Emerge Australia hosted an event at Parliament House in Canberra today. There were a wide range of speakers (including little old me). Details of the event: https://www.emerge.org.au/sick-and-tired-casting-a-long-shadow-long-covid-inquiry-2023/

Unfortunately, due to technical difficulties outside Emerge’s control (to do with this being a sitting parliamentary week), there was only audio available for those not in the room. But two presentations were pre-recorded, and for these there is video available.

My presentation:
Click to expand...


David Putrino’s presentation:
Click to expand...


I highly recommend David’s presentation. He goes hard on GET and behavioural approaches in no uncertain terms.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Simone said:
Emerge Australia hosted an event at Parliament House in Canberra today. There were a wide range of speakers (including little old me). Details of the event: https://www.emerge.org.au/sick-and-tired-casting-a-long-shadow-long-covid-inquiry-2023/

Unfortunately, due to technical difficulties outside Emerge’s control (to do with this being a sitting parliamentary week), there was only audio available for those not in the room. But two presentations were pre-recorded, and for these there is video available.

My presentation:

David Putrino’s presentation:

I highly recommend David’s presentation. He goes hard on GET and behavioural approaches in no uncertain terms.
Click to expand...

Also goes after the effort preference bullshit propagated by Wallitt.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom