News from The Netherlands

don't know how new this is:

Research project

Topic: Persistent physical symptoms
Persistent somatic symptoms are long term symptoms that lack a clear medical explanation. These symptoms have a high prevalence where most people know someone who experiences such symptoms or they experience such symptoms themselves. Symptoms can vary greatly in and between people. While one person may experience fatigue, another may have chronic pain, headaches, an irritable bowel, or dizziness – the list is endless. Factors that may contribute to the onset and/or persistence of persistent somatic symptoms also vary greatly and generally cannot be attributed to one single factor. Because these symptoms cannot be attributed to an actual physical ailment, doctors often find it difficult to help patients experiencing these symptoms. This research line focuses on increasing the knowledge on factors that contribute to the onset or persistence of these symptoms, developing ways to recognize patients at risk of persistent problems, and improving treatment for this patient group.

Contact
Veronique de Gucht
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While umbrella terms such as medically unexplained (physical) symptoms, functional somatic symptoms and PSS are used interchangeably, symptoms may also be classified as syndromes which cluster around bodily symptoms (such as, fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue syndrome, or irritable bowel syndrome).
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https://www.universiteitleiden.nl/e...l-sciences/topic-persistent-physical-symptoms
 
I don't know any more

From: Dr. Marc-Alexander Fluks

Dutch Government recognizes FM

Letter to parliament: Recognize Fibromyalgia (Google translation),

https://www-rijksoverheid-nl.transl..._sl=nl&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=nl&_x_tr_pto=wapp

and also (Google translation),

https://www-rijksoverheid-nl.transl..._sl=nl&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=nl&_x_tr_pto=wapp

Both pages to link to a pdf page but tese do not work for Google
translation. De URLs in Dutch are,

https://www.rijksoverheid.nl/binari...debat-burgerinitiatief-erken-fibromyalgie.pdf

and,

https://www.rijksoverheid.nl/binari...raag-gezondheidsraad-betreft-fibromyalgie.pdf
 
According to this, there is a motion to call for more awareness and research in Long Covid and the health minister is against it, that enough has been done already.

The complete lack of any level of cooperation on this issue, every country for themselves, is absolutely bizarre. Scientific collaboration is usually the thing that crosses borders when nothing else does. During the cold war, the USSR, Europe and the US continued to have scientific collaborations, with things like the space station and ITER.

For a mass disabling medical event? Nope, not just every country but seemingly every municipality does their own thing, isolated from all other efforts. Zero institutional-level efforts, completely fragmented.

 
The motion to research Long Covid has been defeated, the Dutch legislature has decided they do not want their population to know anything about Long Covid, or the government to have any information that may lead them to have to do something about it. Meanwhile, apparently, diseases stop at borders and there is no need to know what's happening elsewhere, it cannot possibly be relevant to "cultural" issues.

This is the harm ideology and pseudoscience cause when mixed with authority and impunity. It even uses ignorance to justify its continued existence, as clear a sign of pseudoscientific thinking as it gets. The class action lawsuits will be enooooooooooormous.

@ministerVWS can breathe a sigh of relief. The motion for more investigation did not make it, so he can continue to say that we know too little about #LongCovid to take any action.
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This seems excessive even in the worst case. If true, this is incredible, and unsustainable.

FNV poll: 40% of healthcare workers who were infected during the first corona wave have now been fired. After 2 years at home with long covid, government aid comes too late for many caregivers, such as Mariska and Samira. Read their story in NRC:
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OK this is clarified in a response: it's 40% of healthcare professionals who developed Long Covid. So 40% of healthcare workers who got LC from the first wave have been fired.
 
rvallee said:
This seems excessive even in the worst case. If true, this is incredible, and unsustainable.




OK this is clarified in a response: it's 40% of healthcare professionals who developed Long Covid. So 40% of healthcare workers who got LC from the first wave have been fired.
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Not justifying this, but won’t most health worker contracts have a clause that if you have been on long term sick for specific amount of time, you can be fired. Certainly that is the situation here in the UK. I know when I got ill health retirement, if my pension had not been agreed, I would have been dismissed regardless because of the amount of sick leave I had had.

I guess this is ethically more complex with Long Covid as, for health care workers, Covid can be seen as an occupational disease.
 
Edit: moved from the Scandinavia thread, always confuse Netherlands and Denmark with which one is in Scandinavia...


It appears that the ministry of health in the Netherlands is promoting herd immunity. It's really weird seeing what's happening in Scandinavian countries and how medical authorities seem so gullible about pseudoscience, the absurd insistence to dismiss this as cultural, while also promoting the idea that science is cultural (Flottorp saying something like "I know the Norwegian context better", as if science or reality are different in Norway than the context that lead the IOM/NIH, CDC and NICE to finally admit the BPS model is flawed).
What is herd immunity and why is it important? What if the virus changes? What is the consequence of a zero-covid policy in China regarding herd immunity? How will group immunity help us against corona in the coming years?
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From that link in the tweet that @Tom Kindlon shared above (it's sounding good)
The assessment phase of the first ME/CFS funding round is underway. In September, the sounding board group and the program committee of the ME/CFS research program will meet to examine the quality and relevance of the applications received. This will later be followed by the assessment of the approved and rejected research proposals from this round. An exciting time for patients, applicants, and others involved. In this post you will be introduced to Jantine. She started this summer as a program manager in the ME/CFS research program. Together with program manager Sabine de Jong, she explains what happened in the program before the assessment phase.
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Jantine Kuiper – van Dijk joined the program on 1 July 2022 as program manager. She has a background in biomedical sciences and has experience in a similar position at a health fund. ...The ME/CFS research program suits her in several ways: 'My biomedical knowledge naturally ties in nicely with this programme, where biomedical research into ME/CFS is an important pillar. In addition, I am aware of the fact that there is a demand for putting the knowledge gained into practice and guaranteeing it in society. That also fits in with one of my principles: knowledge only comes to life if we do something with it.'
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After the applications (3 consortium applications and 22 applications for sub-projects) were received by ZonMw, a process began in which the quality and relevance of each application is examined in a number of steps. ZonMw supervises that process and does not assess itself. The program team not only monitors that the steps are followed correctly, but also looks at the way in which this is done. 'One of the things I pay attention to is that key stakeholders all have a role in the assessment process,' says Sabine. 'Scientists, patients and doctors are all looking at the applications in this first biomedical round of the program from their own point of view. A good assessment of the quality and relevance of applications requires all these different perspectives.'
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The scientific referees pay particular attention to the quality of the applications. The patient references look more at the relevance of projects and at the place of patient participation within an application. 'There is a lot of knowledge about ME/CFS in patients,' says Jantine. 'We therefore thought it important that they are involved in projects as partners. How this is arranged in the projects is therefore carefully studied in the assessment process.'
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Charles B. said:
I would typically imagine this would be relentlessly promoted by the usual suspects, but I’m unfamiliar with the prestige and influence of this research group. I wonder whether this will reverberate in the US for instance?
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It's Hans Knoop, so it will be heavily marketed.

I don't know how these people sleep at night lying so hard about everything they do:
The researchers emphasise that the fact that behavioural therapy can help does not mean that the cause of the symptoms is psychological. Furthermore, not everyone benefits from behavioural therapy.
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And yet they know perfectly that this is exactly how it's perceived and applied in the medical profession, entirely because of their work. Shysters, grifters, con artists the lot of them, and helped and enabled by broken institutions that clearly have stopped caring about anything a long time ago. It's all career and personal ambition.
 
Charles B. said:
I would typically imagine this would be relentlessly promoted by the usual suspects, but I’m unfamiliar with the prestige and influence of this research group. I wonder whether this will reverberate in the US for instance?
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Hans Knoop is part of the BPS incrowd. As is Judith Rosmalen btw. The NKCV which hosted Bleijenberg, v.d. Meer and other acolytes of that incrowd moved to Amsterdam some years back. It seems Hans Knoop is one of the people taking up the mantle of screwing people over.
 
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