Paul Garner on Long Covid and ME/CFS - BMJ articles and other media.

Honestly we are one layer removed here from blaming aliens or lizard people. Dozens of anecdotes exist. Dozens! Out of thousands, but if you don't count that it sounds more impressive. So why is it not showing in the evidence? Has to be: witches, aliens, Illuminati, maybe all of them. It's a giant conspiracy!

Then again, the widely accepted belief in the medical profession is that there exist very disabling "disorders" for which fully effective cures exist and millions of people just choose not to because, uh, reasons, so it's not as if sanity or reason are much of a concern here.

 

The medical profession is obsessed with blaming TikTok and other nonsense for problems caused by COVID even though, you know, ye olde germ theory of disease.

So I don't think that's happening. We can't reason people out of a position they did not reason themselves into. This is the exact same problem as any other conspiracy fantasy community. They decided their truth, and make whatever facts fit as they need them to, even if many of those facts are mutually contradictory.

 

Ignoring him is the best policy.
The second best would be poking fun at what he claims, ideally with a meme generator.
Does he have a MEPedia entry? A regularly updated list of his, erm, “expert opinions” would be good. Typically these things do become more outrageous and unbelievable.

 

I wish we could have a fact-check team that would confront his untruths.

 

How about a meme. It works if you are familiar with the Beckham documentary where Victoria tries to say she was ordinary working class, but then admits her dad drove her to private school in a Mercedes or something.

 

@MrMagoo wrote: .... "he’s really only playing to the court of public opinion. Could be something for Social Media activists to take up."

Paul Garner closes his twitter/X posts to comment, or only allows comments by those he chooses/has not blocked. So he actively obstructs public disagreement with his frequently inaccurate tweets.

.

 

No matter, all you need is a meme to go viral. He doesn’t need to see it/have it on his account. It just gives the non-Paul believers a chuckle and let’s people know he’s not all that.

 

My meme game is poor

 

Nice meme! I think it was a Rolls Royce

 

This steps way beyond the bounds of what I feel is appropriate for someone with his qualifications vs what his bio infers and doesn’t declare conflicts of interest

it seems like it’s a lightening process sales talk from someone whose only connection to the illness itself is at best being friends with those making money from it or with certain beliefs. Either that or it would just be propaganda for his views on severe me and those with it? Either way the ‘hope’ bit is a word for a marketing promise? I say this as it’s not far off the content of the Phil parker dark cloud slides he released just after the guidelines ‘chose not to recommend LP’.

He’s a man who has never experienced me/cfs, certainly not severe me/cfs and has no expertise as a clinician or researcher in the condition. And not one who is taking on responsibility for being careful what he recommends is done so with clear informed consent info re it not causing harm or being clear on risk or what they don’t measure which I thought would be /should be required as part of their professional membership/regustration. He’s pushing it as if it’s a crusade. To bring back the old ideas etc

if it was a tv programme it would have to come with a product placement thing wouldn’t it?

I can’t remember where things got left on eg drug or medical devices sales and the regs on those (and remember a number of years ago things got changed to stop kickbacks etc of some kind) but given the model of lightening process when people become trainer etc I’m curious how it /those types of things fits into to where those are at.

I wonder does the recovery Norway set-up in part ‘skirt’ the obviousness of this by claiming it was ‘just’ about ‘celebrating recovery’ when actually is it mostly only those saying they ‘recovered by’ these certain programmes? And is it set up by those involved in or pushing said programmes?

 

It would be useful if LinkedIn shows the ‘direct connections/conflicts of interest’ because it does have a feature of something like ‘people linked to this person’ on certain pages.

I don’t know whether eg if someone does a post about x company’s product that would go as far as showing how many of their ‘contacts’ work at that company tho?

 

I suspect that there are worse snake oil sellers on Insta and TikTok making much more outlandish and unfounded claims.
I notice a reference to helping “some” people on his little slide, that “some” is doing heavy lifting.

 

I believe the term is “destroying his own legacy”

 

JUst because I have the MEAction 2019 survey report to hand: Your experience of me services

and spotted this (page 5):

"79.2% respondents had been given advice on how to manage activity levels whilst at their clinic.

● The most common advice that respondents had been given was to find a sustainable level of daily activities and increase activities week by week (52.6%). Only 10% of respondents who had received advice said this would have been helpful with hindsight.

● A third (33.7%) had been told to adapt/decrease their activities to a sustainable level, with hindsight 62.9% said this advice would have been useful.

● Just 2.8% had been told to rest, however 26.7% of those given advice thought this would have been most helpful in hindsight.

● 10.8% of respondents had been told that exercise would help them recover and they should immediately start on a programme of increasing exercise. In hindsight, only 0.4% of respondents said this would have been helpful. "