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

strategist said:
Garner's behaviour explains so much about Cochrane, doesn't it? The anti-pharma and the pro-lifestyle changes bias.

In the end it all seems to come down to difficulty adjusting to the reality of having a mortal, vulnerable body and the existence of terrible uncontrollable diseases.

I can understand if someone needs positive thinking beliefs to manage their fears. There's just a problem when there is also claims that it's an actual treatment.
Click to expand...
I think this is a big factor in the deeply rooted denial of the realities of ME, et al, by both the medical profession and everybody else.

IIRC, there was a puff piece on Wessely many years back where he discussed why he went into psychiatry, and clearly part of it was that he was uncomfortable with the physical body. Not that I am accusing him of projection. :whistle:
Snowdrop said:
Yes, so many people who were ill long before any forum or information on the internet had positive beliefs that they would get better and tried ever so many things.

Even now when people get ill there has been so much positive press for exercise (and has done for decades) that I expect there's barely anyone (Until covid and twitter) that did not have the idea that exercise would be good for getting back to normal.
Click to expand...
I got sick in 1984 and did not get diagnosed for over four years. I had never heard of ME before being diagnosed, and I couldn't possibly have heard of CFS because the term didn't exist for the first three years I was sick.

This was also all well before the internet existed. So I couldn't possibly have being influenced by that.
FMMM1 said:
EDIT - just occurred to me that the NICE Committee, which produced the new guideline, dismissed some interventions on the grounds that they didn't represent value for money - so Paul Garner's claims fail the test of being cost effective - even if you accept that they work for some people. I haven't seen any credible evidence that they do work.
Click to expand...
To be cost effective a therapy has to be clinically effective first.
 
Last edited:
Sean said:
To be cost effective a therapy has to be clinically effective first.
Click to expand...
I agree and I'm not aware of any objective evidence that these interventions work - if fact the objective evidence indicates that they don't work e.g. the PACE trial participants didn't return to their previous healthy lives --- return school, hours worked* ---
EDIT - I think there's still merit in the cost argument. E.g. if you look at the PACE trial: number of participants receiving the intervention, number who (objectively) significantly improved (0 is my assumption) then you can estimate a cost per patient per year. There's a cap that NICE apply so if an intervention can be shown to cost more than that, then it's not supported on the basis of cost alone. So if the Paul Garners turn up with claims, that these interventions work, then they can be dismissed on the basis that the available evidence indicates that the cost/benefit exceeds threshold.
Others have written about this on Science 4 ME - more coherently than I have.

*
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1359105317703785
 
Last edited:
Even now, I feel what I call ME-ish. Part of that feeling is that I need to go for a long walk to get my body going again, some fresh air and stretching. Bitter experience tells me it wouldn't work. Listening to what our bodies need only works if they are not damaged.
 
Is there enough material for a docu mini series on Netflix?

Who are the stars? Paul, only Paul.

The documentary attempts to strip away the traditional negativity and stigma attached to long-Covid. It gets a real-life professor of Tropical Medicine to open up about post-infectious issues he faced and how he overcame it from using his mind.
 
'Brave' 'courageous doctor'? fights on through Covid experience with 112 articles, interviews and appearances all over the world- including a nice diving trip abroad- and that's only counting up until January 2021!!!

How does he fit in his day job?
Has he got a day job?

Quotes.....

'Weird as hell’: the Covid-19 patients who have symptoms for months
Professor can't shake Covid-19 symptoms months after diagnosis
'Like being hit with a cricket bat’: A doctor’s battle with long COVID
Coronavirus patients with even mild cases of COVID-19 are taking months to recover and suffering extreme fatigue
COVID-19 sufferer Paul Garner told her about his symptoms. "Suddenly, it crept up on me: very severe exhaustion," he said. "I found I could barely stand, I had this episode where I went to bed with a tremendous headache and tremendous palpitations and my heart was beating rapidly – still no temperature..."It's so frightening in the way that it comes at you and how it vanishes for a little bit – 'I'm OK at the moment' – and then comes back again. It's really frightening."

https://www.evidence4health.org/new...r-discusses-his-experience-of-having-covid-19

beware it is a very long list!
Paul’s core blogs


Interviews and articles related to Paul’s Covid-19 experience


Video
 
He might be one of those 'patient activists' I keep hearing about - possibly the most prolific in history.

Which is pretty good going given it's entirely down to the strength of his brain.

The very same brain that decided his behaviour is professional, appropriate and will benefit patients, as opposed to just him.

Pity about the message he has chosen to promote, and its potential effect on virtually everyone else's health/welfare on the planet.

But...well deserving of a rotten banana.

Several billion tonnes of them in fact.
 
Also, how does he manage to claim that the Spanish influenza "was probably coronavirus"?

Please, can his colleagues discourage him from talking to the media. He is not helping himself and he is certainly not helping humanity.

(It was alphainfluenzavirus H1N1. It started in the US, not Spain.)
 
Jonathan Edwards said:
The more I see of Garner's antics the more I feel moved to contact him and point out what a complete fool he is making if himself, along with Flottorp.
If I did Twitter I would have tweeted by now. But I am glad I don't.
Click to expand...

He doesn't receive many(any?) 'likes' for his tweets from people in his field. Perhaps some are contacting him privately. His 'likes' are mostly from accounts with things dramatic, whimsical and musical.
 
SNT Gatchaman said:
Also, how does he manage to claim that the Spanish influenza "was probably coronavirus"?

Please, can his colleagues discourage him from talking to the media. He is not helping himself and he is certainly not helping humanity.

(It was alphainfluenzavirus H1N1. It started in the US, not Spain.)
Click to expand...

For a professor of infectious diseases, that's a pretty basic mistake i.e. "Spanish" flue was a coronavirus!
 
FMMM1 said:
SNT Gatchaman said:
Also, how does he manage to claim that the Spanish influenza "was probably coronavirus"?

Please, can his colleagues discourage him from talking to the media. He is not helping himself and he is certainly not helping humanity.

(It was alphainfluenzavirus H1N1. It started in the US, not Spain.)
Click to expand...
For a professor of infectious diseases, that's a pretty basic mistake i.e. "Spanish" flue was a coronavirus!
Click to expand...
Given how gross a mistake that is for someone so apparently qualified to know better, I begin to wonder if it really was a mistake on his part, or a deliberate attempt to mislead those who would not know better, but would instead blindly accept the word of someone with his qualifications?
 
Barry said:
Given how gross a mistake that is for someone so apparently qualified to know better, I begin to wonder if it really was a mistake on his part, or a deliberate attempt to mislead those who would not know better, but would instead blindly accept the word of someone with his qualifications?
Click to expand...
Yea it seems slightly weird.
From memory the virus which caused "Spanish" flue has been characterised/sequenced - it was isolated from frozen bodies in the (North American) Arctic.
 
But surely an infectious disease specialist cannot be expected to know anything about one of the most well known infectious diseases outbreaks, that killed tens of millions, in recent history?

That surely isn't something he should be expected to know?

It's not as if he was a historian.

Just coz everyone else knows it.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom