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

Utsikt said:
The section from «over time..» until reference 12 was added by an anonymous user with an IP address that’s located in Manger outside Bergen, Norway. (If you edit anonymously, you’re IP is published. You get a prompt about it when you start editing, so this is public info).
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Ok so probably his friends in Norway. I would do some sleuthing but it's been a while since I did any Wikipedia stuff. Can you see the other edits from this user?
 
The page for Garner was created by Manu Mathew, which describes himself like this on his profile:
Hi!

I'm Manu Mathew. I'm a medical-doctor and a Public Health Specialist working in the Infectious diseases/ Tuberculosis domain.

I'm interested in topics in relation to Science in Medicine (Clinical research methods, Evidence Informed Health care, Bio-statistics, Medical Education, Evidence informed Health Policy and Health Services).
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Manum56User:Manum56 - Wikipedia

It might not be the same person, but a Manu Mathew has been involved in Cochrane, e.g. here (page 6):
https://community.cochrane.org/sites/default/files/uploads/inline-files/UPDATED OA Pack.pdfhttps://community.cochrane.org/sites/default/files/uploads/inline-files/UPDATED OA Pack.pdf
 
Mij said:
He's back!

I believe NICE ME/CFS guidance harms patients with misinformation. Here is one: keeping people with ME/CFS in the dark, implying the condition is permanent, and disallowing brain retraining and cognitive approaches other than helping people cope.

https://twitter.com/user/status/1928085273621004491
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Can’t believe he tagged @nice I feel embarrassed for him
 
Maybe I don't know enough about Wakefield and I'm wrong, but Garner and his gang seem far more extreme to me. The difference being that although most patients think he's a jackass, most physicians agree with him. Wakefield had the explicit support of the Lancet, and the personal support of its editor-in-chief for 12 years, but most physicians were definitely not on their side, were on the right side of the controversy.

Meanwhile Garner's BS is literally the current standard, cruelly enforced with no restraint. He's only saying the same things that most physicians think, but in a more extreme way. And he does that precisely because they are platformed and supported, with the backing of most professional associations and regulatory bodies. It's not as if this level of extremism is anything new, Wessely achieved getting us compared to terrorists in the public eye, and he wasn't alone in that either.

I'm pretty sure Wakefield and whoever supported him would have been just as extreme if they had that vote of confidence, but they did not, and here this rotten ideology absolutely does.

And although the antivaccine movement has and will continue to kill and maim a lot of people, there probably aren't many suicides of despair, which appears to be the main cause of death for people with ME/CFS. Even if the death and injury count is lower, there is something far more morally bankrupt in causing so much misery and suffering that so many people kill themselves, knowing that help isn't not just on the way, but is intentionally being held back. It's like a prison guard who takes special attention to a detainee, assuring them that they will make their life hell.

For this, I find the psychobehavioral quacks to be far more disturbingly immoral. All made so much worse that it gets enthusiastic thumbs up from the medical profession. On that there is absolutely great public interest, but the difference is that this is accepted social murder. In the end this is all that matters. This here is every bit as immoral as the antivaccine movement, but one has almost unanimous professional benediction, and as a consequence high public support, while the other has very low professional support, but growing public approval.

Public approval that will only keep growing because the medical profession keeps blundering, including by pushing extremist nonsense like this. Because if institutions are willing to be this dishonorable in pushing for harmful pseudoscience, then what other extremist shady stuff do they do? It could be all there is, but that's not very convincing. Certainly not for people looking for conspiracies.

And this extremism will not fall back down. A latest, and especially disgusting, messaging has been explicitly that all those suicides of despair they are explicitly responsible for are actually our fault, for depriving them of hope. Peak banality of evil. Hard to see any difference at all with some recent far-right messaging about NPCs (non-playable characters, an explicitly dehumanizing framing that casts some people as openly disposable, whose lives don't matter, being nothing more than background in the lives of people who suffer from main character fallacy).
 
Can anyone remember whether Paul Garner reported improving as a result of any specific formal treatment?

My impression was that he did not and that all he needed to get better was to realise he could get better. So presumably things like the Lightning Process are not necessary for getting better like him. So why is he recommending these quack programmes?
 
Jonathan Edwards said:
Can anyone remember whether Paul Garner reported improving as a result of any specific formal treatment?

My impression was that he did not and that all he needed to get better was to realise he could get better. So presumably things like the Lightning Process are not necessary for getting better like him. So why is he recommending these quack programmes?
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I found this post

Hutan said:
Translation also works for me. It's a 2021 document. Here's a key bit:

  • "Prof. Garner fell ill in mid-March, and has been featured in at least 85 articles and TV interviews since then.
  • On October 5th he writes in a private email that he walks 5 km per day (new revelation)
  • On October 15th, he writes in a new private email that he has also started cycling (new revelation)
  • On October 30th, he tells the WHO press conference that he has been sick for 7 months.
  • On November 1, Dagbladet shares a video of Garner from the WHO, where his last words about Long Covid are: “it isn't in your head.”
  • On November 25th he is on a diving trip in Grenada , shares photos on FB and writes, among other things, “I needed the rest to be honest.” (new revelation)
  • On January 25th, a blog post is published in the BMJ where he claims to have thought himself cured of Long Covid and supposedly ME/CFS.

    He also states that he contracted Dengue fever on the trip – a couple of months after he recovered. Which may indicate a very long vacation, as he considered himself sick on October 30 (cf. WHO), and was in Grenada 3 weeks later. So perhaps the vacation also contributed to his getting back on his feet? Together with the pacing at first? Because why else would he need more rest, if he was already healthy?"

The time line is consistent with a natural recovery from a post-viral fatigue syndrome (which is definitely not to say that this wasn't also ME/CFS). PG's statements throughout that time are also consistent with that, with fluctuations in health but a trend of increasing activity. There is no need to invoke the magic of mind over matter - lots of people recover in the first year of a post-viral fatigue syndrome.
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Jonathan Edwards said:
Can anyone remember whether Paul Garner reported improving as a result of any specific formal treatment?

My impression was that he did not and that all he needed to get better was to realise he could get better. So presumably things like the Lightning Process are not necessary for getting better like him. So why is he recommending these quack programmes?
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He had a phone talk with Landmark where she talked to him while he rode a bike. I’m not sure if he ever completed an LP course.

I can’t find the source for the bike ride, but here is a good summary of his BMJ posts:
https://valerieeliotsmith.com/2021/...arming-flip-flop-on-recovery-from-long-covid/Professor Garner, The BMJ and me: an alarming flip-flop on recovery from long Covid | valerieeliotsmith
 
Chestnut tree said:
I found this post
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Thanks.

There was also I think a story about having a telephone conversation with a psychiatrist in the USA who put him on to somebody in Norway or something like that but I am not sure at what point.

Edit: and thanks Utsikt. I wasn't aware that we knew it was landmark but presumably a telephone call is not an expensive three day formal brainwashing session. So it isn't needed. All you need is to know what she said in the phone call.
 
OK, thanks, that seems clear.
So there is no need to get involved in mind body or brain re-training programmes. You just need to wake up to the fact that you have been bicycling, running and scuba diving for months and may not be quite as ill as you were saying to yourself, friends and social media.
 
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