The pandemic of Long COVID psychobabble continues. This week saw yet another terrible study claiming that long-haul COVID is just an illusion of human cognition, an illness-like experience rooted in psychological processes. The widely reported “finding” was published in the medical journal JAMA Internal Medicine by a group of French […]
Health
BMJ chooses face-saving over fact-checking
So last week, our friends at the BMJ published yet another ‘news’ item in one of the esteemed journal’s very-much-not-peer-reviewed sections. It carried a rather dramatic headline: Covid-19: Boys are more at risk of myocarditis after vaccination than of hospital admission for covid In a world swirling with anti-vaccination conspiracy […]
NICEXIT: Royal Colleges look to “take back control” of treatment standards
The very fact they call themselves “Royal Colleges” should have been a sign. Simply put, some of these folks have a rather high opinion of themselves. There seems to be a widespread view within Britain’s “Royal Colleges” that they form a kind of medical aristocracy, a ruling class with feudal […]
The new NICE Guideline for ME/CFS: Ten Questions Answered
[UPDATED: 29 October 2021] 1. What’s going on? 2. How is the new guideline different to the old one? 3. Why is the new guideline being welcomed? 4. Why was the old guideline problematic? 5. How did NICE arrive at the new guideline? 6. Was NICE overly harsh in using […]
How illnesses become psychologised: Long COVID, ME, and the ‘All-In-Your-Head’ cartel
I was delighted to be part of this panel discussion on Gez Medinger‘s YouTube channel, RUN-DMC. As many readers will know, Gez is a London-based film producer and director who has been debilitated with severe Long COVID ever since contracting Covid early in the pandemic. His YouTube channel is now […]
Paradigm Lost: Lessons for Long COVID
David Tuller (University of California, Berkeley), Steven Lubet (Northwestern University), and I have written an opinion piece over at Health Affairs. It’s on the implications of recent developments in ME and chronic fatigue syndrome for the treatment of Long COVID. We argue that the paradigm shift signalled by the UK’s […]