Tag: Long Covid
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Interview with Betsy Ladyzhets and Miles Griffis, Founders/Editors of The Sick Times
In November, 2023, journalists Betsy Ladyzhets and Miles Griffis launched The Sick Times, a publication devoted to, per its tagline, “chronicling the Long Covid crisis.” Both of them had been covering the pandemic, and Griffis had written of his own Long Covid experience. The Sick Times has gained both readers and funders over the last…
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Video of October Talk in Ireland on How “Biopsychosocial” Research on ME, Long Covid, and Related Illnesses Harms Patients
In October, I spent 10 days traveling around Ireland and giving a talk called “Bad Science, Bad Medicine: How Flawed Biopsychosocial Studies on ME, Long Covid, etc Harm Patients.” (I wrote about the trip here.) I came as a guest of the Irish ME/CFS Association, which had previously arranged similar tours with two physicians who…
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Some Things I’ve Read Recently–Long Covid and Fertility Issues, Psychotherapy Ethics, How to Fake Your Results
It’s been a slow period. Here are a few things I’ve read recently… “The pandemic’s untold fertility story” While Long Covid disproportionately affects women, its impact on their reproductive lives has not received the attention the issue deserves. Recently, Australia’s ABC News addressed the issue with a moving piece called “The pandemic’s untold fertility story,”…
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Letter to BMJ Editor Seeking Correction in New Review of Interventions for Long Covid
The BMJ recently published a review of interventions for Long Covid that–surprise!–recommended CBT and a rehabilitation program as treatments. The review is full of holes. I have focused on one in particular. The review relies for its rehabilitation recommendation on an earlier BMJ study–even though that study has itself already been corrected for having misrepresented…
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Yet Again BMJ Recommends CBT and Exercise for Long Covid
What is going on at The BMJ? In May, the journal corrected an obvious error in a paper about a prominent Long Covid mental and physical rehabilitation trial called REGAIN. The trial was conducted among patients who had been hospitalized for Covid-19, but key sections of the paper generalized the findings to all Long Covid…
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Canadian Group Seeks Feedback on Recommendations for Exercise and CBT for Long Covid
A group called Canadian Guidelines for Post COVID-19 Condition (CAN-PCC) has released a new set of draft recommendations related to preventing, diagnosing and treating what is commonly called Long Covid. The current list of nine draft recommendations includes exercise and cognitive behavior therapy, which has understandably raised concerns among advocates for both Long Covid and…
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The BMJ Corrects REGAIN Study’s Expansive Claims; Results Only Applicable to Post-Hospitalized Long Covid Patients
In February, The BMJ published a study called Clinical effectiveness of an online supervised group physical and mental health rehabilitation programme for adults with post-covid-19 condition (REGAIN study): multicentre randomised controlled trial.” (Post-Covid-19 Condition, or PCC, is one of many current definitions for Long Covid.)The study, led by a team from the University of Warwick,…
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Some Things I Read This Week–Scathing “Effort Preference” Analysis; Kids with Long Covid; National Academies’ Long Covid Definition
An in-depth pushback on “effort preference” When the U.S. National Institutes of Health’s long-delayed “deep phenotyping” study of a handful of ME/CFS patients was released earlier this year, the focus on a weird construct called “effort preference” sucked up all the attention–in part because the paper placed it front and center, in part because no…
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BBC Takes on Lightning Process and Highlights Perspectives of the So-Called “Anti-Recovery Activists”
For years, I have criticized the research purporting to prove that the Lightning Process, a three-day mind-body workshop that has claimed to be effective in curing ME/CFS and a host of other chronic illnesses. The largest study of the LP, conducted by the methodologically and ethical challenged Esther Crawley, a professor and pediatrician at the…
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A Conversation with the Co-Founders of The Sick Times
Journalists Betsy Ladyzhets and Miles Griffis are the co-founders of The Sick Times, a non-profit that covers Long Covid and other chronic infection-related illnesses. They launched the site last November and have built up a solid following for their reporting, updates, and weekly newsletter. They recently received a $250,000 grant that will allow them to…
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Interview with Co-Organizator of Next Week’s Unite To Fight Long Covid Conference
Marco Wetzel, a digital sales expert, is one of five German Long Covid patients who banded together earlier this year with an ambitious plan to produce a major online conference called UniteToFight. Although they faced some initial skepticism, they quickly rounded up some high-profile names as speakers for the free event, including Pulitzer-Prize winning journalist…
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Guardian Columnist George Monbiot Discusses His Scathing Rebuke of the Biopsychosocial Brigades–Text Version
Last week, I spoke with George Monbiot, a British investigative reporter and political activist, who has been a columnist for The Guardian for almost 30 years. He and I have been in occasional communication in recent years over an issue of mutual interest—the scandalous mistreatment of patients suffering from the devastating illness (or cluster of illnesses) known as…