Trial By Error

Tag: Long Covid

  • An Upcoming “Biopsychosocial” Long Covid Conference in Finland

    What is it with the health care establishments in northern Europe? Why are they so devoted to non-evidence-based approaches to treating serious medical conditions? Why do they trust arguably fraudulent research, like the PACE trial and Professor Esther Crawley’s pediatric Lightning Process study? Why are the authors of these studies respected and even esteemed among…

  • Correctives from Putrino & Iwasaki (and Others) to the Long-Covid-Is-Psychosomatic Claims

    When the pandemic began, everyone involved in the ME, CFS, and ME/CFS domain assumed that there would be a wave of post-acute, prolonged complications, since every virus seems to leave in its wake a small but still significant number of people who report a range of non-specific symptoms. It was also widely predicted that many…

  • A Stupid Study of Exercise for Long Covid Patients With Post-Exertional Symptom Exacerbation

    The Journal of Medical Virology has just published a study called “Effect of using a structured pacing protocol on post-exertional symptom exacerbation and health status in a longitudinal cohort with the post-COVID-19 syndrome.” The investigators are from the University of Leeds and the Leeds Community Healthcare NHS Trust. Post-COVID-19 syndrome (PCS) is the name the…

  • Is the Long Covid Phenomenon an Expression of “Psychosocial Distress”?

    For the second time in a few weeks, a major US news organization has provided Professor Michael Sharpe, lead PACE investigator and one-time Virology Blog commenter, with a high-profile platform to disseminate his typical blather and nonsense. Both articles—the first in New York Magazine, the second in The New Republic–-have presented the long Covid phenomenon…

  • The Long COVID Survival Guide and the Role of Patients in Research

    “The Long COVID Survival Guide: How to Take Care of Yourself and What Comes Next—Stories and Advice from Twenty Long-Haulers and Experts” is pretty much what it sounds like. The anthology was published earlier this month, and each chapter is written by one or more contributors. The topics covered address long Covid through a variety…

  • Journalist Ryan Prior Discusses His Upcoming Book on Long Covid, The Long Haul

    CNN journalist Ryan Prior is the author of an upcoming book on long Covid called The Long Haul: Solving the Puzzle of the Pandemic’s Long Haulers and How They Are Changing Healthcare Forever. Ryan, who is 32, has struggled with ME/CFS for half of his life—he first got sick in October, 2006, just before his…

  • A Few Things of Interest I Read This Week

    Miriam Tucker on Long Covid in WebMd The always reliable Miriam Tucker, who has frequently covered ME/CFS for Medscape and other publications, has just written a piece for WebMD called “Long COVID Mimics Other Post-Viral Conditions.” The article covers some of the similarities in symptoms between long Covid and ME/CFS and highlights advocacy efforts to…

  • An Interview With Mt Sinai’s David Putrino About Long Covid, ME/CFS, and Related Issues

    David Putrino is a neuroscientist and physical therapist at Mt. Sinai Hospital in New York. He runs a research lab and a rehabilitation center that quickly became a magnet for patients grappling with what has come to be known as long Covid–what the US National Institutes of Health calls post-acute sequelae of SARS-CoV-2 (PASC). We…

  • Now a Scottish Long Covid Study Fails to Mention the Risk of Post-Exertional Malaise

    *April is crowdfunding month at UC Berkeley. If you like my work, consider making a tax-deductible donation to Berkeley’s School of Public Health to support the Trial By Error project: https://crowdfund.berkeley.edu/project/31347 And here’s another major trial designed by investigators who think that an exercise program might be the optimal strategy for treating the complex grab-bag of…

  • More on the REGAIN Trial for Long Covid Patients

    *April is crowdfunding month at UC Berkeley. If you like my work, consider making a tax-deductible donation to Berkeley’s School of Public Health to support the Trial By Error project: https://crowdfund.berkeley.edu/project/31347 I wrote recently about the problematic REGAIN study from the University of Warwick, which is testing an exercise-and-psychological-rehab program as a treatment for long…

  • The Usual Suspects Promote a Psychosocial “Research Agenda” for Long Covid

    In what could be described as a form of epistemic land grab, core members of the graded exercise therapy/cognitive behavior therapy (GET/CBT) ideological brigades have proposed a “research agenda” for long Covid that reflects the premises of their crumbling treatment paradigm for ME/CFS. This is not surprising. It has been clear from the early reports…

  • Does “Long Covid” Need Rebranding As “Ongoing Covid-19 Recovery”?

    Now here’s a paper called “The Effects of Messaging on Expectations and Understanding of Long COVID: An Online Randomised Trial,” from researchers at the UK’s Health Security Agency. Two of the nine authors, including the senior author who conceived the study, are also affiliated with a National Institute for Health Research unit that partners with…