Read the first part of this article: Exhaustion of the Exhausted – How Cruelly Employers and Insurers Add to the Long Covid Burden
The daily number of Covid-19 deaths may have stopped scaring most people, but the continuing threat of mass disability should cause more concern. It is caused by at least 10% of COVID infections A chronic disease that limits energy (ELCI) A estimate already 65 million* People suffering from Long covid all over the world.
In May 2023, the Office for National Statistics published figures that showed this 2.5 million people in the UK They were out of work due to a long-term illness—more than at any time since records began. The unprecedented rise, attributed to Long Covid, is mirrored in the United States, where the number could be as high as 4 million.
Comparable statistics are not available for South Africa, although it has been estimated 6.5 million South Africans Long Covid can be affected. In the context of such an emergency, we can be proud of the world-leading research being conducted at Stellenbosch University by Professor Recia Pretorius inside microclotting after virus In long covid and the like Endothelial dysfunction in ME. Her investigations show that chronic patients suffer from “Energy- and/or hypoxiaproblem at the level of cellular metabolism resulting in Horrible daily symptoms. Urgent pressure must be put on our government to stand up for patients’ rights and break a pattern Research funded by the insurance industry is used to deny disability for those who haveinvisible disease“.
Big lies and medical scandals
We have to go back more than five decades to understand how the corrupt scratch policies of a single gang of strongmen in the global medical industrial complex led to what one British MP called “One of the biggest medical scandals of the… century“.
in 1955Myalgic encephalomyelitis(ME) is the name he gave Dr. Melvin Ramsey On the identification of a polio-like syndrome demonstrated by 292 employees with crippling fatigue in London Royal Free Hospital. There were others disease outbreak Similar infections appear in the brain and spinal cord, such as those affecting 198 people in the United States Angels County General Hospital in 1934, and 488 in Iceland Circa 1948.
In 1969, ME was indisputably defined as a neurological disease by the World Health Organization. But in 1970, two young psychiatrists re-examined Ramsay’s case notes and decided – Simply because most of those affected were young nurses The most likely explanation isepidemic hysteriaThis would be almost hysterically funny, if it did not become the accepted medical view for the next 50 years.
McEvedy and Beard They arrived at their conclusion without interviewing any of the patients themselves, many of whom remain too ill to work decades later. they Blatant misogyny After that, send millions of patients to the drug trash.
Big lies like “cigarettes are not harmful” or “climate change is not real” serve a powerful financial purpose. In the age of Long Covid, vested interests have continued to promote the discredited theory that energy-limiting diseases such as ME (aka Chronic Fatigue Syndrome) are “It’s all in your head— despite his absurdity of innocence in the face overwhelming Scientific evidence.
Sir Simon Wesleyformer president of the Royal College of Psychiatrists and current non-executive director on the board of NHS England Make a career out of “psychology” Energy-limiting conditions after infection. renaming popularized Myalgic encephalomyelitis As an ambiguous American term Chronic fatigue syndrome In the 1980s, they reformulated it as a mental health issue.
the Social Psychology The BPS model favored by Wessely has been repeatedly applied to other co-morbidities Medically unexplained symptoms which is now understood to have an organic cause:
- Peptic ulcers were thought to be caused by stress until the bacteria were discovered Helicobacter pylori in 1983.
- in 2022, Gulf War disease— which Wesley described 20 years ago as a “syndrome” caused by “anxiety” — it has been shown to be due to exposure to sarin gasto which a quarter of veterans become susceptible due to the genetic variant.
- Also last year, the Epstein-Barr virus was discovered The cause of multiple sclerosis– which was called “hysterical paralysis” until the invention of computed tomography made demyelination of the brain visible.
But by the 1990s,Wesley SchoolThe field of ME/CFS in the UK was dominating. Their insistence on a psychological rather than a physiological origin of the disease was more appropriate for both governments and medical insurers seeking to avoid paying disability benefits. As a result, psychological-focused research continued to gain funding Good, while other applications that suggest studying neuroinflammation or metabolic and immune impairments have been Lower his voice.
Before the effects of the pandemic became apparent, the burden of ME disease in the United States was already high twice that of HIV/AIDS and more than half of all breast cancer cases, yet it only gets 7% of the NIH’s funding.
However, although authorities and medical insurance companies continue to insist that chronic, energy-limiting illnesses have a psychological origin, all over the world People infected with me are still not allowed to donate blood A huge red flag.
in Guide to the UK ParliamentProfessor Emeritus of Medicinal Chemistry, University of Sunderland Malcolm Hooper She categorically described ME as “an inflammatory autoimmune disorder progressing into a complex multisystem neurological, endocrine, and microvascular disease with cardiac involvement”. Notably, ME can have a relapsing-remitting or progressive pattern, like MS, but it is Five times more prevalent.
Professor Hooper testified that the global medical insurance giant Unum I reported in 1993 that ME/CFS ranked second on their list of five most expensive chronic diseases, three places above AIDS. The Child Friendly Spaces Management Plan stipulates the following:Unum stands to lose millions if we don’t act quickly to address this growing problem.”
In 2001, a research conference was held in Oxford titled Get sick and cheat the disease. Unum’s Vice-Chairman John LoCascio was present and several conference participants received insurance company funding, including Simon Wessely and the UK’s Department of Work and Pensions medical director. (DWP), Mansell Aylward. Aylward was accordingly Responsible for BPS form processing to Justifying the UK’s welfare reforms and abolition of disability benefits and disability living allowance, and the Cruel and cunning Evaluation of ability to work.
in 2003, Unum was fined $31.7 million in a class action lawsuit in California for the “Disability Denial Factories.” In 2005, Unum was accused of being a “lawless corporation…that for years operated illegally” by California Insurance Commissioner John Garamendi, when it was charged with more than 25 violations of state law and fined $8 million. By 2006, state insurance commissioners in 48 US states had approved a settlement that required Unum to reconsider 200,000 claims and pay another $15 million in penalties.
In 2004, after retiring from DWP, Mansel Aylward He was appointed Director of the £1.6 million Unum Provident Center for Psychosocial and Disability Research at Cardiff University (then knighted). In 2007, a Yale law professor disclosed a dossier Single / make a scandal of denying benefits in the US The British government was being advised by a reputable US insurer, BBC News reported “extortion”.
In 2008 exhibition in Watchman highlighted The work of Professor Jonathan Rutherford Revealing how Unum built its influence to undermine the UK’s state sickness benefit system to boost sales of private disability insurance. However, Unum was just one of 10 insurance companies cited by Professor Huber in 2007 Testimony before Parliament Explaining how the prominent psychiatrists and DWP officials who funded them as counselors displayed a “stark conflict of interest”.
The infamous PACE trial
The collusion reached its infamous climax PACE EXPERIENCE, a £5 million research project funded in part by the UK Department for Works and Pensions. Principal investigator Michael Sharpa member of the Wessely School, did not disclose to participants in the PACE experiment that he was a paid consultant to Unum.
Findings published in 2011 appear to prove the effectiveness of Graded Step Therapy (GET) and Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) in treating ME/CFS. But all over the world, thousands of people whose “light” feeling has become “severe” after GET, leaving them permanently frustrated in bed, have expressed, Internet rage.
in 2016, heroic efforts to Patient advocates And Citizen scientists To release the full data exposed Fatal defects In outcomes, such as healing parameters changed midway through the experiment.
More than 100 researchers and clinicians signed up An open letter to The Lancet Request an independent re-evaluation of the study. in debate In the House of Commons 2018, MP Carol Monaghan stated that “When the full details of the PACE experiment become known, it will be considered one of the biggest medical scandals of the 21st century“.
Almost total Media silence On such a scoop is perhaps more sinister. Professor Hooper et al They have suggested that, in the UK, it may have a lot to do with the fact that the Science Media Centera supposedly independent body tasked with informing the press of scientific research, was influenced by board member Sir Simon Wesley: “Editors of large newspapers maintained that the editorial policy would only allow them to publish material on ME/CFS that came from SMC.”
Journalists who challenge Wesley’s ideas in print tend to do so They lose their jobs.
Correcting injustice and wrongdoing
In 2021, after a tremendous effort by patient advocates and their allies, the British National Institute for Health and Care Excellence finally update their guidelines Blocking GET as harmful to the people I’m with. But after 50 years of neglect, there is still no effective medicine proven to mitigate their effects Stressful daily symptoms.
Psychotherapy such as cognitive-behavioral therapy remains the standard treatment offered to people diagnosed with ME throughout the world.
In South Africa, Insurance companies continue to require inappropriate psychiatric evaluations of people with Long Covid. Globally, the medical insurance industry continues its deliberate ploy of overburdening people with energy-limiting illnesses into giving up disability claims, generating millions in profits for shareholders.
Thanks to half a century of existence fee like “Dodgers and hackersPeople disabled by He must suffer from chronic disease that limits energy stigma In addition to “disastroussymptoms. These patients experience contempt and segregation similar to people living with HIV 40 years ago, but with a remote Poor quality of life from most chronic conditions.
On top of all that, insurance companies who cheat patients pay us when we’re down.
On 11 July, just as this article was about to be published, The Guardian published an article titled, “The researchers say the ME/CFS directive discouraging exercise is flawedIt can be said that A Blatant attempt by Wesley School Supporters of the BPS brigade to wage background protection actions to protect their reputation, their own interests and the bottom line of their insurance company overlords.
* This issue of 65 million It is based on a conservative estimate of one in 10 of all Covid-19 infections producing long-term complications after the virus. Recent studies published by the CDC and The Lancet have indicated a prevalence between one in five (19%) and one of two (45%). around Half of Long Covid patients meet the criteria for a diagnosis of ME. Please wear a mask in unventilated places.
This piece is indebted to Grant and spoons Margaret WilliamsAnd Mo StewartAnd Catherine Hill And Joe Hunt.
