- Millions of people are disabled with long covid (a horrific illness)
- This is going to be VERY expensive
- There are big financial incentives to downplay the severity & prevalence
- Concerted efforts similar to the climate denial playbook
fast.ai/2021/10/12/med… 1/
It is critical for physicians, scientists, & public health officials to realize they are not dealing with an orthodox scientific debate, but a well-funded sophisticated denialist campaign based on ideological & corporate interests -- @GYamey @gorskon
blogs.bmj.com/bmj/2021/09/13… 2/
Many of the lessons from climate denialism debates apply to covid as well 3/
There has been misleading & irresponsible coverage of Long Covid in outlets like the New Yorker. Read some responses here @itsbodypolitic 4/
wearebodypolitic.com/bodytype/2021/…
There is not some clean break from the past where medicine stopped involving biases: racial, gender, anti-fat, ableist 5/
Medical data is not objective truth. It can be missing, biased, or incorrect 6/
“While being misdiagnosed with the wrong *physical* disease doubled the time it took to get to the right diagnosis, getting a *psychological* misdiagnosis extended it even more – by 2.5 up to 14 times, depending on the disease.” 7/
bbc.com/future/article…
Multiple sclerosis “was called hysterical paralysis right up to the day they invented a CAT scan machine” and white spots of demyelination could be viewed on the brain 8/
theguardian.com/books/2020/sep…
Activists of ACT UP forced the government & pharmaceutical companies to stop neglecting the AIDS crisis through a two pronged approach: creative and confrontational acts of protest, and informed scientific proposals 9/
npr.org/sections/healt…
Science does not just progress inevitably, independent of funding and politics and framing and biases 10/
It is a pivotal time for how societies will address the many disabled w/ long covid. I hope we will center patient partnerships in research for complex & multi-system diseases, and strengthen inadequate disability support to improve life for all disabled people. 11/
Medicine is inherently political. 12/
fast.ai/2021/10/12/med…
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