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Alan Levinovitz Profile picture
@AlanLevinovitz
Jun 7 • 6 tweets • 3 min read • Read on X
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Would like to note that I made a thread QTing a study that someone said showed 91% of people recovered from PAIS. The study did NOT say that, and I tweeted a misinformed thread that leaned into that incorrect reading. I deleted the tweets, but I will leave this tweet up with the thread I posted so people can see the mistake I made, as well as the original tweet that I QTed.
I appreciate people calling my attention to the mistake. I don't want my tweets up, because they were false and misleading about that study, but I would like people to be able to see the mistake I made, which is in the unrolled thread that I QT above.
The person who originally posted the study was suggesting that many recovery stories — with unproven pharmacological interventions *or* unproven mind-body interventions — are really due to high natural remission rates of PAIS (and long Covid) within the first year.
Lastly: This is on ME. It is irresponsible to QT an interpretation of a study and agree with it — much less write a whole thread about it — without actually reading the study to see what it says!!
All of that said, I encourage people to read the original thread. It's not really about the study, which does not say what I thought I did.

It's about how people tend to emphasize high rates of natural remission when they are trying to explain away a recovery story that is due to an intervention they dislike or disbelieve in. But they tend to emphasize low rates of natural remission in other contexts.

Not an excuse for the mistake I made. Just an important point to make nevertheless.
In case it somehow gets deleted, here's screenshots too. Image
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More from @AlanLevinovitz

Alan Levinovitz Profile picture
Jun 6
In order to maintain consistency about beliefs re: long Covid and recovery, many things must be possible. Here, for example, is someone saying that 91% of people recover naturally from such conditions in a year. If true, why isn't that front and center in discussions of long Covid?
Instead, people are told that long Covid and other PAIS are long-term chronic conditions with no cure. For some % of people with LC, that's true, and we need to help those people with research!

But you will not see people saying "don't worry, 91% of people with long Covid recover naturally."

Except in one case. And that's when they are responding to the many, many accounts of recovery with "mind-body" treatments. In order to dismiss those treatments, they must cite recovery statistics that are very, very expansive (91%), so they can chalk the recoveries up to natural remission.
We need to know what's happening with long Covid. Is it true that 91% of people who have it naturally recover within a year? Then that is exactly what clinicians should be telling their long Covid patients. And that's what advocacy organizations should be saying.

And we should be trying to figure out how to distinguish that 91% from the 9% who don't recover, and often get severely ill and bedbound, suffering from horrific symptoms. And then we should research the causes and interventions most likely to help.

But it is impossible to do so if people also assert that long Covid is in *almost all cases* a debilitating, long-lasting chronic condition, and people who check out advocacy sites hear exactly that (which they do), and physicians tell them that, which is often the case.
Read 8 tweets
Alan Levinovitz Profile picture
Dec 16, 2024
Japanese people love soy.

Japanese people use lots of seed oils.

Japan consumes 1/3 the meat of Americans.

They live 10 YEARS LONGER THAN AMERICANS.

See how easy this is?
I'd love to sit down and have a health debate with you, @calleymeans. Bring @CaseyMeansMD too! I'd bring in a little history, you guys could bring in your theories, it would be great for everyone. Pick the podcast host.
If you want to do a neutral host, we could do Ethan Suplee or WeTheFifth. If you want someone sympathetic to you, Peter Attia or Huberman. I'm happy anywhere.
Read 4 tweets
Alan Levinovitz Profile picture
Dec 6, 2024
When people believe the promises of a powerful guru, they will ignore all evidence that challenges their beliefs.

Let me illustrate with the craziest guru story you'll ever hear.

Meet Hulda Clark, PhD. She promised her followers the cure to all diseases. Literally. Image
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"NEW RESEARCH FINDINGS show that all diseases have simple explanations and cures once their true cause is known."

Which diseases? All of them! Diabetes. High blood pressure. Seizures. On and on.

No one could possibly believe this, right?

Ha! This is just the start... Image
I found out about Hulda Clark when my dad called me, worried about my aunt.

"Alan," he said. "I know you study suspicious medical treatments. Well, Aunt E- is involved in something very suspicious. She's spending thousands on dollars on a treatment. A machine."

"A machine?" I asked.

"A zapper."

"A ZAPPER?!"

Now my dad is like me, prone to a bit of hyperbole. But he insisted that my aunt was paying money she couldn't afford for zapping treatments.

So I looked it up. He was right.
Read 10 tweets
Alan Levinovitz Profile picture
Nov 22, 2024
The description @ezraklein offers here of RFK Jr. is fundamentally incorrect.

His beliefs are not driven by the idea that corporations are poisoning our health to line their pockets.

If that were true, he wouldn't like nutritional supplements, which are produced by corporations that are lining their pockets with the profits!

No, RFK Jr.'s worldview driven by two factors:

Contrarian anti-establishment thinking, and reverence for what's "natural".Image
This is why RFK Jr. doesn't support nuclear energy, despite being an avowed environmentalist, and doesn't support lab-grown meat made by spunky independent start-ups, despite being an avowed animal rights activist.

And it IS why he supports cryptocurrency, somehow unconcerned about energy consumption or the possibility that crypto companies might be lining their pockets.

Crypto represents anti-establishment contrarianism, combined with a "natural" approach to currency (it is organic, bottom-up, by the people for the people, amiright?!).

So he likes it.
@ezraklein Let me give an analogy. This is like describing someone who is really into UFOs, cryptozoology, and also government cover-ups as someone whose worldview is driven by "the idea that the government often hides important information from citizens."
Read 5 tweets
Alan Levinovitz Profile picture
Nov 21, 2024
When I criticize charlatans in the health and medicine world (Oz, RFK Jr., anyone who writes a book about what They don't want you to know), I often hear this kind of response:

"What about the problems with Big Pharma and the money they're making?"

Which makes a lot of sense!

The problem is that the charlatans are generally uninterested in addressing the real problems with pharma $$$, and more interested in pushing their own simplistic nonsense as a solution.

Let's take vaccines. Any critic of pharmaceutical companies would understand that vaccines are not, in fact, a giant moneymaker for pharmaceutical companies. They're also good for public health!Image
Here's a much less exciting, but much more important problem where pharma is unscrupulously raking in $$$.

When a drug patent is going to expire, they will make superficial tweaks to the drug, to secure a continued monopoly on its production. Targeting this incredibly terrible practice that stifles competition and raises drug prices would be great.

Why aren't people like RFK Jr. making this a central talking point? I'll tell you why: Because understanding and reforming Pharma is less a priority than making big sweeping statements about corruption and how They want to poison you.

prospect.org/health/2023-06…Image
Another problem is the hyping up of so-called "me-too" drugs, where a new drug is hailed as a breakthrough, enormous amounts are charged for it, but in fact the improvements are marginal. Although it's a complicated issue, targeting the development of overhyped "me-too" drugs would be a great place to go after pharma.Image
Read 5 tweets
Alan Levinovitz Profile picture
Nov 19, 2024
I've been studying charlatans, con-men, faith healers, and snake oil salesmen for a very, very long time.

To people who haven't been conned, it can be very difficult to understand how it happens. Consider the guy below, who literally looks like Satan.

His name is Brian Clement, and he continues to convince thousands of people that he can cure their cancer using nothing but wheatgrass shots and crackpot diets.

So how does these people do it? And why are they never held accountable?

I'll explain, using the tragic story of an 11-yr-old girl who died because of Clement, as a case study.Image
Image
First, you *have* to understand who these charlatans prey on:

People who are scared and vulnerable.

People who have been betrayed by authorities or the establishment.

People who have been disempowered.

That's why, when Clement visited Canada to sell people on his clinic, he would focus on First Nations people

After all, why would they trust the medical establishment or the government?

For over a century they were horrifically treated by the Canadian authorities. Children kidnapped and put into reeducation schools. Tortured and abused. First Nations culture was systematically degraded and erased.

On top of that, medical professionals sneered at indigenous medicine. Superstitious nonsense. Ignorant savagery.
Now I ask you to imagine how you would feel, as a Canadian First Nations parent, if a man came and gave a talk in which he told you that he BELIEVED in First Nations medicine.

In which he said that the medical establishment who sneered at you was wrong. That the government who oppressed your people was propping it up to earn money and harm you. That if you trusted them, they would continue to harm you.

And then, he offers you a choice. If your child is sick, you can listen to their false promises, or you come to his holistic healing clinic.

At Brian Clement's Hippocrates Institute, they don't buy into "mainstream medicine." They use natural healing. Unlike medical professionals, they embrace the wisdom of indigenous medicine. No chemotherapy. No surgery.

Wouldn't you want your child who was diagnosed with leukemia to go there?Image
Read 11 tweets

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