Prof Michael Sharpe says writing press articles about long COVID will spread this illness!

[Hip]

Professor Michael Sharpe is one of the chief culprits for trying to make people believe ME/CFS is an "all in the mind" condition caused by psychological or psychosocial factors.

As one of the Wessely School, Prof Sharpe has been strongly criticized (to put it mildly) by the ME/CFS patient community for trying to psychologize ME/CFS.

Now Micheal Sharpe has turned his attention to long COVID, to try to make this look as if it were caused by psychological and psychosocial factors as well.

In his presentation to the Swiss Re insurance company in Feb 2012 (Swiss Re are notorious for their role in psychologizing ME/CFS), Prof Sharpe claims long COVID may be caused by by psychological or psychosocial factors:

Here are some slides from Sharpe's presentation to Swiss Re about what he proposes are the possible causes of long COVID:

Psychological Factors​

• Seeing bodily sensations as alarming and focussing on them
• Becoming anxious and then experiencing more symptoms (significant anxiety in a high proportion of patients)
• Coping including avoidance and seeking medical care

Social factors - The media​

"In some cases, long COVID could mean lifelong COVID. The effects can be horrible. Among them are lung damage, heart damage and brain damage that can cause memory loss and brain fog, kidney damage, severe headaches, muscle and joint pain, loss of taste and smell, anxiety, depression and, above all, fatigue. We should all fear the lasting consequences of this pandemic".

George Monbiot, The Guardian, January 2021

Summary of possible causes of Post-COVID syndrome​

Biological

• Organ pathology and immunology
• Physiological changes such as dysautonomia

Psychological and behavioural

• Fear, focussing on symptoms anxiety and depression
• Coping behaviour

Social

• Misinformation/ online and press and iatrogenesis
• Social, interpersonal and employment issues

Source: slides of Micheal Sharpe's Feb 2021 Swiss Re presentation (pdf of slides also attached to this post).
Sharpe's presentation was part of the Swiss Re Institute's Expert Forum on secondary COVID-19.



Professor Sharpe is a long-time paid consultant for disability insurance companies, which is a huge conflict of interest.

Disability insurance companies are able to save $billions if they can make an illness look as if it were psychologically-caused ("all in the mind").

This is because disability insurance rules usually stipulate that they do not have to provide long-term disability support to people with psychological conditions; they only have to provide lifetime disability payouts to people with debilitating physical diseases or conditions.

So by making long COVID look like a psychologically or psychosocially-caused condition, or making it appear as if there are psychological elements to long COVID, this can get insurance companies off the hook for disability payouts to patients, saving them billions.

Disability insurance companies will be worried about their profits at the moment, as the global wave of long COVID patients may require lifetime disability support payments to millions of patients, and this will be very expensive for these insurance companies. So they have a financial interest in trying to paint long COVID as an "all in the mind" condition.



A Guardian article has focused on Michael Sharpe's blatant attempt at psychologizing long COVID, and Sharpe's idea that writing press articles about long COVID will spread this illness:

In a presentation to the reinsurance giant Swiss Re, Michael Sharpe, a professor of psychological medicine at the University of Oxford and founder of a long Covid clinic, proposed that one of the causes of the syndrome was “social factors”.

The social factor at the top of his list was an article I wrote for the Guardian, describing the suffering of patients with the condition.

Source: Apparently just by talking about it, I’m super-spreading long Covid

 

[Mary]

This is unreal! I saw this the other day. It's hard to fathom the unlimited depths of his delusions, or his apparent greed and willful lies about ME/CFS (and now Long Covid) which have caused so much suffering to so many.

 

[Rufous McKinney]

It's hard to fathom the unlimited depths of his delusions, or his apparent greed and willful lies about ME/CFS

What floors me is- do we not live in a global world?

British psychiatrists seem to exist as an Island unto themselves. Scientists in other countries just don't exist it seems.

Who cares about Harvards and Stanfords. Sure, apply for massive grants to study an illness thats FAKE, thats what Harvard and Stanford types do. Ron Davis enjoys wasting his life. Klimas, Systrome, what do they know.

appalling.


I can't process whats happened over there.

 

[marcjf]

In his presentation to the Swiss Re insurance company in Feb 2012 (Swiss Re are notorious for their role in psychologizing ME/CFS), Prof Sharpe claims long COVID may be caused by by psychological or psychosocial factors:

Of course it is a presentation to an insurance company. You can smell the conflict of interest.
We need to start treating these people like flat-earthers and those that spread vaccine conspiracy theories.

I think he is treated more seriously because he is a Dr, which is pretty sad, since people like him have been turning psychiatry into a pseudoscience field.

 

[Hip]

I can't process whats happened over there.

The psychiatrists who have interests in psychologizing biological diseases are international. You have the Wessely School group of psychiatrists in the UK: Prof Simon Wessely, Prof Michael Sharpe, Prof Peter White, Prof Trudie Chalder, and others.

But you also have their equivalents in other countries:

In the Netherlands you have the Nijmegen group, which includes people like Professor Jos Van der Meer, who is considered the Dutch Simon Wessely. Dr Frank Kuppeveld and Prof Gijs Bleijenberg are big Nijmegen names.

In Denmark you have Professor Per Fink.

In Australia you have Dr Andrew Lloyd and Dr IanHickie.

In the US, the late Dr Bill Reeves of the CDC was a major proponent of the "all in the mind" view of ME/CFS. Then there is Dr Edward Shorter (now in Canada).

The creation of the disease of chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) in 1988 was likely created in the US in order to benefit disability insurance companies, I have always suspected, so that they can get away with not paying out disability support to patients.

The myalgic encephalomyelitis (ME) name already existed, but in its ICD classification, ME is defined as a neurological disease, and this does not help disability insurance companies to wangle out of paying disability support to patients.

Whereas in its ICD classification, CFS is defined as an illness which can involve psychological factors, and this is very useful to insurance companies to evade disability payments (as insurance rules stipulate that they do not have to provide long-term lifetime support for psychological conditions). More info on ME and CFS classifications in the ICD found in this post.

 

[Alvin2]

When someone writes their own epitaph simply stand back and watch them crash and burn.
We would rather he wakes up and stops denying reality but if a public self humiliation is what he wants there is no reason to save him from making a fool of himself.

No amount of lies will sweep covid under the rug, its too well known and it has amounts of research money behind it that we could never dream of. His campaign of lies will fail and we will be there to point out how he is a one trick pony who did the same thing to us.

 

[Rufous McKinney]

For example in the Netherlands you have the Nijmegen group, which includes people like Professor Jos Van der Meer, who is considered the Dutch Simon Wessely. And Dr Frank Kuppeveld is a big Nijmegen name.

In Denmark you have Professor Per Fink.

yes, this aberrated response also seems to radiate from the Scandavian regions as well.

I periodically will share one of these stories with my husband- over there in the other chair.

Most of the time, he doesn't even believe me. That they took somebody's 13 year old away, stuffed them into a pschy ward and shot them up with BOTOX.

 

[Rufous McKinney]

The psychiatrists who have interests in psychologizing biological diseases are international.

The now rather famous Dr. Jordon Peterson, professor of psychology up in Canada, went after the issue of very poor quality research in the Humanities.

This article somewhat summarizes some of that, while going after Dr. Peterson for other controversies he is involved in.

https://themedium.ca/comment/what-does-peterson-have-against-humanities/

Now this may be psychology, not medical type psychiatry. but I suspect they share drinks from the same well, at times.

"....if the question is about scientific rigour, then maybe Peterson should start with his own discipline: psychology. One of the main principles of the scientific method is reproducibility, or the ability to replicate an experiment or study to independently arrive to the same results. This principle is meant to provide validity to the research.

However, the Reproducibility Project, dedicated solely to investigating the validity of research in the discipline of psychology, concluded only 36 per cent of studies in the sample were replicated successfully, albeit with statistical significance. However, the result that only 36 per cent of the studies were replicable shows the bias that even seemingly “rigorous” academic disciplines can hold."

 

[Hip]

The video of Professor Michael Sharpe's presentation has been uploaded here.

 

[Alvin2]

The now rather famous Dr. Jordon Peterson, professor of psychology up in Canada, went after the issue of very poor quality research in the Humanities.

The replication crisis is a very good thing, reevaluating one's basic assumptions is way past due, especially in psychology.

 

[Hufsamor]

 

[Rufous McKinney]

Stuck for a time in an RV with out anything but a hot spot and a cell phone- I listened to a few 100 hours of Jordon Peterson lectures, opinions, controversies.

 

[Alvin2]

Stuck for a time in an RV with out anything but a hot spot and a cell phone- I listened to a few 100 hours of Jordon Peterson lectures, opinions, controversies.

I hope you used brain bleach generously afterwards

 

[msf]

As a paid shill, he seems to be more in the White school. Wessely is more of a good old-fashioned charlatan. There is an important difference between the two schools: one has zero ethics, while the other has zero intellectual honesty.

 

[godlovesatrier]

I saw this on twitter, completely nuts.

 

[IThinkImTurningJapanese]

But you also have their equivalents in other countries:

I feel so left out.

Psychosomatic Medicine IUHW NARITA HOSPITAL

• We have a large number of specialists in psychosomatic diseases in general, functional somatic syndrome, physical symptoms that are associated with psychiatric diseases (panic attacks, physical symptoms associated with depression etc.) and stress related diseases and conditions (poorly controlled diabetes due to stress, intractable allergic diseases etc.). We will also treat physical diseases, which have been treated in other departments but are not showing improvement or have become intractable, with a comprehensive mind/body approach.
• Offers specialist treatments for myalgic encephalomyelitis / chronic fatigue syndrome and fibromyalgia syndrome.
• We also have physicians with vast experience of palliative care. We will offer palliative care, in coordination with other departments and specialists of various fields.

 

[Abrin]

The psychiatrists who have interests in psychologizing biological diseases are international. You have the Wessely School group of psychiatrists in the UK: Prof Simon Wessely, Prof Michael Sharpe, Prof Peter White, Prof Trudie Chalder, and others.

But you also have their equivalents in other countries:

In the Netherlands you have the Nijmegen group, which includes people like Professor Jos Van der Meer, who is considered the Dutch Simon Wessely. Dr Frank Kuppeveld and Prof Gijs Bleijenberg are big Nijmegen names.

In Denmark you have Professor Per Fink.

In Australia you have Dr Andrew Lloyd and Dr IanHickie.

In the US, the late Dr Bill Reeves of the CDC was a major proponent of the "all in the mind" view of ME/CFS. Then there is Dr Edward Shorter (now in Canada).

The creation of the disease of chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) in 1988 was likely created in the US in order to benefit disability insurance companies, I have always suspected, so that they can get away with not paying out disability support to patients.

The myalgic encephalomyelitis (ME) name already existed, but in its ICD classification, ME is defined as a neurological disease, and this does not help disability insurance companies to wangle out of paying disability support to patients.

Whereas in its ICD classification, CFS is defined as an illness which can involve psychological factors, and this is very useful to insurance companies to evade disability payments (as insurance rules stipulate that they do not have to provide long-term lifetime support for psychological conditions). More info on ME and CFS classifications in the ICD found in this post.

Now in Canada we have this whole thing going on with McMaster University. This drives me completely batty seeing that the University of Montreal is working with OMF. How can one part of my country believe in science and the other side believe in cruel fairytales.

This article has more information about what has been going on in Canada for the curious.
https://www.virology.ws/2021/04/19/...esponds-with-mcmaster-u-about-that-wsj-op-ed/

 

[Hip]

As a paid shill, he seems to be more in the White school. Wessely is more of a good old-fashioned charlatan. There is an important difference between the two schools: one has zero ethics, while the other has zero intellectual honesty.

I suspect it is not just Michael Sharpe and Peter White who have disability insurance links, but also Simon Wessely, but he may be better at covering his tracks.

Wessely was involved in PRISMA, a multi-national healthcare company working with insurance companies.

Simon Wessely is featured on this Swiss Re insurance website page.

 

[bertiedog]

The video of Professor Michael Sharpe's presentation has been uploaded here.

Is feel like I want to be very abusive towards this bloke but I know it's against the rules. So much ignorance and does rather take away faith in doctors in general which I know is unfair.

Pam

 

[hapl808]

People keep saying, "It's different with long Covid - there's too much publicity to sweep it under the rug." I may be a cynic, but I think they underestimate the opacity of the rug and the eagerness of those doing the sweeping. How many of us have the energy to fight that losing battle?