I’ve got a “women’s problems” scandal for you: #ME/CFS.
#greatestmedicalscandal
A government inquiry in 2020 said an arrogant culture in which serious medical complications were dismissed as "women's problems" had contributed to a string of healthcare scandals over several decades.”
My conversation this week with the brilliant @feargalsharkey.bsky.social:
youtu.be/MPo3_0DjgyU?...
Long Covid groups in the UK- including Long Covid Support, Long Covid SOS, Long Covid Kids, and Long Covid Physio - suggest the government must move from "tokenistic recognition" to a comprehensive national strategy addressing Long Covid as a mass-disabling event. Following findings that the government ignored warnings and failed to manage the crisis, they are demanding long-term funding, specialized care, and prevention measures. © Long Covid SOS Key Recommendations to the UK Government: • Establish a National Strategy: Create a dedicated cross-government taskforce, led by a designated minister, to manage Long Covid as a public health and economic crisis. • Long-Term Funding & Research: Ringfence £100m in annual research funding, with a focus on biomedical research, clinical trials, and patient-driven research priorities.
• Fix & Expand Healthcare Services: Reverse the closure of NHS Long Covid clinics, establish Centres of Excellence across the UK, and ensure multidisciplinary care that goes beyond basic rehabilitation. • Protect Children & Schools: Implement specific, child-centred action, including improved air quality in schools and measures to prevent further infections in educational settings. • Workplace & Welfare Rights: Formally recognize Long Covid as a disability under the Equality Act 2010 and as an occupational disease for frontline workers, granting access to industrial injuries benefits. • Public Health & Prevention: Launch public campaigns on the risks of Long Covid and implement public health measures (air cleaning, mask-wearing in healthcare) to reduce ongoing transmission.
Background and Context As of early 2025/2026, many specialized Long Covid clinics are closing, with only 46 confirmed to remain open out of over 120, while 24 have closed and 31 are under review. Advocacy groups argue this is leaving the sickest people without care. The All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on Long Covid continues to urge the Prime Minister to act on these issues to prevent a worsening, long-term societal and economic impact.
#LongCovid
For those who have forgotten the past 40 years:
Tax cuts for the rich
...don’t trickle down
Boosting military spending
...doesn’t bring peace
Slashing regulations
...doesn’t create jobs
Folks, we’ve seen this all before.
"This is a life and death story for the UK – so why is it being brushed under the carpet?"
Healthy Life Expectancy at Birth Plummeting. 📉
It is a hideous scandal that they can publish a chart as obvious as this and not even mention the words 'covid infections'.
I actually do not believe most men should be in positions of power until they have proved themselves worthy. Enough. Patriarchy is a failed, destructive experiment and one we can no longer afford.
I am so tired of fragile little men starting wars. I am so tired of fragile little men making policy decisions that harm us all. I am so tired of fragile little men doing horrendous harm to children and expecting us all to forget about it. I am so tired of fragile little men with their tantrums.
There's been discourse on Long Covid on this site the past few days. I think some people are thoroughly underestimating how hellish chronic illness can make you feel, even if you aren't at an immediate risk of dying.
I was just thinking of disability benefits. I'm really glad #DirtyBusiness showed a TYPICAL 'medical assessment' for PIP.
The welfare system is fake too. It's another Potemkin.
Govt scrapped regulation of water companies, of course they will deny the impact of pollution on people.
Wes Streeting wants you to die so the people who already have more money than god can have just a little more
Ministers plan linking patient data to benefit claims and employment statistics. As Streeting promises to make the NHS "accountable" for whether patients are in work by setting new targets for 'getting people back to work'. That NHSE (DHSC) Palantir contract should help
www.ft.com/content/6943...
Couldn’t have said it better ourselves. 📺 🙌
The first episode of Channel 4's Dirty Business is a hard-hitting, must-watch that will leave you feeling sick with anger.
Haven’t watched it yet? Catch up now on More4.
#DirtyBusiness #RescueBritainsRivers
www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio...
Don't let Thames Water keep marking their own homework
It's time for them to LOSE THEIR LICENCE
Write to Ofwat now to say no to 14 years of illegal pollution
👉https://weownit.org.uk/act-now/ofwat-say-no-to-15-years-of-illegal-pollution-thames-water
#DirtyBusiness @windrushwasp.bsky.social
White and colored gradient square graphic from WHO European region. Black text reads "long Covid has not disappeared. People continue to develop the condition after new Covid-19 infections"
WHO European region graphic with woman pictured outside on a swing, her back is to the camera. Caption (truncated): Bára, 43, teacher and crisis counsellor from Czechia, loved her happy, busy life as a mother of two and with an inspiring profession. She contracted her 3rd case of COVID-19 in the spring of 2025. Since then, she has been house-bound due to severe fatigue and heart
WHO European region graphic with gradient pastel background and a white block with black text that says "This myth uses discrediting and oversimplification by claiming Long COVID is "a thing of the past". It reduces a complex, ongoing health issue to a false, easy-to-share statement. It sticks because the message provides comfort by suggesting the threat is already over."
For all those who call us "Covid doomers" for continuing to post about the harms of long Covid - just know that the @who.int also posted yesterday about how this crisis isn't over
London, 40 people, King's College London researchers found Long COVID linked to altered brain oxygen use.
The hippocampus worked harder to support memory, while the anterior cingulate showed lower metabolism tied to depression and inflammation.
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
We have some of the highest concentrations of Covid-caused disability up here in Greater Manchester. How many people with Long Covid in Gorton and Denton? For 18 months, Labour's been pretending that people disabled by Covid don't exist, letting Covid rip, then attacking people for being #disabled.
It's extraordinary, how Labour can have an election in Gorton and Denton triggered by an MP medically retiring from his post due to #LongCovid, yet be unable to say the word Covid, let along in conjunction with Long, or lift a finger to cut Covid infections or help those now living with Long Covid.
I don't believe that all mental health challenges are downstream of politics but I've been finding it increasingly rough, watching autism & ADHD turned into a new theatre of the culture wars. The hit pieces on SEN kids, the endless badly-researched columns on 'overdiagnosis' - I feel really crushed.
Almost no ME/CFS patients return to work "The help we have provided to patients through the welfare and healthcare systems has had little rehabilitative effect," says a researcher. The Norwegian Labour and Welfare Administration requires ME/CFS patients to go through work-oriented measures in order to be granted disability benefits, which is a challenge for many patients. (Photo: Gorm Kallestad / NTB) Emilie Wee Journalist Published 21 March 2025 - 00:01
🧵
"Almost no ME/CFS patients return to work: "The help we have provided to patients through the welfare and healthcare systems has had little rehabilitative effect," says a researcher."
www.sciencenorway.no/chronic-fati...
#MEcfs #CFS #PwME
1/
I guess this says everything 😔😔
Those claiming New Style ESA also get National Insurance credits which safeguard their state pension. Presumably by removing this, the DWP are also removing claimants right to a state pension.
This comes on top of the UK government not giving any new money towards #myalgicencephalomyelitis, whereas the German government is giving hundreds of millions of €.
Repellent.
#LongCovid
@ashleydaltonmp.bsky.social
URGENT:
An NHS hospital is starving a severe ME patient & has now stopped giving her fluids. Savannah has now lived with severe ME for several years - but the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in South London is putting her life at risk. @h-sharland.bsky.social has the story
www.thecanary.co/uk/analysis/...
For a group of people allegedly "scared" to exercise, its really surprising how many clients ask me about deconditioning, and we end up discussing what the problems with it are and ways to try and reduce it (safely - and its not always possible or a priority ofc)
Mafia goon: Nice house you got here...it'd be a shame if something happened to it
Media outlets: Mafia goon rules out use of force. Expresses regret at the mere thought of it
Can't recommend this article highly enough.
Seeing key events listed chronologically clearly shows how much work remains to be done if there is to be justice for #pwME & an end to the relentless corruption.
#ME #MEAwareness #MedSky
medium.com/@abrokenbatt...
Simon Wessely used intimidation to change how an author wrote about ME and Long Covid. The threat of a law suit was likely a bluff, but still had the desired effect. This is how Wessely operates.
Hannah Davis tweet: “Study of 41k people finds long-lasting immune system dysregulation after COVID infection, particularly CD8+ T cells (which detect & kill virus-infected cells & cancerous cells). Strong study - same patients compared pre, during, & after COVID. 4LongCovid sciencedirect.com/science/ articl... “
New study: “SARS-CoV-2 causes lasting immune dysregulation for over 20 months.” And if most or many people are getting infected once every 12 months, then when does their immune system have time to recover? Immune systems protect against colds & infections but also cancer & other diseases. #COVID
