Elke Hausmann
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drelke.bsky.social
Elke Hausmann
@drelke.bsky.social
350 followers 390 following 1K posts
German, English, Spanish
Sociology, Medicine, General Practice
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drelke.bsky.social
Compare and contrast:

www.simonwessely.com/Downloads/Pu...
In summary, the available evidence, and the considered judgement contained in the final Clayton report give no support to material damage to health as a direct consequence of the sudden, temporary increase in aluminium consumption caused by the water purification error. So why then did some people suffer and complain for years after the event? We suggest that the most likely explanation of the Camelford findings is that the perception of normal and benign somatic symptoms (physical or mental) by both subjects and health professionals was heightened and subsequently attributed to an external, physical cause, such as poisoning [29].
November 28, 2025 at 5:19 PM
drelke.bsky.social
Harrowing viewing #PoisonWater

Aluminium, not ‚anxiety‘.

‚(…) don’t allow your emotions to show to other people who may use them against you. I had to be the man giving straight scientific evidence, no speculation, nothing, just report on what I knew to be correct‘.

www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/epis...
No hazard to health Symptons mild and short lived Anxiety causing problems Fears of Alzheimer's disease unjustified
November 28, 2025 at 5:05 PM
drelke.bsky.social
3/3
Please think about WHY some might compare LC to AIDS. This has echos of the ME , controversies' where ME ‚activists' are told off by ‚scientists' for being, too emotional' (about their own lives going down the drain - isn't that understandable?). If your experience is that nobody listens to you, you might end up lashing out (or make comparisons that can be criticised for being factually wrong, but to some clearly feel emotionally right - and have some justification behind them) just to get heard. Yes, facts are important. Yes, emotions shouldn't supplant facts. But please consider the context. Please pick your fights. Be an ally to people who don't have the power to affect change in the real world.
November 26, 2025 at 8:19 AM
drelke.bsky.social
2/3
I doubt that any LC ‚activist' thinks that LC and AIDS are the same. They have some similarities in that the viruses that cause them affect the immune system, albeit in very different ways. You might say that AIDS is (was before HIV meds) a death sentence and Long Covid is not (people with LC have by definition survived the initial infection, but remember that many many people have died and still die from acute Covid infections), however bear in mind that for some patients affected by LC this can feel like a living death.
November 26, 2025 at 8:18 AM
drelke.bsky.social
No, #LongCovid is not AIDS.

But…

Musings from a patient’s perspective.

1/3
Covid is not HIV, and Long Covid is not AIDS. These are facts. But... LC patients can experience debilitating, life-changing symptoms that healthy people just cannot imagine. Many people are oblivious to that. They think that Covid won't affect them as they have survived previous Covid infections ‚unscathed' (we don't actually know that yet - virus consequences can take time to reveal themselves). In the early phase of the AIDS epidemic most people believed that only ‚other' people (men who have sex with men) would get it - nothing to do with them. It was only later that HIV infection was recognised to be serious for everyone who got it, and everyone could get it. The function of the comparison to AIDS relates to how societies react to those viral threats, to get people to understand that this is serious. Not just for us, but likely for you, too.
November 26, 2025 at 8:18 AM
drelke.bsky.social
#LongCovid
Like an estimated 20 million Americans, I have an incurable post-acute infection syndrome that goes by the name of long Covid. Some people refer to the long Covid experience as a "journey." I wish they would stop. I'm pinned down by it, stuck with it. I feel like I'm getting nowhere. Sugarcoating my bitter pill, a chronic disease, by calling it a "journey" might sweeten it for you, but not for me.
November 25, 2025 at 2:46 PM
drelke.bsky.social
#LongCovid
#ME
There is a different way to do health research. This is the promise that I see in the medical humanities, and that I have witnessed at Durham University's Institute for Medical Humanities, as both a doctoral and postdoctoral researcher. The medical humanities offers a new vision for health research, which holds lived experience at the heart of the research process. What makes this vision so compelling - and, I believe, so urgently necessary - is in its commitment to move beyond assumptions, theories, and belief systems and to ground discovery in what people who live with illnesses experience and express. By attending to these experiences, and by making visible and palpable the symptoms and suffering, we can get closer to understanding what a disease might be and how we can better support those who live with it.
November 25, 2025 at 5:20 AM
drelke.bsky.social
Danke!

#LongCovid
Fritz: Erschöpfung ist ja das geringste Problem, im Gegensatz zu den neurologischen Symptomen wie eben Dauerschwindel, Tinnitus, nicht aufstehen können, weil der Puls dann bis 220 hochgeht oder so was. Deswegen würde ich da zustimmen. Erschöpfung ist einfach ein Begriff, der ein bisschen niedlich ist und die Erkrankten in die Nähe von „Ich habe schlecht geschlafen und fühle mich heute nicht ganz so fit" rückt. Außerdem wird die Erkrankung historisch Frauen zugeschrieben, die gerne als hysterisch oder eben erschöpft stigmatisiert werden. Aber die Leute stehen nicht mehr auf, weil ihr Körper das gar nicht aushält.
November 20, 2025 at 8:52 AM
drelke.bsky.social
30 years on, for some people it’s still all about stress in #ME, and now the argument is being rehashed for #LongCovid.

bjgplife.com/long-covid-a...
As discussed above, there are those who argue that Long Covid is essentially an illness caused by lifestyle, with the idea that it is down to 'stress, rather than constituting the long-term effects of the infection by the Covid virus on the object-body. Stress may have a role to play, among many other factors, in making an individual more susceptible to viral infection and illness in the first place at a particular point in time, considering what we know about its effects on the immune system, but whether it has anything at all to do with the development of Long Covid is by no means certain. The way stress is often talked about these days, and used as an all-encompassing explanation for the generation of illness, has more than a whiff of the good old humours about it. The four humours developed by the Ancient Greeks that had to be kept in balance to remain healthy25 have become our stress hormones and autonomic nerve impulses that we need to work hard at keeping in a delicate balance, otherwise we supposedly tip over into illness. I don't want to suggest that stress has no effect on the body, but just to question whether 'stress' as the causative factor for illness, being evoked so ubiquitously, may be applied to conditions where this is not warranted. Long Covid is a case in point. Stress can certainly negatively contribute to the illness experience; once ill, symptoms do worsen with stress and can often be relieved by removing stress. In that context it also has to be said very clearly where stress for an ill person comes from - most of it comes from the outside: an inadequate healthcare system, a punitive welfare system, unhealthy work places, insecure housing - and not least, negative judgement by others, some of which may be informing those systems. Adverse social conditions are often misrepresented as personal lifestyle choices. Without improving those, attention to an individual's stress response will mostly not get us very far on the route back to better health. At the same time, removing all stressors and/or dealing better with stress is not in itself a cure for Long Covid.
November 18, 2025 at 8:23 AM
drelke.bsky.social
Meine Gedanken dazu… Nicht wirklich ausgereift - wie gesagt, ich denke schon länger darüber nach, wie wir am besten kommunizieren können, dass unsere Krankheit keine psychische ist, aber das wirklich gar nichts mit einer Abwertung psychischer Krankheiten zu tun hat, sondern einfach nur ein Fakt ist…
Ich frage mich halt, ob man es sich damit zu einfach macht. Man kann natürlich sagen, dass man hier etwas kommuniziert, und wie das dann rezipiert wird, hat nichts mehr mit mir zu tun. Stigmatisierung von psychischen Erkrankungen existiert, und in dem Kontext wird doch so ein Slogan von vielen verstanden. Meine Frage war eben, wenn man nicht nur die, die einem sowieso schon zustimmen, mitnehmen, sondern auch andere Leute ansprechen will, ob man da nicht auch darüber nachdenken muss, wie etwas über die eigene Gruppe hinaus aufgenommen wird. Sonst kommt man nicht weiter, wir brauchen ja alle Unterstützung, die wir kriegen können! Der Slogan auf der Tasche war jetzt auch nur der Anstoß für mich, in die Richtung weiterzudenken.
November 17, 2025 at 3:11 PM
drelke.bsky.social
💯 gegen Psychologisierung von #LongCovid und #ME, aber… ?
Ernsthafte Frage an die PsychologInnen. In mir weigert sich auch alles, wenn jemand mein Long Covid als 'nur einen Burnout' abtun will. Auf der anderen Seite frage ich mich, wie so ein Slogan auf jemanden wirkt, der einen echten Burnout erlebt hat. Weisen wir hier Stigma von uns weg, aber hin auf andere stigmatisierte Gruppen? Das spaltet doch dann eher, als dass es zusammenführt. So kriegen wir eher weniger Sympathie für unser Anliegen. Wie gehen wir damit um?
November 17, 2025 at 10:12 AM
drelke.bsky.social
#LongCovid
'Und ich glaube, wenn wir da sozusagen differenzierter sind und die vielen Leute, bei denen eine Post-Covid-Symptomatik dann wieder besser wird und die auch von Aktivierung profitieren, wenn wir es schaffen würden, die von denjenigen zu trennen, die davon absolut nicht profitieren und denen wir schaden, dann wäre, glaube ich, viel gewonnen!'
November 16, 2025 at 6:30 PM
drelke.bsky.social
Ich kann zwar nicht einschätzen, ob das genug Geld ist, um das hinzukriegen, aber alleine, dass unser Leid anerkannt wird, dass man da was machen will, dass ich wieder hoffen darf, dass vielleicht, vielleicht in 10 Jahren diese Hölle vorbei sein könnte - das ist BIG!

#LongCovid
#ME
Heilung soll bis Mitte der 2030er-Jahre möglich sein In einem Eckpunktepapier der Koalition, das dem Spiegel vorliegt, bezeichnen der frühere Gesundheitsminister Karl Lauterbach (SPD) und der CDU-Abgeordnete Stephan Albani die Erkrankungen als "eine der größten gesundheitspolitischen Herausforderungen des 21. Jahrhunderts" '. In Deutschland seien mehr als 1,5 Millionen Menschen betroffen, vor allem durch die vielen Fälle nach der Coronapandemie. Nach Angaben von Lauterbach sind für 2026 im Bundeshaushalt 15 Millionen Euro für die Erforschung der Krankheiten vorgesehen. "Von 2027 bis 2036 geben wir jedes Jahr 50 Millionen Euro aus", zitiert der Spiegel Lauterbach. Damit könne Deutschland zum Vorreiter im Kampf gegen Long Covid und ME/CFS werden, sagt er. Das Ziel müsse sein, die Diagnose und Behandlung der Erkrankungen so weit zu erforschen, dass sie bis spätestens Mitte der Dreißigerjahre geheilt werden können.
November 14, 2025 at 8:32 AM
drelke.bsky.social
#LongCovid
"I want other people to realise that this actually is quite life changing and it's quite serious, I couldn't be independent now whereas before I was a very independent person," said Ms Lunt Davies. In a recent open letter to health secretary Wes Streeting, Long Covid SOS called for the government to "get [the] Long Covid crisis on the health agenda" and fund further research.
November 13, 2025 at 4:47 PM
drelke.bsky.social
Hier wird im Prinzip endlich mal klar gesagt, dass zwischen Long COVID mit und ohne PEM unterschieden werden muss. Das ist doch positiv.

Jetzt muss ‚nur’ noch klar gesagt werden, dass bei Long COVID mit PEM/ME eine Reha mit Physiotherapie kontraindiziert IST!
Es ist hervorzuheben, dass die bisherige Evidenz zu rehabilitati-ven Interventionen ausschließlich Long-COVID-Patienten ohne eine manifeste Diagnose einer myalgischen Enzephalomyelitis/ Chronic-Fatigue-Syndrom (ME/CFS) einschließt. Für Patienten mit diagnostizierter ME/CFS gelten andere Empfehlungen, da bei dieser Subgruppe rehabilitative Ansätze, insbesondere körperliches Training, kontraindiziert sein können [18]. Die Interpretation der positiven Reha-Effekte muss daher auf Patienten ohne ME/CFS sowie mit leichten bis mittelschweren Long-COVID-Symptomen begrenzt bleiben.
November 13, 2025 at 6:51 AM
drelke.bsky.social
The growth in support for the Greens and Zohran Mamdani's recent mayoral victory in New York suggests voters are beginning to question the idea that positive change is unattainable. Policies that are dismissed by the establishment as radical and unworkable, from rent controls to nationalised energy (both of which the majority of Britons support), are seen by much of the public as mainstream and logical. That's the thing about the narrative that Britain is falling apart. There are indeed many problems facing the country. But rather than immigrants and disabled people, the culprit is a social and economic structure that needs transforming. Most voters don't need convincing the system is broken - they need inspiration that it can be fixed. The ideas dismissed as "undeliverable" are the very ones we most require.
November 12, 2025 at 7:06 PM
drelke.bsky.social
‚But when the unproven theory can‘t deliver on the claims, then what?‘

#ME
Perhaps part of why psychologically-based rationales for disease can be widely accepted is because the harm this can do is underappreciated. Miller et al argued that their narrative inspires hope, and people with severe ME/CFS deserve that. But when the unproven theory can't deliver on the claims, what then? In a study Miller et al cited, researchers found that being told the disease was psychosomatic was the most common reason for suicidal thoughts for people with ME/CFS. [9] It's not the first study to suggest that being told they are effectively to blame for not recovering is a contributing factor to the increased risk of suicidality in people with ME/CFS. [10] A critical part of hope for people suffering illness is being able to trust that the medical community will work objectively to find better treatments and ways to support them, rather than promote unproven theories. People with ME/CFS deserve better than being told that their minds can overcome what's the matter with their bodies - if only they try hard enough, for long enough.
November 9, 2025 at 6:30 AM
drelke.bsky.social
More thoughts on PEM.

#LongCovid
#ME
More thoughts on PEM. We could know more about it, if we had studied it better by now. But we know enough to inform people of it existence. PEM is not a straightforward symptom. Mild PEM is much less obvious than severe PEM. Education about PEM is just a first step. Knowing that something like that exists (it's not just in your mind, you're not going crazy) equips you to recognise it, or discount it. Or, if it's not obvious in your case, to at least proceed with caution with going all out in the gym again after an infection when you're still not feeling quite right. Or make an informed decision as to whether physical rehab is a good idea for you. Or look closely at what triggers you most - the physical, mental or emotional exertion, because that will help you to do pacing better, which is inherently difficult to do well.
November 8, 2025 at 8:38 AM
drelke.bsky.social
#LongCovid
#ME
I feel for anyone who lives with a history of childhood trauma and is then on top of that struck by an illness like ME, and has to encounter professionals who can't tell one from the other. There are plenty of ME patients with no history of trauma. Long COVID has shown that it can it affect the most well adjusted people with no trauma in their past. You would have hoped that this would have changed the narrative, but no. It just reinforced the narrative by suggesting that in those people, there must be deeply hidden trauma that the patient is not even aware of that is arising from the psyche and becoming visible through this physical illness. People who would be perfectly healthy now if the COVID pandemic had never happened. This just shows the absurdity of this line of reasoning.
November 8, 2025 at 7:54 AM
drelke.bsky.social
#LongCovid
This is really interesting reading for someone who does not tend towards hypochondria, but suffers from Long Covid with PEM. It has made me realise even more how let down we all are by not having the difference between Long Covid with and without PEM spelled out, in the form of a major public health information campaign. Without it, people without PEM end up thinking that they have to act as if they did have it (with the resultant negative effects of de-conditioning, also if you are someone managing a mental health condition by remaining active, you are risking a worsening through inactivity), while some of us who do have PEM struggle to recognise it and act accordingly. This is the major fault line - PEM or not PEM. This is the one area where education would be really helpful for everybody, whether you have it or not.
November 7, 2025 at 7:25 PM
drelke.bsky.social
#LongCovid
Why is it so difficult to write that the most important thing you need to be aware of if you have Long Covid is PEM (plenty of good explanations of what that involves out there). If you have PEM, physical rehabilitation is contraindicated. It is pretty straightforward. If you have Long Covid without PEM, you may benefit from from slowly getting more active again - after a good few weeks of recovery from the acute infection. Journalists, do your work. It's not that hard.
November 6, 2025 at 4:47 PM
drelke.bsky.social
4/4
But this is a new era: you can't reach an accommodation with an ICE agent when he's kneeling on your neck. Climate chaos does not come with a moderate option. An oligarch is not interested in your pitiful attempts to strike a deal. To see the logical endpoint of the new left's embrace of money, look no further than Peter Mandelson. Famous for being "intensely relaxed" about people getting filthy rich, he became especially relaxed in the company of the filthy rich, such as money man and child sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein - and is now discovering anew the meaning of "disgraced".
November 6, 2025 at 7:02 AM
drelke.bsky.social
3/4
In his fine new book The Great Global Transformation, the former World Bank economist Branko Milanovic describes how our political and economic order is now coming to an end. China and the global south now account for more of the world economy than the US, Japan, Europe and the many others put together that he terms the "capitalist core"; at the same time, capitalism is being redefined. The elites who prospered under the regimes shaped by Reagan and Thatcher are now redefining their nations into narrower, meaner, harsher societies, ditching the old commitments to multiculturalism and equality for women. They are forcing upon the rest of us capitalism without secure contracts, unions or even the HR department.
November 6, 2025 at 7:02 AM
drelke.bsky.social
2/4
The centre-left should be taking on the extreme right and acting as the anti-Trump. Instead, as Fintan O'Toole writes in the latest New York Review of Books, it is playing at being not-Trump. Or: not-Farage, not-Weidel, not-Le Pen. In the UK, Starmer's pitch is basically: we'll adopt the language and the flags, but deploy them with greater civility. As a response to this moment, it is morally contemptible and politically myopic.
November 6, 2025 at 7:01 AM
drelke.bsky.social
1/4

www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...
Still, the chief reason Mamdani has aroused such keen interest is because he is the first leftwinger to show that politicians can not only face down Trumpism, they can beat him. That is the defining task of our era, as New York's new mayor knows. Amid the thank-yous of last night's victory speech, he declared: "If anyone can show a nation betrayed by Donald Trump how to defeat him, it is the city that gave rise to him."
November 6, 2025 at 7:01 AM