Firstly, I have been working on a new blog called “The Psychiatric Multiverse” these last few months. I’m looking to explore various psychiatric issues through the lens of physics weirdness. It is taking quite a lot of research, but I hope the blog will be up and running by the end of the year. Consequently, I’m shifting this blog to be more personal and more thread of consciousnessy. On with today’s post!
My mum called her GP yesterday, enquiring how long she would have to wait for a blood test after contracting Covid (so as not to affect the results of the blood test). “Oh, Covid used to be severe as it was a novel virus. But now it’s been around a while and is no longer serious. It is more like the common cold”, was the reply (paraphrased). You could have fooled me a couple of months ago while my throat was burning, a fever pushing towards 39/40 Celsius (102/104 Fahrenheit) and an altered mental state that nearly required A&E (or ER).1
This claim threw me into disbelief. How can you possibly make the general statement that Covid is now as mild as the common cold, when it currently leads to the deaths of around 100 people per week in the UK? Such evidence is quite difficult to ignore.
My mum had already told me that from her time training to be a doctor there was an overreliance on memory, and a dearth of critical thinking. Her poor memory was one of the reasons she decided being a medical professional was not for her. I had seen evidence of a lack of critical thinking in my interactions with psychiatrists but this was one of the first times I heard direct evidence from a GP.
I see critical thinking as the ability to evaluate new information in the context of old information, identifying inconsistencies and limitations. Which then leads to asking questions and answering those questions by seeking out new information.
The University of Louisville does a much better job of defining critical thinking, using a quote from a 2003 paper by Michael Scriven and Richard Paul2
Critical thinking is the intellectually disciplined process of actively and skillfully conceptualizing, applying, analyzing, synthesizing, and/or evaluating information gathered from, or generated by, observation, experience, reflection, reasoning, or communication, as a guide to belief and action.
My guess is that the GP read up on guidance from the NHS, or other sources, and updated their belief somewhat blindly without taking into consideration other information. For instance, the NHS page on covid mentions that “The symptoms [of covid] are very similar to symptoms of other illnesses, such as colds and flu.” The Public Health England information sheet on Covid says that “For most people, COVID-19 is a mild illness.“
It seems clear that the current Covid variants generally produce milder (emphasis on the suffix -er) symptoms for most people, considering reports on the omicron variant.
But to say that Covid is in the same category as the common cold for everyone is a strange conclusion. Why are there still people who develop long covid? Why are we still vaccinating the vulnerable population if the disease is supposed to be so mild? Why are there cases3 where reinfection results in more severe illness? This Guardian article concludes that Covid is more severe than the common cold.
It is this lack of critical thinking which I think has contributed to the horrible situations ME/CFS sufferers often find themselves in. I have written previously about my experiences of taking lithium, and how critical thinking proved to be very useful in finding the best dosing regime for my specific case.
A lack of critical thinking breeds a loss of trust in patients. My trust in clinicians fell through the floor during my time in the psychiatric system. This isn’t good. Fighting disease requires patient and doctor to work together. Without that trust, I would hazard to guess that the likelihood of a poor outcome increases significantly.
