Co-ordinating MadCovidDiaries, Bethan is a person living with a mental health condition and passionate about survivor collective activism. Bethan co-presented her research on #Neorecovery at the 25th International MHNR Conference. In addition to her role as co-ordinator of the group, she has conducted numerous studies, both in advisory and co-applicant roles.
Long Covid Support
IncellDx, a California-based company, has three goals for its long Covid support program. They want to use a drug similar to the one used to treat HIV and cholesterol to treat the disease and find a way to measure whether the treatment is working. Critics point out that there are no widely accepted biomarkers for long Covid and that treatment regimens at respected clinics vary widely. Furthermore, doctors don’t prescribe drugs, but treat the symptoms instead. It is very difficult to create a standardized treatment for long Covid, because of the myriad of symptoms present in patients.
The Mayo Clinic is one such facility. The Covid Activity Rehabilitation Program at Mayo encourages patients to start their recovery slowly. Most people want to get back to normal life right away, but a sudden jump back into regular activities can be exhausting. The result can be a flare-up or fatigue that feels like a relapse. For this reason, long Covid support programs provide support for patients while they recover from their illnesses.
The administration is working to understand the impact of long COVID across populations. People with long COVID may need assistance in daily activities or accommodations. The guidance package was released during the 31st anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act. Its goal is to raise awareness about this condition and strengthen services for people with Long COVID. These clinics treat more than 1,100 long Covid patients. Many patients report that waiting for appointments is a frustrating experience.
The CDC has invested $50 million in long COVID research. The President’s FY23 budget allocated $25 million in grant funding for the study. The funds will help researchers answer important questions related to the disease’s underlying mechanisms, long-term effects, and how clinicians can best engage with patients. The funds will also help fund the INSPIRE study. This study will follow nearly 6,000 individuals for up to 18 months. This study will focus on high-risk populations in the communities affected by Long COVID.
The Obama Administration is advancing Long COVID awareness, and aims to expand access to culturally-comparable information. Through the Federal Employee Health Benefit Program (FEHBP), the Obama Administration will increase awareness of Long COVID among carriers serving the 8.2 million federal employees. Additionally, OPM will increase enrollee education regarding Long COVID coverage. Currently, it is the only disease in the U.S. that causes chronic fatigue and respiratory illnesses.
Epistemic advantage
The term “epistemic advantage” has several meanings within feminist theory, and is often applied to women who have the benefit of knowing about their oppressors. The definition of epistemic advantage is defined by Uma Narayan, a leading feminist theorist. For instance, the term refers to the advantage that minority groups have over their oppressors when it comes to the application of knowledge.
Interestingly, there is also a conceptual advantage to the fact that Madcovid is a marginal person. Because it is a marginalized group, it has a different hermeneutical framework than other people. Furthermore, it may not have the same theoretical framework as dominant people, but this means that it may be easier to identify the knowledge of the marginalized group. This epistemic advantage can be valuable to those marginalized groups, as their knowledge and values are not shared by the dominant group.
The standpoint theory argues that there is no such thing as an absolute standard of knowledge. This is a paradox because a person’s standpoint is not socially situated, but is, nonetheless, fundamentally situated. As a result, it contradicts the thesis of situated knowledge. By contrast, the standpoint theory claims that epistemic advantage is earned through a struggle for power. This argument suggests that the marginalized experiences reveal problems that need to be explained and can become research agendas, policy issues, and objectivity-maximizing questions.
There are many perspectives on the relationship between knowledge and power, but none of them posit that knowledge increases in value with power. Rather, knowledge is a privilege for those who have power over others. However, knowledge and power can increase each other, but not the other way around. So, it is crucial to understand how knowledge is distributed and the relationship between them. When a person has more power over another, the knowledge that he/she holds will be more valuable than the knowledge possessed by the other person.
In this study, researchers investigated the relationship between epistemic beliefs and vaccination intentions. They focused on university students, who have the potential to be instrumental in attaining herd immunity. The researchers used established measures of human values, epistemic beliefs, and vaccination intentions to assess the potential for herd immunity. The findings suggest that prosocial values can influence vaccination intentions, as well as vaccination intentions. This study was the first to explore these connections.
Second-wave standpoint theory also disassociates women from ahistorical, biological, and essentialist categories. These perspectives are more useful in situations in which women must conceal a part of their identity in order to pass as a scientist. It is important to note, however, that the second-wave standpoint theory also provides the same benefits for women. While women are denied the epistemic advantage that men hold, they can still obtain a certain degree of autonomy when it comes to thinking about their lives and making decisions.
Social change
In its quest to bring about positive social change, the MadCovid community possesses a number of advantages over other groups. For one, its membership consists of individuals who are themselves disabled, and therefore understand the shared challenges and opportunities. At the same time, its members have undergone decades of collaborative critical reflection, which has given them an intricate understanding of their shared situation. The Internet also provides the community with the speed and accessibility it needs to achieve its goals.
In addition to its founders’ experiences, MadCovid is also comprised of a number of members who have experienced various forms of mental illness, distress, and neurodiversity. This means that its members have extensive experience in activist work, as well as privileged access to evidence about mental illness in the UK. Members of MadCovid also have time to engage in collaborative critical reflection. The emergence of these two factors makes the movement an important tool for those seeking to make social change.
