The little red line on the Covid test has gone....
But for those who think that this Covid experience is one that should be created with indifference, I really do not agree. It is is a horrible illness, and the long-term effects are dire.
I thought I was being cautious before this happens. I will be doubly so now. I am aware of how easy it is to be re-infected now. And I don't want to repeat the last week in a hurry.
Bit slightly more normal patterns of working are being resumed.
Thanks for reading this post.
You can share this post on social media of your choice by clicking these icons:
You can subscribe to this blog's daily email here.
And if you would like to support this blog you can, here:
do you still advocate a zero covid policy?
I have never advocated zero covid
I have advocated maximum mitigation
And any sane person would
By John Puntiss, a retired paediatrician and co-chair of KONP.
https://www.change.org/p/boris-johnson-don-t-scrap-free-covid-testing-and-isolation/u/30762996
Over 200,000 deaths from covid now. At the beginning of the pandemic 20,000 was thought to be too many.
You’ve cleared it pretty quickly, Richard. Some people continue to test positive for a couple of weeks. The government recommendations of 5 days isolation for adults and 3 days for children is a nonsense, as they are well aware.
I’m not really sure what the government and public health bodies are really thinking when it comes to the plans (or lack of plans) to deal with the ongoing waves of Covid infection. I understand that the public has become inured to tens of thousands of deaths each year from the virus due to the nonsense messaging that Covid is no worse than influenza, but the disruption to healthcare which is again seeing numbers waiting for treatment just isn’t sustainable, if we have to deal with multiple waves of infection each year.
Those in the UK government are obviously keen on privatising healthcare so cynically, you could say they want the NHS to collapse, but it’s not just our government which is following the same three wise monkeys approach to (not) deal with the effects of the ongoing pandemic. Plenty of others with different methods of funding their healthcare are just doing the bare minimum or less and hoping for the best.
And, of course, this doesn’t even consider longer-term effects to health or socially due to lost schooling, lost working time and so forth.
Hope you are fully recovered soon, Richard, and we’ll then have to prepare ourselves for the next wave of infections in a few months – probably from the BA 2.75 variant, by the looks of things.
I a, still being careful
The test is just encouragement
The long term is still there
Hunt is in LBC, pretending he cares for our health care.
So i wrote a thread to remind him of the harm he and his party, and Labour have caused to the Health of the Nation, the right to health of the population.
https://twitter.com/coreluminous/status/1550063797951467520?s=20&t=mi4D86G6__KJXUO0G3TCRw
I started by laying out a basic truth.
“Here;s a view.
The ‘profit’ of a Healthy Health Care system is best described as a healthier population, and rapid, effective treatment offered to people who become ill, who are vulnerable and deserve our full collective support.”
Then I carefully presented the facts that he is responsible for enhancing facilitating Wealth Extraction and undermining the NHS and the nations’ health.
Glad you are getting back to normal and hope you dont suffer the longer term issues. Imran, along with others seems to use ‘zero covid’ as some kind of accusation – probably linked to the hubris over China which has since gone quiet.
https://consortiumnews.com/2022/06/28/covid-19-chinas-death-toll-puts-us-to-shame/
But those of us, along with you Richard, trying to promote maximum mitigation may need to explore how far the virus might be suppressed. Infections so high – around a million even at low points and death rate of around 50K a year unacceptable – inhibits social interaction and the economy. If we could get infections down to a few thousand and keep it there using beefed up local tracking and tracing it would liberate consumers, business and the vulnerable who at present still have to shield, But is it feasible?
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Nh9G5h-tssqmcSNornNTWd53mryI7yKU/view?usp=sharing
https://www.bmj.com/content/378/bmj.o1793
So glad to hear you are more or less through your Covid, Richard. Good folk so often seem to be far too few.
(On Sunday I lost, Vanessa Rosenthal, playwright and actor and my brilliant and lovely partner of 12 years; not Covid – a rogue reaction to cancer immunotherapy.)
My sympathies Nigel
Go well, and take good care of yourself as you grieve
Just had a positive test myself. Second bout. So far I feel better than I did the first time, but it is early days.
And I though *I* was being careful. I hope all the maskless people on the crowded train earlier this week – including the ones who were coughing – appreciate that I was trying to protect them and myself, but I suspect they just thought I was a weirdo for bothering.
I know the feeling
It’s excellent news that you are through the first stage, Richard. I’ve appreciated what you have been able to write, even while deep in the throes, and am very much looking forward to your further thoughts as you continue to recover. I have a feeling that the next couple of months of Tory “leadership” campaigning are going to prove fruitful grounds for analytical dissection. Keep well.
Couldn’t agree more on it being a horrible illness, but what I’ve found startling is how different it can be from person to person. I’d heard this from various sources but I’ve now experienced it first hand. My wife had tested positive on the Monday (11th). I tested positive on the Thursday. We’d both felt the first effects on the evening before and for both of us day 1 was aching all over, fatigue, and a headache that felt like pressure inside as we’ll as being in a vice-like grip from the outside. However, from there on our Covid took a completely different path. Her primary symptom was a severe dry cough that lasted two days and then disappeared almost totally with aches and pains disappearing on day three. Mine has been the worse sore throat and ‘wet’ cough that I’ve ever had and that I’m sure I would not have been able to get through had it not been for the fact that I had some ‘proper’ painkillers left over from recuperating from an operation I had last year and taking them made it just possible to swallow and breath. That, and the fact that my worst day was Sunday. Had it been in the extreme heat of Monday or Tuesday I’m not sure I’d have got through without being hospitalised.
Anyway, here’s not the place to go into any more detail except to say that, like you, I’ve no wish to repeat this experience any time soon.
Ours is like that
I am now just fatigued – and focussing solely on work that has to be done
My wife much more chesty and sore throat
But I am now testing firmly clear – surprisingly
Did any of you watch the programme last night about vaccine deniers?
Even after being told that at one hospital in January there were 50 cases, of which 21 went to ICU, 20 of them had not been vaccinated. I think it was 13 who died, and none had been vaccinated. Not one of the seven people involved in the programme agreed to be vaccinated. They said they would think about it.
Staggering
Missed it, watching the football.
Were the deniers able to give rational reasons for refusing the vaccination? I’m quite glad I’ve had mine.
Not as far as I could see. There were conspiracy theorists in the group who had their ideas completely debunked. There was one lad who posted conspiracy on twitter; she said she had seen his tweets and he was very upset at that. There were a couple who didn’t wear masks, even in hospital, at which I was surprised. A few said they were concerned at the speed at which the vaccination was rolled out. The explanation was because the virus was so virulent, the labs stopped working on anything else and concentrated on that.
They were shown round the Oxford/AstraZeneca lab, watched how the tests were performed, saw everything anyone could hope to see to show that the vaccine was as safe as it could possibly be, demonstrated the probability of having the most common side effect of having the vaccine, and still not convinced enough to have one.
It’s worth watching.
What it convinced me of was that if I hadn’t had my two vaccinations before I caught covid, I would probably have died.
Can you imagine what the world would be like if African countries had anything other than a zero Ebola policy?
When Covid first appeared we did not know (and frankly we still do not know) the mortality rate of this disease or its mutations. Initial estimates were ~ 3% mortality – which implies 1.8 million in the UK. So at 200,000 we got off lightly.
The European and US reaction of anything other than a zero covid policy was short sighted, foolish and irresponsible. Anyone who says otherwise is motivated by something other than the wellbeing of the general population. Perhaps they are simply scared of effective government / the loss of freedom that ‘illiberal’ solutions imply .. but the cost of such ‘liberalism’ is huge.
The general population understood this – one reason the first UK lockdown was so effective. Had we taken the Chinese (and briefly Italian) approach and combined this with more effective regional or sub-regional travel restrictions we could have eliminated the virus – as they did in Melbourne with a large outbreak, and Perth with a smaller outbreak. Had all countries taken this approach then future generations – not just our generation – would have been spared the curse of covid.
Inter-generation inequity is the defining characteristic of our times. Covid is just one of many negative examples of what we are to bequeath to our grandchildren. Of course it’s not all bad news – there are many positives too. But I cannot help but feel that the west has failed on this one.
One of the (many) limitations of money is that is cannot capture inter-generational inequities. In the absence of ‘creditors yet to be born’, money only covers intra-generational claims. Only governmental constraints on the use of resources / the generation of waste / the spread of disease and public health – either outside of the market system or in combination with it – can protect those as yet unborn (and indeed those born but without power or resources).
I agree…
Our Governments, dominated by ‘interests’ rooted in Oligarchy dominance and wealth extraction are not using the powers of legislatures to protect the populations Right to Health.
https://www.hhrjournal.org/2020/11/the-right-to-health-in-times-of-pandemic-what-can-we-learn-from-the-uks-response-to-the-covid-19-outbreak/
This report in late 2011 lays out the basics of this in Health Care terms..
I would go further. I say that the kinds of policies that would protect and uphold a populations right to health are seen by the extant ruling class as ‘socialistic’ and as a threat to the ‘free market’ (Free Market as a Religious Dogma to mask the true nature of Wealth Extraction and Concentration across generations, or Wealth as a political hegemon..)
If they had succeeded in stopping the spread, in taking the kinds of action to accurately inform the, engage and support the whole population, especially the most vulnerable, it would have proven that ‘socialistic’ policies work much better than free market policies when it comes to the crunch…
just as they understand that confronting ‘externalised costs’ across the industrial system would alleviate most of the problems caused by pollution, environmental degradation and consequent climate disruption but would also eviscerate the rate at which wealth can be extracted as it would mean paying to prevent pollution, environmental degradation etc by redesigning industrial production processes at systemic level and this loss of wealth extraction is deemed unacceptable because the power of vast wealth as a political hegemon is in the wealth, not the ideas, the ideology, the mechanisms of the free market, which are largely bogus.
There’s a huge reckoning that must happen, if we are, as people, to get through the next 50 years, with degrees of humanity, peace and justice.
Just as MMT, UBI, Unionisation and of course proper wages (that respect workers time as valuable time out of a human life, irrespective of skill level) provides a mechanism to abolish poverty and is violently opposed by Wealth Extraction Factions in their pursuit of dominance…
For anyone interested and able to watch, there will be an indie-SAGE discussion at 1.30 today about the anniversary of “independence day ” as Johnson called it, and what we have learnt. You can log in on youtube. Can’t recall the last time I heard anything from government Sage. I doubt they will be celebrating it.
Something like 50,000 more COVID deaths in the last 12 months. That is about 10% of the annual number of deaths. Some freedom.
In, what two and a half years, in England, there have been over 1,000 COVID deaths in people in their 30s, nearly 3,000 people in their 40s, and nearly 8,000 in their 50s. Admittedly, most of the deaths have been among older age groups (not that we should be writing off people in their 60s or 70s or older, as if their lives do not matter) – but fully 6.5% of all people in their 90s – about one in fifteen – and 2.5% of those in their 80s – one in 40 – have died from this one infectious disease. And probably more due to undercounting in the early stages.
Hope you are ok
Thanks for your concern. Yesterday was the worst day so far, but the drugs are helping. I’ve been forced to sleep earlier and longer than usual, which is probably a good thing. I’m hoping I might be more or less back on form next week, but just taking each day as it comes.
Looks like Canada, Israel and New Zealand have bad outbreaks at the moment. Three countries, very distant from each other, with very different strategies. This thing really has not gone away at all.
I may need to invest in some better masks…
Ffp3s
I am exhausted now
But the work has just gone in
Now to relax
From the youtube by indie-sage. Another programme well worth watching, particularly for the graphics.
https://www.independentsage.org/a-seven-point-plan-to-suppress-covid-infections-and-reduce-disruptions/
Went to a Prom last night. Having recently got over Covid with relatively slight symptons, and seeing how it’s currently rampant and completely ignored by our so-called ‘government’, I wore one of my FFP3 masks on the train, tube, and the bar at the RAH. I took it off for most of the prom itself, I’ll admit, as it wasn’t too crowded up in the gallery, and their is a pretty efficient air conditioning system there.
My observation is that even on a really crowded tube, hardly anyone was wearing a mask. A clear example of an utter lack of leadership from the authorities. I spoke to an Italian man who was wearing a mask, and he said mask wearing is more prevalent there.
As for the deniers..I’m glad I didn’t watch it, it would have enraged me. it’s bad enough living with the reality of Truss and Sunak and their moronic party, and watching the long forecast climate breakdown occurring. I’ve sadly come to the conclusion that the best thing to happen with these clowns is that they become receipients of 2022 Darwin awards and therefore cease to bother the rest of us.