Coronavirus (Covid19) Corner

[Marilyn]

Let’s hope that the WHO issue an order that every international traveller must carry an up to date vaccination certificate that is in just one format, world wide. ( or one format world wide, instantly recognisable and incorporated in passports).

[Stanley]

Ian's suggestion about hitting the the reboot button on schools and giving them another year is a good idea. I suspect the problem they see with that is that it means subsequent years will be late.
I was appalled yesterday when I heard a young primary school pupil being interviewed on Today about school was prompted to say if she had been mentally affected by the delays. It was a leading question and of course the girl than obliged by saying how awful it was.

[plaques]

I'm getting a little confused and more than a little concerned about the covid-19 numbers and lockdown, I haven't quite reached the paranoid stage but heading that direction. Of course its not just the covid but Trump, Boris and Brexit so in some respects it may be considered a perfectly normal state of mental fatigue for what we are going through.
My current musings are that both the NHS App and Johnson et al are saying one in three who are infected show no symptoms. We can now surmise that on top of the currently declared positive tests there are another third walking about spreading the virus. This will equally apply to those who have been vaccinated and released back into circulation. In effect there will always be a pool of people spreading the infection unless everybody is tested for active virus infection. Doing it piecemeal, teachers, school children, care homes etc will help but it would need an universal coordinated programme like the vaccine programme to really bottom it.

[Big Kev]

David Whipp has shared the following information in Facebook land. I've asked the question about vaccine availability at Barnoldswick Medical Centre as it's not mentioned.

20210126_090826.jpg

Update - Currently only Colne and Nelson...

[Stanley]

Thanks for that Kev. I shall be speaking to my diabetes clinic nurse this morning and will ask her the question then.
Like Ken I am finding the question of when weighing heavily on my mind. Onward and upward?

[plaques]

Thanks Kev. any update is welcome. What David Whipp has posted looks very much like the procedures mentioned in 'How to Vaccinate the World' More or Less Link Virtually everybody in the priority list has been brought to the centres for vaccination including those in care homes. Those less mobile will be dealt are later in the programme using the less temperature sensitive vaccines than the Pfizer.
It looks like Pendle are on top of the game and providing they get vaccine deliveries they should be applauded for the work they are doing.

[Tizer]

A friend of mine who lives in Kent tells me that anyone who is symptom free is being offered a covid test once a fortnight. That seems like a good plan.

It does, I wonder if there is enough resource for the whole country to adopt that. I know care workers and medical staff are regularly tested and there is pressure for school staff to be done regularly too.

I'm not convinced that's much help, except for collecting data and doing statistics. In real life you could get infected as you left the test site and you're most effective as a spreader in the first few days after infection. You can be spreading before you have symptoms. The testers should tell people that if they get a negative result they shouldn't assume they can then go and mingle with others. So the tests can be useful for picking up some infected people but they might be asymptomatic and have gone past the infectious spreading stage. It's all very complicated unfortunately!

[PanBiker]

I doubt they will ever do the vaccines at Barlick as it's not really a suitable venue. Another reason why we actually need a proper Health Centre in Barlick.

[Wendyf]

I managed to miss calls from Earby Surgery on both the house phone and my mobile this morning, we must have been between the house and the car though I don't know how I missed the mobile call. By the time I found it and listened to the answer message about arranging my vaccination it was too late, my place had been filled! I hope I don't go back to the bottom of the list. Talking to the surgery gave me the opportunity to ask if Col had been moved onto the vulnerable list and it seems he hadn't. Hopefully he will be given priority now.

[Big Kev]

Oh no, Wendy. Hopefully there's a 'catch up' list.

[Marilyn]

So sad to hear the news that UK has passed the 100,000 death toll mark.

[Stanley]

From what the nurse told me yesterday, there is a bureaucratic division into primary health care areas and we come under Colne. They have been told there will be no Barlick vaccinations except for care homes and housebound and I don't qualify for either of them so I will have to go to Colne and can have a slot any time I request it so I am talking to Susan about how we can manage this. The nurse said that the Barlick staff were upset about the decisions and agreed that one of the barriers was probably the adherence to the 15 minute check period.
I see we are at last almost world beating, in the number of deaths per head of population.

[Big Kev]

I see we are at last almost world beating, in the number of deaths per head of population.

I was just reading about that BBC Health and after the usual 'government bashing' the article goes on to say

But it must also be recognised that there are factors outside the control of the government - certainly in terms of its pandemic response - that have contributed to the high number of deaths.
One of the reasons the virus was able to take a hold and spread so quickly was because of geography and the fact the UK - and London in particular - is a global hub. Genetic analysis has shown the virus was brought into the UK on at least 1,300 separate occasions, mainly from France, Spain and Italy, by the end of March.
It was here before we knew it. That's not something Australia or New Zealand had to deal with on such a scale.
Density of population is also a factor. The UK is among the 10 most densely populated big nations - those with populations of more than 20 million. What is more, our cities are more inter-connected than they are in many places.
It meant the virus was able to seed everywhere quite quickly. Contrast this with Italy which saw the vast majority of cases in the north of the country in the first wave.
The ageing population also needs to be taken into account. Once you do this, and adjust for the size of the population - known as age-standardised mortality - deaths have risen, but not by as much as some of the headline figures suggest.

[Stanley]

All very reasonable and I agree with it but the bottom line is still 100,000 and another 50,000 expected as we dig our way out of the bunker.

[plaques]

Just finished Stanley's book 'Forgotten Voices of the Somme' I won't be be mention it in 'Good Reads' its far too harrowing but I will draw the comparison that the first day of this battle had 19,240 dead rising to 127, 000 at the end. The covid deaths are heading towards these numbers something we never thought we would see again.

[Tizer]

Plaques, thanks for that comparison. Another comparison is with number of deaths in the UK due to terrorism - about 4000 since 1970. The terrorists are now having their work done for them, more effectively and on the cheap. It's time we started treating the organisers of raves and other mass meetings during lockdown as terrorists - they are killing more people than the real terrorists have ever done in the UK.

Kev, I agree with the scientists and Labour in this article....
`Covid-19: 'Poor decisions' to blame for UK death toll, scientists say' LINK
"A legacy of poor decisions" by the UK before and during the pandemic led to one of the worst death rates in the world, scientists have said. Labour also criticised "monumental mistakes" by the prime minister in delaying acting on scientific advice over lockdowns three times.

Note Boris Johnson being quoted: "We truly did everything we could." That on an equal with some of Donald Trump's lies.

And Robert Jenrick said: "Ministers took the "best possible" expert advice." Yes mate, and then made the worse possible decisions! (You can tell what mood I'm in today... )

[PanBiker]

Our Jack and Jemma are back at work. Having said that they both say they feel tired, not surprising really. If it was me I would have stayed off at least another week. Anyway, Jemma's school have acknowledged this and she is working from home a much as possible. We have got them a bottle of Metatone to help them along, Sally and I used that after our three weeks of flu. I hope there are no long term consequences for either of them.

[Tripps]

Good news Ian. I've been thinking of them.


I listened to More or Less today, and they asked where people were getting infected. The TV coverage has been getting more graphic over recent days showing people who died just a short while after the interview. many were said to have been 'shielding'. If they did that properly - how did they become infected?

More or less is a difficult listen, (for me anyway) and crams a lot of information in. They mentioned supermarkets as a possible source, but (I think) they dismssed that as a theory. I'm still not chancing it. I think they said that transmission within a household was common, and outside the home less so. Be good to know more on the subject.

I've gone back to pessimistic mode recently. Jab on Saturday. Maybe that will cheer me up?

[plaques]

A rather tragic story. One of our Northumberland friends could no longer cope alone so entered a care home about a year ago somehow 3 weeks ago he contracted covid and was whisked off to hospital apparently made a recovery but then relapsed and died last thursday. Being a tight community Mrs P's cousin popped a note through to her neighbour's door telling him that 'Bill' had died. Unknown to her he had another friend called 'Bill'. Off he goes to Bill's house to give his condolences he is met by his daughter who thanks him for his visit and explains he died from covid last thursday and they haven't had time to tell many people. Potentially an embarrassing situation but which turned out to be a sad coincidence.

[PanBiker]

A coincidence and tragic nevertheless.

[chinatyke]

A serious question. If Covid initially came from bats in some remote cave in Yunnan via Wuhan Institute of Virology, is the worldwide bat population at risk of becoming carriers of the Covid-19 virus from human to bat transmission?

[Stanley]

Knowing the answer to questions like that doesn't change your chances of getting infected so don't worry about it over much China....

[Big Kev]

The WHO team, in Wuhan, are out of quarantine and can now start investigating the origins of the virus. 'Their research will rely upon evidence provided by Chinese officials'.

BBC News

[chinatyke]

The WHO team, in Wuhan, are out of quarantine and can now start investigating the origins of the virus. 'Their research will rely upon evidence provided by Chinese officials'.

Great!!

[Marilyn]

Should be a doddle. The Chinese say the virus started in America!