vaughan45

Cheque book or debit card modelling - he's had it all built by a professional model maker! Too afraid to mention it before.

Slightly sore arm, occasional hot flush and feeling a bit spaced out, the only side effects here, 36 hours after having the Astra/Zenica vaccine. Nowhere near the level of side effects I get when having my annual infusion of Zoledronic acid for a bone related condition.

Although the health check is fairly basic I am aware GP practices are able to investigate things further / expand the included tests for an individual if there is clinical need. If you are overweight or obese this will raise your perceived health risk as calculated by the algorithms used in clinical systems.

Had my jab today at a centre being run as a collaboration by a number of our local GP practices and was pleasantly surprised how well organised it was with most of those except the clinicians being volunteers. No queuing, wait in the car until you are called and then in and out in under 10 minutes. My wife is now waiting for group 5 patients to be called in our area.

'Normal' means something different to each individual - Discuss Unfortunately a 'return to normal' probably means a return to complacency. There are possibly aspects of the old normal that should be avoided!

I seem to recall when the East-West link was included in the Cameron government's rail proposals it was supposed to be electric, as it would link to the WCML, Midland Lines which were due to be electrified to Sheffield, ECML, Cambridge electrics - however electrification was the first part of the proposal to be abandoned.

That may not really help the situation as Johnny comes to school with Covid-19, teacher doesn't get it, but Johnny passes it to Joe & Jill who take it home and infect their families and their contacts. The vector of transmission in the school are the children, yes protect the teaching staff, but you first need to stop the spread by ensuring all adults are vaccinated and that the vaccine continues to work. I believe that none of the vaccines so far approved is licenced for use in under 12s.

Without wishing to be a prophet of doom, possibly not, as no vaccine gives total protection although it may reduce the severity and then there is the potential for other mutants appearing as the virus adapts to it's 'new normal'. Which is why the flu vaccine is given annually and doesn't always provide protection if the boffins haven't guessed that 'seasons movers and shakers' correctly. Still think regular hand washing, masks and social distancing will be with us for a while...

Unfortunately there is one key data element that is missing from the vaccination data that is not being made public (for good reason). Whilst London is clearly at present the lowest achieving to-date, it is not clear whether this is due to poor availability of vaccine, limited numbers of suitably qualified people to give the jab due to the tremendous health pressures in the capital or whether there is a higher level of refusal here. Refusal could be due to socio-ethnicity, religious or other reasons combined with always present number of anti-vaxxers. I do of course fully understand why the government is not going to make this information available yet, as it would undermine the campaign, but the level is important because as English politics is invariably London centric, any slippage here could delay the slow incremental loosening of restrictions across the country as a whole, even if the tiered approach was re-adopted. Whilst it wouldn't be ethical, from a hypothetical point of view I would look at managing the new case data to ensure that the reported rates of infection made public don't decline too rapidly, just enough to ensure that hope is given, whilst still encouraging people to have the vaccination when they are able and keep the lockdown pressure on. The data could always be corrected later and blamed on a 'systems or administrative error'. Having spent quite a number of years in public sector Informatics, I treat the public Covid-19 data with a note of caution, particularly as I know much of it is not created in an NHS 'super-computer', but extracted from a large number of individual and differing systems and then manipulated by both automated and manual methods (e.g. Excel spreadsheets) to arrive at the final dashboards. That is not meant as a criticism, as I think it is amazing the volume of data being made available daily in very difficult circumstances.

Agreed - the question I keep being asked is 'If your concerned about catching Covid-19 why do you keep have packages delivered?'

I guess the key difficulty is deciding who in the older generations is 'prosperous'. You will also need to take account of those who are already helping younger generations within their own families (to avoid a lot of legal issues this is often done informally) and those who are injecting their income / savings into the wider economy by spending rather than purely saving to form an inheritance at death. Perhaps we need a 'spend out to help out' scheme, although given that we manufacture very little in the UK, much of the money spent is likely to only benefit big business with a little going to a few warehouse and delivery staff. The 'very prosperous' will no doubt already have their financial assets safely secured away.

Sort of - some activities were were concurrent, I will leave you to guess which ones.

Yep - designing, wiring, building, painting, photographing, drinking, sh*gging - enjoyment is a many headed hydra

Personal freedom an illusionary concept - Discuss? Nope - at the moment my mind is on what to build on the 4' x 2' micro baseboard I seem to have acquired

Presumably those who believe Covid-19 is only a mild illness will not be requiring a vaccination then, when their turn comes. I was going to say this is useful as it ensures those doses won't be wasted, but unfortunately it means they could still be a source of infection for others.

Just to clarify - The figure I quote is based on a personal risk assessment by a consultant for myself taking into account my respiratory and other conditions, so has not been misquoted - It came as a result of a particularly candid telephone consultation part way through lockdown one and was something of a shock. For the population at large the risk will vary according to an individuals own circumstances, although I agree that that when you take an average across all age groups, socio-economic groups etc. the risk is quoted as 5%.

When you have been advised by your respiratory consultant that if you catch COVID-19 you have a 95% chance of hospitalisation and a similarly high risk of death if admitted, everything becomes a potential carrier.

Yes always do. When we lived in the home counties we used a private service that cleaned the bins shortly after they were emptied. Since moving to wildest Norfolk, the pressure washer comes out on a weekly basis.

I have been spraying our bins with a disinfectant / detergent mix concocted by SWMBO each time they have been emptied.

Very probably, as believe domestic cats and dogs can act as carriers too. So possibly it could be transferred to you from someone petting your pet before you do.

interesting to note today that the Welsh 1st Minister at length and our PM more briefly at the beginning of this evening's presser both seem to be saying that supermarkets / shops now seem to be a bigger source of Covid-19 transmission. Whilst this may be partly due to laxness by both customers and shops themselves, Boris even stressed that you should only be touching what you intend to buy. Whilst I am aware that the virus does survive for some time outside of the body, particularly on hard surfaces, it was always stated that its survival time on other surfaces was not an issue (which I never actually believed, given that the original Shielding instructions stated you should wipe down or wash shopping and quarantine post etc. for 72 hours). Has anyone seen any research that extended survival is one of the reasons for the Kent variant transmitting more easily?

One wonders if this Brazilian variant has contributed to the Chinese vaccination the Brazilians are giving only having around 50.4% effectiveness? - but then again possibly not.

If you've nothing wrong you have nothing to fear, if you have something to hide you shouldn't be here