SARS CoV-2 coronavirus / Covid-19 (No tin foil hat silliness please)

Pogue Mahone said:
The irony being that ‘black mould’ was caused by over-prescription of medicines, specifically oral steroids. The risk is highest in diabetics/pre-diabetics.

Although your mum’s script doesn’t look too egregious. Mainly vitamins and OTC stuff which probably won’t be much help but also unlikely to harm. I dunno what “Dolo” and “Rinifol” is though.
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Dolo is just paracetamol. Rinifol is anti-nausea/diarrhoea, not sure if it was because the antibiotic has that side-effect or because of covid symptoms.
 
berbatrick said:
Dolo is just paracetamol. Rinifol is anti-nausea/diarrhoea, not sure if it was because the antibiotic has that side-effect or because of covid symptoms.
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Ah. Ok. Does look quite an array of pills to give nothing more than symptomatic relief. It’s always interesting to me that prescribing choices (which are supposed to be completely objective and evidence based) has obvious cultural differences. In the US you’re also likely to be prescribed an absolute smorgasbord of pills for illnesses where UK/Irish doctors would usually just recommend paracetamol.
 
massi83 said:
There's no risk about it. Your hospitalisations are going down. Your ICU numbers haven't been this low since July.
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But just over three weeks ago every top scientist in the country was begging the government to tighten the restrictions or even have a lockdown before Christmas.

To go from that to no restrictions in the space of a 5-6 week period seems reckless.

I appreciate that we all want this pandemic to end right now, but surely the wise move would be to extend the plan B measures to the beginning of March (end of winter) and in the mean time drive the infection and hospitalisation rates right down to take the pressure off the NHS?
 
Pogue Mahone said:
Ah. Ok. Does look quite an array of pills to give nothing more than symptomatic relief. It’s always interesting to me that prescribing choices (which are supposed to be completely objective and evidence based) has obvious cultural differences. In the US you’re also likely to be prescribed an absolute smorgasbord of pills for illnesses where UK/Irish doctors would usually just recommend paracetamol.
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Ya, not just the number of pills, even the dosage is much higher in India. This was the inhaler I was on, and that dosage literally doesn't exist in the US.
On the flip side, based on r/asthma, steroid+LABA inhaler+nasal spray+montelukast seems to be a global prescription.
 
Pogue Mahone said:
Ah. Ok. Does look quite an array of pills to give nothing more than symptomatic relief. It’s always interesting to me that prescribing choices (which are supposed to be completely objective and evidence based) has obvious cultural differences. In the US you’re also likely to be prescribed an absolute smorgasbord of pills for illnesses where UK/Irish doctors would usually just recommend paracetamol.
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That’s just about money though, right?

The US healthcare system is monumentally fecked up because of the money flying around in it and a combination of pharma sales reps and “ask your doctor about <insert drug>” adverts on the tv will surely lead to all kinds of pointless prescriptions.
 
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Garethw said:
But just over three weeks ago every top scientist in the country was begging the government to tighten the restrictions or even have a lockdown before Christmas.

To go from that to no restrictions in the space of a 5-6 week period seems reckless.

I appreciate that we all want this pandemic to end right now, but surely the wise move would be to extend the plan B measures to the beginning of March (end of winter) and in the mean time drive the infection and hospitalisation rates right down to take the pressure off the NHS?
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At that time there was uncertainty about how high hospitalisations will go with omicron. Now we actually know. You are past your peak. I am not against WFH or masks, but most of the 20 year olds have had omicron already, no reason not to open night clubs for instance.
 
Beachryan said:
Curious if anyone has had similar: my wife had it - with a really high 'ct' score I think it's called - and we lived normally together for the whole period. I never tested positive nor had a symptom.

Does that mean I've likely been 'exposed' - surely?

Same deal with our son, though kids can burn through it so quickly it's hard to tell.

We're coming out of our 2.5 week quarantine and I'm weighing up going to the office.
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We use the Ct score to assess how contagious a patient is, so a CT score of >35 means we remove them from isolation in the Covid unit and place them next to other patients in the general ICU without risk of them exposing others to it.

Very simplified, the PCR is a process where repeated duplications of the virus genome allows us to detect it in a sample, and a Ct score of 35 means the sample has gone through 35 duplications before being able to be spotted.

Therefore, if your wife had a very high Ct value upon diagnosis (ie over 35) then it's logical that you didn't get it from her as her viral load was very low at the time.
 
Anustart89 said:
We use the Ct score to assess how contagious a patient is, so a CT score of >35 means we remove them from isolation in the Covid unit and place them next to other patients in the general ICU without risk of them exposing others to it.

Very simplified, the PCR is a process where repeated duplications of the virus genome allows us to detect it in a sample, and a Ct score of 35 means the sample has gone through 35 duplications before being able to be spotted.

Therefore, if your wife had a very high Ct value upon diagnosis (ie over 35) then it's logical that you didn't get it from her as her viral load was very low at the time.
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Ah thanks, I fear I may have gotten the score backwards, she was a 25. Apols, we don't totally get what is 'good' and 'bad'. Maybe I just got lucky.
 
Rado_N said:
That’s just about money though, right?

The US healthcare system is monumentally fecked up because of the money flying around in it and a combination of pharma sales reps and “ask your doctor about <insert drug>” adverts on the tv will surely lead to all kinds of pointless prescriptions.
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Oxycontin agrees
 
Rado_N said:
That’s just about money though, right?

The US healthcare system is monumentally fecked up because of the money flying around in it and a combination of pharma sales reps and “ask your doctor about <insert drug>” adverts on the tv will surely lead to all kinds of pointless prescriptions.
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Basically. Although a lot of it is driven by consumer expectations. The whole private healthcare model incentivises both parties to over-medicalise. The physicians are more likely to order unnecessary investigations and do unnecessary procedures and the punters will have much higher expectations from their “personal physician” so won’t settle with being told there’s nothing that can be done for their viral illness. I think that’s changing a bit recently, since the insurers started tightening their belts.
 
Two years and its finally got us. My wife just tested positive after a few days of feeling shit, she's in her third trimester so exceptionally glad to be vaccinated.

I'm negative so far and thankfully with current rules here still allowed to go out.
 
11101 said:
Two years and its finally got us. My wife just tested positive after a few days of feeling shit, she's in her third trimester so exceptionally glad to be vaccinated.

I'm negative so far and thankfully with current rules here still allowed to go out.
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Sorry to hear that and I wish her / you all the best.
 
11101 said:
Two years and its finally got us. My wife just tested positive after a few days of feeling shit, she's in her third trimester so exceptionally glad to be vaccinated.

I'm negative so far and thankfully with current rules here still allowed to go out.
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Good luck and hope she gets better soon
 
Is there infection/hospitalisation/death data from the UK broken down by race?
 
berbatrick said:
Is there infection/hospitalisation/death data from the UK broken down by race?
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Here’s a good analysis of deaths.
  • After adjusting for region, population density, socio-demographic and household characteristics, the raised risk of death involving COVID-19 for people of Black ethnic background of all ages together was 2.0 times greater for males and 1.4 times greater for females compared with those of White ethnic background.
  • Males of Bangladeshi, Pakistani and Indian ethnic background also had a significantly higher risk of death involving COVID-19 (1.5 and 1.6 times, respectively) than White males once region, population density, socio-demographic and household characteristics were accounted for; whilst for females in Bangladeshi or Pakistani, Indian, Chinese and Mixed ethnic groups the risk of death involving COVID-19 was equivalent to White females.
 
Pogue Mahone said:
Here’s a good analysis of deaths.
  • After adjusting for region, population density, socio-demographic and household characteristics, the raised risk of death involving COVID-19 for people of Black ethnic background of all ages together was 2.0 times greater for males and 1.4 times greater for females compared with those of White ethnic background.
  • Males of Bangladeshi, Pakistani and Indian ethnic background also had a significantly higher risk of death involving COVID-19 (1.5 and 1.6 times, respectively) than White males once region, population density, socio-demographic and household characteristics were accounted for; whilst for females in Bangladeshi or Pakistani, Indian, Chinese and Mixed ethnic groups the risk of death involving COVID-19 was equivalent to White females.
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It's our oppressed women killing us with all that cooking. Bloody long game. :(
 
Just seen the UK government's latest R rate for London is 0.7 to 1.1. Growth percentage per day is -8 to -1. :cool:

England rate is 1.1 to 1.5.

Come on Laaaandon!! :devil:
 
Dumbstar said:
Just seen the UK government's latest R rate for London is 0.7 to 1.1. Growth percentage per day is -8 to -1. :cool:

England rate is 1.1 to 1.5.

Come on Laaaandon!! :devil:
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The official HSA stats are always lagging indicators because they only run with finalised data,

If you look at the "nowcast" stuff you get:


Which basically mirrors the current case number falls.

Though when you dig into the numbers you can see the same kind of pattern we had back in October/November for delta - school-aged catching covid, parents catching it in sympathy.
England.medium.png
 
Stanley Road said:
Why did you have one?
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My wife had a sore throat and someone at her gym tested positive recently and I drove her to the drive through test centre and thought we might as well both get tested as we are triple vaxxed, so could have it and be asymptomatic (doubt it TBH). I was expecting the nose bit of the test to be annoying, irritating or painful but it was barely a tickle. Which pleased me.

Rapid tests are both hard to get and expensive with PCR tests free.
 
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11101 said:
Two years and its finally got us. My wife just tested positive after a few days of feeling shit, she's in her third trimester so exceptionally glad to be vaccinated.

I'm negative so far and thankfully with current rules here still allowed to go out.
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Hope she recovers quickly.
 
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