Category Archives: current affairs

current affairs, medical

Monkeypox 6. Quick Updates

This is really going to be just a quick few updates of some of the salient features I spotted in the last few days.

The headline message remains: The risk is low so don’t be concerned, but do be vigilent.

Illness & Precautions

  1. Infection during pregnancy can lead to miscarriage. [1]
  2. A child’s temperature is likely to be higher with monkeypox, and they may complain of backache, lower leg aches, chills, and very tender glands around their neck. The blisters are bigger with monkeypox (cf. chickenpox). [2]
  3. People with monkeypox have been told to avoid contact with their pets for three weeks amid concerns the animals could become infected and pass the virus on to other people. However the risk of someone passing monkeypox to their pet is low and no cases of monkeypox have ever been suspected or reported in pets in the UK. [3]
  4. People who have tested positive for the virus and their close contacts are being told to isolate at home for 21 days. They should avoid contact with other people until all lesions – or blisters – have healed and scabs have dried off. [4]
  5. Anyone testing positive is being told to abstain from sex while they have symptoms, and then use condoms for 8 weeks as a precaution. [4]
  6. Confirmed cases and their close contacts should take extra care if they need to leave the house to see a doctor or other health worker. [4]

Epidemiology

  1. Health officials are reporting that the current monkeypox outbreak is mostly affecting younger men in London. Although anyone can contract the virus, 111 of 183 cases** in England are in men who have sex with men. In England, 86% of those infected live in London and only two are women. Most are aged 20 to 49. [5]
    (** This was a couple of days ago and the numbers have increased since then. The UK government regularly publishes the latest figures etc. [11])
  2. People aged 50 and above are likely to be immune (they’re more likely to have had a smallpox vaccination) but the under-50s are more susceptible. [7]
  3. The recent outbreak of monkeypox is being linked to events taking place in Spain and Belgium, according to a leading advisor to the WHO. And the authorities are investigating possible links between a recent Gay Pride event in the Canary Islands, which drew 80,000 people, and cases at a Madrid sauna. [6]
  4. Experts in Africa have warned that monkeypox could change from a regionally widespread zoonosis to a globally relevant infectious disease. The virus may be filling the ecological and immunological niche once occupied by the smallpox virus now that smallpox vaccination has ceased. [1]
  5. Which means this was an outbreak waiting to happen after the end of global smallpox vaccination more than 40 years ago. [7]
  6. There’s unlikely to be the same “explosive growth” of infections into the general population that was witnessed with Covid. However the outbreak could continue for several months as contact tracing slows but does not stop transmission. [7]
  7. Scientists are working through how the disease came to flare up in so many countries in such a short space of time. Many suspect that monkeypox was circulating at low levels, undetected, in the UK or Europe for several years before it reached the MSM community and flared up. [8]
  8. Genetic studies on monkeypox viruses taken from people in the ongoing outbreak show a close resemblance to the virus that reached the UK, Israel and Singapore from Africa in 2018 and 2019. They all have a common ancestor which probably dates back to 2019. [8]
  9. Data from the Democratic Republic of the Congo in the early-1980s and mid-2010s suggest the effective reproduction numbers at those times were 0.3 and 0.6, respectively – meaning each infected person passed the virus to fewer than one person in those populations, on average. [1]
  10. DNA viruses like these are a lot larger and more complicated than RNA viruses like Coronaviruses. Coronaviruses are among the largest RNA viruses known, at about 30,000 base pairs, but things like monkeypox are up over 200,000 bp. [9]

Zoonotic Concerns

  1. The infection can be spread by animals, and pet owners have been urged to “manage exposed pets and prevent the disease from being transmitted to wildlife”. [10]
  2. The EU has warned that the zoonotic transfer to humans could spill over yet again from humans to other mammals, potentially making monkeypox endemic in Europe. That’s a real concern, since we know the disease can be carried by a variety of small mammals. But what we don’t know is the likelihood of humans passing it on to animals, or the disease getting established among those animal populations in the wild. [9]
  3. Some of our most troublesome infectious disease threats – think Ebola, or Nipah, or coronaviruses, and now monkeypox – are disproportionately zoonotic diseases. [1]

References

[1] https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/what-we-know-about-the-rise-in-monkeypox-cases-worldwide/ [£££]
[2] https://www.thisislocallondon.co.uk/news/national/uk-today/20163472.uk-monkeypox-outbreak-tell-difference-chickenpox-monkeypox/
[3] https://www.theguardian.com/science/2022/may/27/monkeypox-patients-contact-pets-uk
[4] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-61640196
[5] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-61660180
[6] https://www.thisislocallondon.co.uk/news/national/uk-today/20160206.monkeypox-outbreak-sex-raves-spain-belgium-may-blame/
[7] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/may/24/monkeypox-outbreak-was-waiting-to-happen-say-scientists
[8] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/may/25/monkeypox-may-have-been-circulating-in-uk-for-years-scientists-say
[9] https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/now-monkeypox
[10] https://www.thisislocallondon.co.uk/news/national/uk-today/20162530.monkeypox-pet-owners-urged-manage-exposed-pets-uk-cases-rise/
[11] https://www.gov.uk/government/news/monkeypox-cases-confirmed-in-england-latest-updates

current affairs

Elections

Many parts of the UK have local council elections in a month’s time. Don’t think it matters? Well here’s a quick reminder why it does matter and why you should vote at every given opportunity.

If you fail to vote undesirables (what ever your value of “undesirable”) are more likely to get elected … and of course your voice can’t be heard.

current affairs

One of My Rare Forays into Current Affairs

OK, so Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe is on her way home to the UK having been released from 6 years detention in Iran. And let’s not forget that Anoosheh Ashoori has also been released and is non this way back to the UK.

Of course this is tremendous news for them and their families, at which we should rejoice.

But as always there is undoubtedly more to the story than we’re being told. So …

Q. Why are they released now?
A. Because the UK finally paid the almost £400M which Iran claimed it was owed.

Q. So why did we pay this money now, when it could have been paid years ago?
A. We now want to have friendly relations with Iran.

Q. But why would we suddenly want to be Iran’s friend?
A. Because the UK wants Western sanctions against them lifted.

Q. Why?
A. Very simply because we want their oil; oil which they currently can’t sell in the West.

You see just as with Kuwait many years ago, it all revolves around oil (and ultimately corporate greed). As Clare Short memorably remarked when Iraq invaded Kuwait many years ago: If the Kuwaitis grew carrots, no-one would care. So with Iran, my friends.

Boris Johnson needs oil (and gas) to keep the country running – to Hell with climate change – now the Russian (and Ukrainian) supply is effectively cut off.

What a cynical move, when we could (and should) have gotten them both freed years ago. Words fail me to describe my contempt for this government and its immediate predecessors.

current affairs, medical

Why are GPs Leaving the NHS?

Dr Clare GeradaEarlier this week there was a long read article in the Guardian by Dr Clare Gerada, a senior GP and former chair of the Royal College of General Practitioners. In the article Dr Gerada draws on her own experience to show how the GP’s role has changed in the last 30 years. No wonder the NHS is haemorrhaging GPs because it is not a pretty tale.

“In my 30 years as a GP, the profession has been horribly eroded”

We should be very worried, because we are clearly not getting the healthcare most of us would want, or expect.

current affairs, medical, ramblings

More Covid Stupidity?

So our pathetic government appear to have decided that all Covid-19 restrictions will be removed in two weeks time, as part of the plan to save Boris’s skin. Basically they seem to be saying that Covid is over, the case numbers are falling rapidly, there’s no longer any need to isolate, and we can all go back to normal. [1,2] Essentially this says “we don’t care; go back to normal; if you get Covid well tough luck, but it is now only a cold so continue going to work and spreading the disease further”.

Let’s look at this.

  1. Of course the government reported case numbers are falling; they’re designed to. People are being urged to go back to work, and testing is not being pushed. There is now no requirement to get a confirmatory PCR test following a positive LFT; and there’s no requirement to log the result of a LFT; so testing has dropped off a cliff – people just aren’t bothering. So as the government reports only confirmed positive tests, of course their numbers are falling.

  2. However this does not accord with data from the Office of National Statistics (ONS; a government body) who do random sampling of the population. Nor does it agree with the data from the Zoe Covid Study, who track reports from their 4 million subscribers. [3,4,5] The Zoe study is showing rates still incredibly high at around 200K/day (as it was at the beginning of January) and the ONS data is tracking this fairly closely. That means around 1 in 25 people currently have Covid [5] and anything up to 10% of those are re-infections [3,5].

But it is worse than this …

  1. Going back to normal, means no testing and no isolation. So people will be walking around with Covid as they think they have a bad cold (or are even asymptomatic), they’ll keep travelling and going to work/school, and spreading infection. Many will be forced back to work as many employers won’t tolerate time off sick with a cold (which is in itself stupid, but part of the “work at all costs” ethic).

  2. More people walking about spreading infection means that the number of cases will rise, as will hospitalisations and deaths. And because there’s no testing the government won’t know, until hospitalisations, deaths or school absences start climbing out of control. But by then it is too late; the genie is out of the bottle. (Remember that hospitalisations and deaths lag behind infection by 2, 4 or even more weeks.)

  3. That in turn puts the vulnerable at even greater risk. And many vulnerable people (like me) are feeling even more that they’re condemned to “house arrest” because they dare not risk going out and getting infected.

  4. It also means more children off school, or having their education impacted because their teachers are sick.

  5. And the higher the rate of infection, the higher the number of cases of Long Covid which will severely impact the patient’s life for … well we don’t know how long!

  6. More infection also means the virus has even greater opportunities to mutate. That’s the way evolution works. These new variants may be less or more infectious, and/or cause more or less severe infection. And again we wouldn’t know, because there’s no testing.

  7. All this is compounded in that immunity wanes. We know that the good immunity provided following two vaccinations was falling off rapidly after 6 months [7]; hence the booster programme. But it does now seem that immunity provided by boosters falls off rapidly too, such that someone like me who had their booster in mid-October (17 weeks ago) now has almost no benefit from it [6]; I’m back where I was last June with a risk of around 4 times the norm [8] (and I’m by no means in the extra-super-mega-vulnerable range). We seem to be needing a new booster every 3 months or so, but there appears to be no plan for this – indeed the current booster programme has effectively stalled [3].

  8. According to the BBC “The law will be replaced with guidance … and for example people will be urged not to go to work if they have Covid” [2]. Frankly the government can provide as much guidance, urging and recommendation as it likes, but people are going to take little notice: they need to work and their employers aren’t going to tolerate high levels of absence.

Is it any wonder the vulnerable and the disabled are worried. They feel that the government doesn’t care about them and wants them out of sight and out of (their) mind. (From a personal perspective, friends are going to increasingly not understand of one’s avoidance of social gatherings etc.)

I have seen a number of respected scientists, including some members of Independent SAGE [9], suggesting that the government’s proposed action is nothing less than “criminal negligence”. We don’t know what is round the corner in terms of new variants, so they could well come back and bite us in the bum at any time. And when it does the consequences are going to be a direct result of yet further government failure.

Whether it is actually “criminally negligent” only a court could decide, but I would certainly class it as totally stupid and intensely unethical.

[1] Guardian; 09/02/2022; https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/feb/09/covid-rules-axed-england-is-pandemic-end-really-in-sight
[2] BBC News; 09/02/2022; https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-60319947
[3] Independent SAGE; 04/02/2022; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=21TKKKFfGYo
[4] Zoe Covid Update; 03/02/2022; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MUfjJ1z-a6s
[5] Zoe Covid Update; 10/02/2022; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z2Zm9OcULDs
[6] Telegraph; 24/12/2021; https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/12/24/fourth-jabs-possible-covid-booster-immunity-will-fall-millions/
[7] University of Edinburgh; 21/12/2021; https://www.ed.ac.uk/news/2021/covid-19-vaccine-protection-wanes-three-months
[8] QCovid Risk Calculator; https://qcovid.org/
[9] Independent SAGE; https://www.independentsage.org/

current affairs

Barcodes on Postage Stamps

Most people in the UK will have seen recent Christmas stamps with a barcode, which were part of a trial.

Royal Mail have now announced that all their standard definitive stamps (that’s the plain, non-commemorative ones) and Christmas stamps will now have a barcode. Like so …

The idea is that we scan the barcodes using the Royal Mail app and we’ll eventually be able to watch videos, information about services, or birthday messages and other greetings from senders. Currently the only available video has been created for Royal Mail by animation studio Aardman, and features Shaun the Sheep. Further videos are planned to be released during 2022.

Beware: non-barcoded definitive and Christmas stamps will remain valid only until January 2023. Although there will be a scheme to trade them in for new models.

But, Oh dear! I foresee a whole new genre on Tik-Tok, Instagram and doubtless elsewhere. Be afraid; be very afraid!

amusements, current affairs, ramblings

Predictions for 2022

Once again this year I’ve brought my crystal ball out of retirement and asked it, and my dowsing pendulum, to help me guess what may happen during 2022.

Prognostication has been difficult again this year because of all the continuing unknowns and variables. This is due in large part to the Covid-19 situation, but also the on-going fall-out from Brexit and a dysfunctional UK government.

As before, I’ve divided the predictions into sections: General, World, UK, and Personal. Various items are redacted (although I have them documented) as some might be especially sensitive.

Disclaimer. I remind you that these are just my ideas of what could happen; they’re based solely on hunches and gut feel; I have no inside knowledge, I haven’t been studying the form, and I have a success rate of about 20%. So if you base any decision on any of this I will take no responsibility for your wanton act of idiocy or its consequences.

General

  1. The first half of year is likely to be relatively quiet; but the second half could be turbulent.
  2. Watch out for travel delays and general buggeration during weeks 18-20, 34-38, 38-41 (possibly Covid related), 41.
  3. Also watch out for change around the time of eclipses, especially in areas where they are visible. This year we have:
    • 30/04: Partial Solar Eclipse visible in S Pacific, S America, Antarctica
    • 15-16/05: Total Lunar Eclipse visible in N America, S America, Antarctica, W Africa, SW Europe
    • 25/10: Partial Solar Eclipse visible in Europe, SW Asia, Arabia
    • 07-08/11: Total Lunar Eclipse visible in Arctic, Pacific, NE Russia, NW Canada
  4. There are Supermoons on 14/06 & 13/07. These should herald good news.

World

  1. A number of international treaties are likely to be broken in the second half of the year.
  2. There’s an international incident associated with the Winter Olympics; possibly involving the death of a competitor.
  3. There’s a Republican landslide in the US mid-term elections.
    This allows Trump to resurface as a serious contender for US Presidency in 2024.
  4. Macron is re-elected as French President, but by a small margin.
  5. Ukraine is reabsorbed into Russia despite international condemnation.
  6. There’s a military coup in Chile.
  7. Japan starts dumping the tritium contaminated water from the Fukushima nuclear site into sea – without telling anyone this has started; in fact it may have been happening for over a year.
  8. There are continuing, and aggressive, clampdowns on freedom of speech and protest across the world.
  9. At least one country votes to leave the EU.
  10. Three countries announce plans to go cash free by 2025.
  11. In good news, global wine production increases by at least 20%, mostly in the Southern Hemisphere.
  12. Covid-19 is here to stay.
    Another deadly Covid variant emerges just as Delta & Omicron are being defeated.
    Covid variants will start to be named in Hebrew or Chinese.
  13. The first “all flu” vaccine is available and it is combined in the Covid vaccine.
    It’s in Phase III trials this year, so won’t be available for a while yet.
  14. Nevertheless anti-vaxxers become more strident and aggressive as they gain increasing support.
    The number of unvaccinated (for all diseases) is causing major medical and public health issues.
  15. There’s a major infrastructure issue, probably affecting several countries, possibly due to a cyberattack or (more likely?) a large solar storm.
  16. At least one major space mission fails; maybe ISS or Ariane 6, or something else.
  17. There are several high impact astronomical/cosmological events; all due to things previously unknown science.
  18. There’s a major earthquake in the Himalayas.
  19. There’s a major volcanic eruption in Philippines, Papua New Guinea, or Iceland.
  20. This will be another hot and wet year, probably the hottest ever.
  21. Deaths: Dalai Lama, Nancy Pelosi, both Popes, George W Bush, Bill Clinton, Jimmy Carter, Angela Merkel, Aung San Suu Kyi.

UK

  1. It is likely the men in grey suits will remove Boris as PM.
    However there’s no prospect of an early general election.
  2. Sinn Féin gain control of Stormont.
  3. Recovery is slower than expected as Covid doesn’t go away.
    GDP will increase by a maximum of 2% as a result.
  4. Road & rail infrastructure spend has to be significantly reduced due to economic shortfalls.
  5. Bank of England interest rate rises to between 1% and 2%.
    Mortgage rates increase significantly but savings rates remain stagnant.
  6. Fuel duty is reduced to stimulate recovery, but at the expense of relaxing “net zero” climate targets.
  7. The State Pension triple lock is removed permanently.
  8. Continuing supply chain problems due to the on-going effects of Brexit, Covid, lack of lorry drivers and a lack of key workers; there’s no resolution in sight and food shortages remain a possibility.
  9. Supply chain and interest rates drive an increase in inflation to between 5% and 10%.
    Meat, fish, fruit & veg all increase by 20% to 25% overall.
    Gas price rises by 50% compared with YE2021 – partly as a ploy to make people switch away from gas.
    Electricity prices rise by 25%.
  10. There is continuing disruption to movement of goods between Northern Ireland and the UK mainland.
    Consequently there’s continuing discord between UK and EU.
  11. The government continues to try to reform TfL and refuse further financial support.
    Bus and tube services are cut back.
  12. HS2 costs rise by at least 30%.
  13. Covid cases remain stubbornly high; averagely on-going 400 deaths/week and 100K cases/week.
    A major rise in Covid cases in January/February due to Omicron variant and Christmas/New Year super-spreader events.
    And another spike in September/October.
    Everyone will need another vaccine booster jab, probably starting in late Spring or early Summer.
  14. There’s further significant rationalisation in the supermarket sector.
  15. The government moves to further criminalise prostitution and recreational drugs.
  16. There may well be a significant event (possibly a disaster) somewhere in Thames Estuary roughly north of Westgate-on-Sea.
  17. Deaths: The Queen, Frank Field, Stephen Fry, George Alagiah, George Monbiot, Piers Corbyn, George Galloway, Dennis Skinner, Andrew Marr

Personal
Five items, including possible deaths redacted from here as the content is bound to be sensitive to people I know. However these items are documented in my files and will be tracked.

Obviously I shall try to keep track and will hope to publish the results at the end of the year. Let’s hope we have a better success rate this year and that the worst of the predictions don’t come to pass.

current affairs, environment

Just-in-Time

How many times have you seen a gap on a supermarket shelf, and on enquiring been told some variant of “Oh, it should have been on last night’s delivery, but wasn’t”? I know I’ve had this any number of times. Yet another failure of Just-in-Time delivery.

While this may be excusable when the product is perishable, like fresh fruit and veg, it really isn’t good enough for sanitary towels, drugs for the hospital, or parts for the factory down the road.

Just-in-Time delivery was a product of Toyota in 1950s Japan, and has taken over worldwide supply chain logistics since it hit the west in the 1980s.

Effectively every sector has seen it as a way of reducing cost: no idle stock overheads; no warehouses to be paid for; no warehouse staff to employ. And who can blame them when shareholders want ever more profit and managers need ever fewer overheads.

But as Kim Moody outlines in this Guardian article, there’s a problem. All too often it is Just-not-in-Time. Because the supply chain is now so incredibly complex and lengthy that any slight hiccup has a dramatic domino effect. And there is no safety margin in the way of warehoused stock.

A relatively small (in the overall scheme of things) hiccup can be enough to tip the balance. An unexpected exponential rise in natural gas prices. A large ship wedged sideways in the Suez Canal. A volcano erupting and disrupting aviation flight paths. And that’s without mega-disruptions like a pandemic, or own goals like Brexit.

Without every cog of the global supply chain working like well oiled clockwork, Just-in-Time isn’t. In today’s world logistics managers, and their downstream clients, work on the basis that the supply chain is working properly. They have no choice when the whole system is geared this way and they have no access to resources to provide contingency.

But, again as Moody points out, the contingency comes at a price – a price which is passed on to the end consumer. And as consumers we have gotten too used to ever cheaper everything, and fail to understand when prices rise. Joe Public doesn’t understand (or care about) economics; he cares about only his wallet and having strawberries all year round. Nor does he understand how this drive for ever faster capitalism is driving climate change.

We need to slow down. And we need to adjust the supply chains as well as our consumerism. We need to stop shipping stuff halfway round the world when we have the same product at home or very close by. Think: New Zealand lamb; Chilean wine; Peruvian asparagus – the examples are endless just in the supermarket. [On which note, well done to Waitrose for committing that all their own brand meat is British and for continuing to win awards for animal welfare.]

I end with Moody’s parting comment:

Now is the time to think about not just how we make and consume things, but also how we move them.

current affairs, medical, science

Covid: England vs Europe

Why England is doing so poorly against Covid-19 compared with the rest of Western Europe? Two of our top scientific analysts, Prof. Christina Pagel and Prof. Martin McKee (both of Independent SAGE) take a quietly scathing look in this Guardian article from a few days ago.

Prof. Christina Pagel and Prof. Martin McKee

As usual, I’ll pick out some key points.

CNN, capturing a widespread view, called England’s approach an “experiment” (a leader in the Irish Times prefaced that word with “reckless”).
. . .
Since 1 June, there have been almost 3m confirmed cases of Covid-19 in England. Rather than prompting concern, this seems to have instead resulted in a perception that England has transitioned to “living with the virus”. Each week in England there are still more than 500 deaths and between 150,000 and 200,000 confirmed cases of Covid-19 … Yet these numbers are rarely discussed. Presumably they are considered a necessary price to pay for the majority to get back to living a normal life (of course, many of those who are clinically vulnerable, and their family members, do not feel able to enjoy this return to normality).
. . .
England has one of the highest burdens of Covid in Europe … England’s case rates are eight to 10 times higher than some of the best performing countries, such as Spain and Portugal.
. . .
Why are our closest neighbours achieving much better health outcomes given that they, too, have their children back at school, their students back at university, and their business and leisure facilities open?
. . .
[England] had fully vaccinated 67% of its entire population by the beginning of October, far lower than countries such as Portugal (85%), Spain (79%), Denmark (75%) and Ireland (74%). Crucially, much of the rest of Europe began vaccinating teens early in the summer.
. . .
Face coverings and vaccine passports remain widespread across western Europe … Many countries have also made major investments in ventilation and filtration, while some have made CO2 monitors compulsory in certain settings … In England these measures have been scrapped.
. . .
England, not for the first time, is the odd one out in Europe. The Sage modelling subgroup … warned of the potential for new surges this autumn and considered that “a relatively light set of measures could be sufficient to curb sustained growth” – advice the government has, once again, ignored. If it looked to its European neighbours, England might realise that they are already doing just this. They are demonstrating that there is a way to be open while keeping cases low [which] works. And we should be doing it.

So what do we have? Two jumbo jets week of people dying of Covid – and yet no outcry, no concern. Escalating rates of infection amongst school-age children. And a lack of enforcement of health and safety legislation which requires employers to provide a safe working environment – see this thread on Twitter. All because we have an inept, selfish government which the great unwashed UK numpties love.

How much better would everything be if everyone took on board the old tenet: Treat other people as you would want them to treat you. Think about it. There’d be a complete paradigm shift; in everything!