Covid the *** and the final stage.

[Covrich]

SO when it affects the PM and Chancellor they put on a "pilot programme" what the actual hell..

I mean, I get the logic behind it.. but you can't just make the rules up to suit yourself and tell the rest of the country to behave another way.

 

[marshbrewer]

To be fair, the pilot scheme had already been announced and was in progress, however the participants are supposedly chosen at random. That the PM just happened to be chosen I find highly suspicious.

 

[Benfleet Brewery]

Well, something I’ve been almost 100% sure of for the past week was finally confirmed in an email this morning, my wife and I have COVID. We watched the Euro final at our friends house and they both woke up feeling groggy the next morning and subsequently tested positive. My wife and I were contacted by track and trace and then on the Tuesday started to develop cold like symptoms ourselves which got steadily worse over the course of the week despite testing negative with daily lateral flow tests.

I feel pretty annoyed with myself that I’ve succumbed after successfully avoiding it for a year and a half at the expense of leading a normal life, no holidays, no parties, going for months on end without seeing friends and family etc. Was it worth it only to drop my guard and go and catch it eventually anyway?

I suppose if there are any positives, perhaps the biggest one is that my wife and I managed to hold on long enough to have been double vaccinated before catching it. Trust me, the past week hasn’t been easy. We’ve had constant headaches, coughing and severe body aching. Even a shower is painful as the water hits your skin. And in the past two days I’ve lost all taste and smell as well.

I dread to think how different things might be if we hadn’t been double jabbed, but honestly, that doesn’t make it a walk in the park. Just be careful when things open up and everyone is allowed to do as they like from tomorrow. This thing is spreading like wildfire out there and just because Boris says you are allowed to go out and catch this horrible virus, it doesn’t mean you should do so.

 

[marshbrewer]

Hope you and your wife feel better soon @Benfleet Brewery . Take it easy.

 

[Covrich]

Well, something I’ve been almost 100% sure of for the past week was finally confirmed in an email this morning, my wife and I have COVID. We watched the Euro final at our friends house and they both woke up feeling groggy the next morning and subsequently tested positive. My wife and I were contacted by track and trace and then on the Tuesday started to develop cold like symptoms ourselves which got steadily worse over the course of the week despite testing negative with daily lateral flow tests.

I feel pretty annoyed with myself that I’ve succumbed after successfully avoiding it for a year and a half at the expense of leading a normal life, no holidays, no parties, going for months on end without seeing friends and family etc. Was it worth it only to drop my guard and go and catch it eventually anyway?

I suppose if there are any positives, perhaps the biggest one is that my wife and I managed to hold on long enough to have been double vaccinated before catching it. Trust me, the past week hasn’t been easy. We’ve had constant headaches, coughing and severe body aching. Even a shower is painful as the water hits your skin. And in the past two days I’ve lost all taste and smell as well.

I dread to think how different things might be if we hadn’t been double jabbed, but honestly, that doesn’t make it a walk in the park. Just be careful when things open up and everyone is allowed to do as they like from tomorrow. This thing is spreading like wildfire out there and just because Boris says you are allowed to go out and catch this horrible virus, it doesn’t mean you should do so.

Sorry to hear that BB

Don't beat yourself up though as annoying as it may feel I think the honest and sad reality is at some point it is unavoidable it will come in to contact with us all at some point whether we detect it or not. (not in anyway advocating trying to catch it just as we try to live a normal life with friends and loved ones and work ect even being as cautious as we personally can)

I think the fact you are now double jabbed like you say hopefully means you have ultimatley done the right thing and the damage is mitigated.

Stay safe and a speedy recovery to you both

 

[Leon103]

It seems a lot of double jabbed people are getting it. Perhaps some more tests are needed on the various vaccines.

 

[Chippy_Tea]

Sorry to hear that BB, your post should be an eye opener to all those that have decided not to have the *** and it makes me glad me and SWMBO have had both and my son has had his first.

 

[dad_of_jon]

It seems a lot of double jabbed people are getting it. Perhaps some more tests are needed on the various vaccines.

get well soon BB and your other 1/2 - on the subject of jabs they are still highly effective against death and hospitalization but less so against symptomatic covid and less again from asymptomatic covid. It will take a while for a fuller data set of vaccines vs beta variants to be available and there will be tweaking of the the jabs to boost effectiveness against the new variants. An important part of the vaccines effectiveness will depend on the viral load and we can reduce that with mitigations.

I think of it like a using my oven gloves when getting bottles out of the oven. Without oven gloves (no ***) I'm going to get burned pretty quickly. with a teatowel (one ***) If I'm quick I can get the odd bottle out without burning myself. With oven gloves (2 jabs) I can get all the bottles out, BUT if I stuck my hands in the oven whilst on a high gas mark and lingered for a while even those would not save me from being burned. So even with 2 jabs and spending a lot of time where there is a high level of viral particles is still going to be a risk of catching it.

So we are both fully jabbed and visited Leeds - no public transport used went on tue/wed so quieter days in pub, avoided 'spoons. eat/drank outside as much as poss. On the 2 occasions we ate in we were either in a quiet corner or in the case of tapped which was a bit busier we were by a window with airflow coming into the pub. If they scrap 2 meters i'd not have gone into tapped because the risk would be unacceptable to me.

 

[Chippy_Tea]

The prime minister and chancellor will now self-isolate after contact with Health Secretary Sajid Javid, who tested positive for coronavirus.
The reversal comes just hours after they said they would take part in a pilot scheme involving daily testing instead of self-isolation.
Opposition parties said it suggested there was "one rule for them and another for the rest of us".
Downing Street said Boris Johnson will conduct meetings remotely at Chequers.
Chancellor Rishi Sunak said on Twitter: "Whilst the test and trace pilot is fairly restrictive, allowing only essential government business, I recognise that even the sense that the rules aren't the same for everyone is wrong."
Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer said the prime minister and chancellor had been "busted yet again for thinking the rules that we are all following don't apply to them".
"The public have done so much to stick to the rules. At a time when we need to maintain confidence in self isolation, parents, workers and businesses will be wondering what on earth is going on in Downing Street," he said.
"The way the prime minister conducts himself creates chaos, makes for bad government and has deadly consequences for the British public."

• How are Covid rules changing on Monday?
• Profile: Sajid Javid
• All UK adults offered Covid vaccine

Labour's Jonathan Ashworth had earlier told the BBC's Andrew Marr Show that it was unfair that politicians appeared to have access to "VIP testing" to avoid self-isolation, while Liberal Democrat Leader Ed Davey asked if it was only available to "the privileged few".
The managing director of the Iceland supermarket, Richard Walker, also criticised the proposal for Mr Johnson and Mr Sunak to avoid self-isolation.
"Shame the hundreds of Iceland staff who've been pinged can't avoid self-isolation. We can all do a daily lateral flow test," he said.
Meanwhile, Transport for London - one of the organisations also involved in the pilot according to the government - said it was "still waiting for formal notification that we are part of this trial". One London Underground line was forced to close on Saturday because too many staff had to self-isolate.

Mr Javid tested positive on Saturday morning after a meeting at Downing Street the day before, and both Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak were contacted by NHS Test and Trace.
No 10 had said a workplace pilot scheme would allow the prime minister and chancellor to keep working from Downing Street by taking daily tests. A spokesman said they would only be able to carry out essential government business and would self-isolate at all other times.
Stepping in for Mr Javid, who is self-isolating after his positive test, Housing Secretary Robert Jenrick had defended the plan on the Andrew Marr Show.
"The scheme is a well known and long-standing one, it's not just available for politicians," he said. But he added that his own department was not part of the scheme.
The government said there were 20 public and private sector organisations involved in the pilot scheme, including Network Rail, Transport for London, Heathrow and Border Force.

 

[Chippy_Tea]

This must be one of the fastest government U-turns ever: 157 minutes after saying the PM and chancellor wouldn't be isolating, Downing Street decided they would.
The reason is set out by Rishi Sunak on Twitter - ministers can't be seen to be following different rules to everyone else.
But questions will be asked about why No 10 initially said they would be escaping isolation. Who made the decision? Who signed it off? The prime minister and chancellor must have known about the plan.
There's also the fact that the PM and chancellor had the choice over whether to isolate - which most people don't at the moment.
The political symbolism is also highly significant. Three senior government ministers will be in isolation on the day almost all legal restrictions are lifted in England.

 

[Cheshire Cat]

Boris's next U turn will be mask wearing indoors.

 

[Northern_Brewer]

It seems a lot of double jabbed people are getting it. Perhaps some more tests are needed on the various vaccines.

By any standards, the vaccines work remarkably well, for normal jabs 50% effectiveness is considered pretty good. They are doing their job, which is stopping people dying and getting badly ill, which they do with 90+% effectiveness. And as a bonus they seem to cut transmission by half or so.

But they don't make you invincible, and they only reduce your chance of infection, not stop it entirely. But like Javid, you're more likely to experience mild disease.

And given that we have 46m people with one ***, and 34m at (2jabs + 2wks), then unless the *** was 100% effective you'd expect to see a fair number of jabbees getting Covid. It's a bit counter-intuitive, but it should be regarded as a success of a vaccination campaign that has reached a majority of the country, rather than a failure of a vaccine against a 100% standard that no vaccine reaches.

And the vaccine guys are trying to catch up as fast as they can. Booster jabs against variants are already in trials, the noises coming out of government seem to be that they'll give boosters to the "vulnerable" who have the AZ already, but that might not even be down to the over 50s, it might just be over 60s or 70s.

It's early days, but this week saw a really interesting paper from the Scripps where they've found a domain that's conserved between SARS1 and SARS2 that's not part of the binding site (which is what the vaccines target) that can be recognised by antibodies, albeit only when it is starting to flex into position to bind ACE2. It's early days, years away from any kind of pharmaceutical product whether drug or vaccine, but it might be the basis of a durable protection against coronaviruses in general.

 

[Chippy_Tea]

Boris's next U turn will be mask wearing indoors.

My Son is self isolating until Wednesday as a friend has tested positive he has taken a test every day and they are all negative he says he hasn't been close to this person indoors yet he has to stay here in a small house with me and SWMBO and although we have both had both jabs we are a little concerned that he may get it and infect us having read the post below earlier.


Benfleet Brewery posted -

Well, something I’ve been almost 100% sure of for the past week was finally confirmed in an email this morning, my wife and I have COVID. We watched the Euro final at our friends house and they both woke up feeling groggy the next morning and subsequently tested positive. My wife and I were contacted by track and trace and then on the Tuesday started to develop cold like symptoms ourselves which got steadily worse over the course of the week despite testing negative with daily lateral flow tests.

I feel pretty annoyed with myself that I’ve succumbed after successfully avoiding it for a year and a half at the expense of leading a normal life, no holidays, no parties, going for months on end without seeing friends and family etc. Was it worth it only to drop my guard and go and catch it eventually anyway?

I suppose if there are any positives, perhaps the biggest one is that my wife and I managed to hold on long enough to have been double vaccinated before catching it. Trust me, the past week hasn’t been easy. We’ve had constant headaches, coughing and severe body aching. Even a shower is painful as the water hits your skin. And in the past two days I’ve lost all taste and smell as well.

I dread to think how different things might be if we hadn’t been double jabbed, but honestly, that doesn’t make it a walk in the park. Just be careful when things open up and everyone is allowed to do as they like from tomorrow. This thing is spreading like wildfire out there and just because Boris says you are allowed to go out and catch this horrible virus, it doesn’t mean you should do so.

 

[Chippy_Tea]

More than one third of Londoners have not had their first vaccine dose making it the area with the lowest uptake in England, latest figures show.
The data from NHS England also shows 55% have not had a second dose. Across England, 88% of people have had a first dose and 68% the second.
Figures also show the city has one of the lowest rates of Covid-19 cases, with 298 per 100,000.
Sadiq Khan said "everything possible" was being done to vaccinate everyone.
Pop-up vaccination centres are being held across London, including in the Tate Modern and football stadiums. There are 300 locations in the city where people can be vaccinated.

The government set a target for all adults to be offered a first dose, and two thirds their second by Monday when all of the social distancing restrictions are being lifted.
NHS London did not confirm how many Londoners have been offered the vaccine but have declined.

• 'Perfect storm could lead to Covid-19 increase' in London
• How many people have been vaccinated so far?
• What do over-18s need to know about the vaccine?
• How are Covid rules changing on Monday?

The city has a high proportion of young people - with 35 being the average age - meaning many have only been eligible for a vaccine for a short period of time, according to the mayor's office.
People are offered a vaccine via their GP however the city has a high proportion of people who are not registered with one. It also has the UK's highest migrant population who may also be missing out on a vaccine invite as they are not registered with a doctor.

FULL ARTICLE - Covid 19: More than one third of Londoners unvaccinated - BBC News

 

[Chippy_Tea]

'It's not Freedom Day for us': The people in Greater Manchester who are living in fear of restrictions being lifted

'Freedom day' is what Monday, July 19, has been dubbed - when the majority of Covid restrictions are lifted in England.

However, for some people, who are immunocompromised or have chronic health conditions, it's a very different story.

By the end of July there will be no social distancing rules, no limits on how many people can meet, and face coverings will no longer be required by law.

The Manchester Evening News spoke to Sian, from South Manchester, about how she feels about restrictions lifting - and what it means for her going forward.

Siân has chronic fatigue syndrome, otherwise known as ME. She feels like people with her condition were forgotten about when she was left off the list of people who were seen as clinically vulnerable at the start of the pandemic. Now, she feels forgotten about again.

"We weren't on the shielding guidelines, but a lot of us were isolating anyway," she said. "I'm a moderate case, but even a common cold can knock me out."

Siân is part of an online community for people with her condition, where she's able to air her thoughts and concerns.

She said: "A lot of us were feeling safe with these measures in place, but in a week it's going to be a free for all. Soon some people who are vulnerable are going back into full on shielding," she said.

"A lot of us are absolutely terrified and feel abandoned," she added.

Siân says she has only recently built herself up to going out of the house and doing things like going for food with friends sitting outside. However, once restrictions lift, she will no longer feel so at ease. While some people can't wait to go out clubbing, Siân is trying to enjoy herself as much as possible now, before social distancing rules are scrapped.

She's is in her late 20s, and hasn't yet had both of her Covid jabs. She says that other people with similar conditions were put on the priority list, but she wasn't, despite asking her GP about it. However, this means that the restrictions will be lifting before she's able to get fully vaccinated at the very end of July.

Siân is also part of a local NHS support group for young people with her condition. "There's so many young people with chronic fatigue, going to school when the Delta variant is running wild. It's absolutely shocking to me," she said.

"It just seems malicious by the government to screw disabled people and people with chronic issues. It's not freedom day for us."

"I was watching pictures of everyone at the football but I haven't hugged my grandma since before March 2020 because I'm terrified," Siân. It's two different worlds," Siân said.

However, Siân is grateful for politicians like Andy Burnham and Sadiq Khan for speaking out and encouraging people to continue wearing masks. She says that it gives her hope that 'some people will still be sensible'.

A YouGov poll has found that two thirds of people in the UK plan to keep wearing masks this summer after Covid restriction come to an end.

"That's really good to know," Siân said.

The Department for Health has been approached for comment.

To get the latest email updates from the Manchester Evening News, click here.

 

[Chippy_Tea]

 

[Benfleet Brewery]

Thanks for your kind wishes everyone. We are both feeling a lot better today and managed to spend most of the day laying down on a lounger in the garden rather than in bed. Even managed to sink a couple of my a German Lagers (although I can’t taste anything). Hopefully we are over the hump now and on the mend. Sorry about my little piece on the soapbox earlier. I’m pushing 56 years old and suffer from asthma, my wife is 5 years younger than me so although we both felt like crap the past few days, I’m convinced it would have been worse, particularly for me, without the vaccine.

 

[Chippy_Tea]

Glad to hear you are on the mend and as for the soap box sometimes its a good thing to use it, lets hope your tale of woe makes at least one person who hasn't had the *** change their minds.

 

[ChrisR73]

It seems a lot of double jabbed people are getting it. Perhaps some more tests are needed on the various vaccines.

These vaccines were designed for an earlier strain of COVID-19, the delta variant has adapted to become more contagious.
The mRNA vaccines are particularly well suited to being tweaked to new variants should this be required.
The biggest worry is that rising infection rates offer more opportunities for further mutations and potentially more variants.

 

[Chippy_Tea]

Will you still wear a mask in shops and crowded places?