Yesterday I heard that my oldest son’s mother and my former wife, both of them living in England and, of similar age to myself, are getting vaccinated for covid-19 this week. Yes, you read that correctly! The much denigrated and trashed ( in America) National Health Service, accused of “socialized medicine” is already vaccinating …
Tasked with getting anti-virus needles into arms, our leaders have proved totally unable to organise the proverbial drinking session in a brewery. Twenty million people are supposed to have had covid jabs by now. The actual figure is only 2.6 million. This is a national emergency, just as a major war would be. The national …
Pharmacist to customer: “Sir, please understand, to buy an anti-depression pill you need a proper prescription. Simply showing your marriage certificate and wife’s picture is not enough.”
How will Moderna make the 100 million doses contracted for in the first quarter of 2021 and the 200 million doses it has to provide the federal government (for $3.2 billion) by the end of June? A big part of the answer is outsourcing production to a contract manufacturer that will make the vaccine on …
Continue reading ‘Catulent – a name you are probably unfamiliar with’ »
Hours after England’s new lockdown measures were announced last Saturday, 700 people crammed into a warehouse outside Bristol for an illegal Halloween rave. Police were called to the event in Yate, Gloucestershire, at 10.30pm, but according to a spokesman, crowds refused to disperse, and several officers sustained minor injuries when party-goers, denied entry to the …
A mutated strain of Covid-19 carried by holidaymakers returning from Spain could be partially responsible for the current “second wave” in Europe, a study has suggested. Like all viruses, SARS-CoV-2 mutates as it replicates inside its human hosts. Now it appears that a variant called 20A.EU1, first detected in farm workers in northern Spain in …
Face shields have been recommended for use by hairdressers, and are worn by teachers in some schools. But plastic face shields are not effective at stopping airborne droplets from escaping from an infected person’s mouth, according to a study in Japan. Computer simulations showed that almost 100% of droplets under five micrometres (released when people …
The way dementia patients in care homes have been treated during this pandemic “should make us sick with shame and pity”. Afflicted by an illness that attacks their memory and sense of self, they draw special comfort from the presence of loved ones. Yet in the name of infection control, the Government has seen to …
Continue reading ‘A Tale of Cruelty and Despair (in the UK)’ »
Today’s Washington Post carries the news that the death penalty is alive and well and is being carried out, in several cases, in what appears to be a hurry before the change of administrations. I naively believed for some reason that the deliberate killing of prisoners at the hands of the government was a barbaric …
Mindfulness and meditation can worsen depression and anxiety. Mindfulness (paying close attention to your own thoughts) and other types of meditation are usually seen as simple stress-relievers – but they can sometimes leave people worse off, worsening depression and anxiety. About one in 12 people who try meditation experience an unwanted negative effect, usually a …
Continue reading ‘Mindfulness and meditation: are they good for you?’ »
Large numbers of people, mostly in the mid-West, refuse to wear masks in public places within and without buildings, claiming that doing so infringes upon their “liberty”, and that mask searing and social distancing is at the “discretion” on the individual (ah! the individual!). This, notwithstanding the raging virus that is filling hospitals and killing …
Teen girls’ self-harm crisis Back in 2018 The Guardian ran an article about social media and a rise in school work being blamed for the doubling of U.K. hospital admissions of teenage girls for self-harm. According to British National Health Service figures, in the two decades since 1997, the number of girls under 18 admitted …
Americans complain about healthcare and its cost. Brits, on the other hand, myself included, are proud of the “free” National Health Service. Or, to be exact, what used to be the National Health Service before the “Conservative” government started privatizing it by stealth and making it a profit center. Now read on……… To The Guardian …
During lockdown, road traffic fell dramatically all over the world. In Scotland, it was down 65%. And yet all those cars being off the road didn’t make much difference to levels of air pollution. A team at the University of Stirling analysed levels of PM2.5 fine particulate matter recorded at 70 roadside locations around Scotland …
By 2028, British people won’t be able to claim their state pension until they’re 67. According to a new study, however, there is a potential problem: although we are living longer, we may not be healthy enough to work for longer. Researchers at Keele University and Newcastle University used data from the English Longitudinal Study …
