Soooo....because we have been in lockdown, flu levels have been low and resistance to flu will be low next winter. This means there will be a flu surge next winter according to a recent report. For ****’* sake !!
That is one view though. I read elsewhere (must check) that flu is so low that this year it may not mutate and we can use the same vaccine as this year?
I will try to source it* as I am sure it also said that flu is more-or-less eradicated atm as loads been vaccinated and with staying indoors and social distancing hardly any virus has spread. *It was a reliable news source too, i'll check it now.
That influenza cases barely register is really eye-opening, because it shows how virulent COVID is, and how much worse unrestrained spread of COVID could have been. The effort has been enough to basically eliminate lesser diseases, while COVID continues to dominate life in a lot of places. I know that the high caseloads can sometimes make it feel like we're accomplishing little, but that's because we're facing a really, really tough adversary. It's been one hell of a slog, but we're almost there.
I was invited to have the AZ vaccination and accepted but as a sufferer of long Covid and now on the Long Covid register my doctor said the jab might well make for an unpleasant few days, and she was right. It wasn't as bad as I thought it might be but when I was already struggling to get enough air in my lungs I was a bit worried. Anyway, all was back to my new normal after a 3 days or so. I have to say that the people at the surgery were brilliant. Everything was superbly organised and it was a one way system so no struggling to get past anyone on the way out. My doctor had a delightful student doctor giving the jab and to be honest I hardly felt it. The doc even had the time to advise a few things to help ease the issues I am still experiencing and I came away with a new type of inhaler which is just magic. It clears my airways very quickly and although it doesn't last beyond a couple of hours I can use it up to 8 times a day so I feel a whole lot more confident having it. She has put it on a repeat prescription so I can just ask for them whenever I'm running low. If anyone here is struggling with breathing, ask your doctor for a Fostair Inhaler. Brilliant things. I take my hat off to the doctors, nurses and all the students that are now under so much pressure. They really are a fabulous collection of dedicated, caring and hard working people who just want the best for the people they see. They are magic, and a national treasure.
You can use it with a Ventolin but not with the brown inhaler. My doctor said it has very similar properties to the brown inhaler but is like a turbo charged mix of the brown and blue inhalers with a couple of other ingredients mixed in. She said it has fast become the default inhaler she prescribes for anyone suffering with chronic asthma. She said anyone struggling to breathe should insist they are prescribed the Fostair because it is so effective. Hope this helps.
One Oxford batch has been suspended in Austria after one death and one serious medical event. Some deaths are bound to occur in such a large number of people vaccinated....just by sheer chance, but obviously the correct procedure is to withdraw the 'suspect' batch. Has happened elsewhere, but evidence has subsequently cleared the vaccination as the cause. The worrying thing in this case is that both people worked in the same hospital .....could still be a coincidence, but of concern.
Presumably Long Covid is like ME which can occur after flu. Originally ME was thought to be in the patient's mind, but has now been recognised as a real thing.
I have always been quite fit and healthy up until I got this covid so it has come as a huge shock to find that I am struggling to even walk for 15 minutes without feeling like my lungs are going to burst. I've always walked an hour or more a day round the beach, gone swimming and played tennis regularly, but that isn't possible at the moment. I am in touch with several people who are experiencing long covid and their ages range from 24 to 80 and none of them had any major health issues before this hit them. From what I have heard from others and what my doctor has told me, long covid doesn't just affect people with poor health and they really do not know why it hits people in such a random manner. My doctor said there just doesn't seem to be any specific reasons why one person ends up with long covid and another person doesn't. I guess some of that is because the medics and scientists have been focussed on fighting the pandemic and getting vaccines into people. My doctor also said it will take years of studies to find out more about long covid and hopefully to come up with some answers. The one thing you shouldn't do is to try and fight long covid by trying to push a fitness regime because that just makes things worse. Eat healthy food, get fresh air, try to stay positive, accept that things have changed and try to adapt to a different way of living and hope things improve at some point. That is the hard bit, but I am very grateful to still be alive and able to look forward to spring and summer this year.
I have a friend who is a retired GP. He went back to work to help out when the pandemic struck, then caught Covid and passed it on to his whole family. This was last July/August, and his 22 year old son is still really poorly with Long Covid. It would appear to be a sort of autoimmune thing like ME, in that the younger and fitter you are, the worse it hits. By the way, one of my work colleagues developed ME following a bout of glandular fever, another viral infection, back in the 1980’s. I think even then it was recognised as a real illness, we used to measure red blood cell magnesium levels to monitor ME patients.
I admire your positive frame of mind and hope you have a good recovery. Still beggers belief that alot of people it seems are not taking it seriously .
This is an extremely worrying discovery. Kings College London are calling for an urgent review on the gap between first and second Pfizer jabs, as the efficacy in cancer sufferers falls well short of that of those who don’t have cancer. There are some extremely low efficacy figures in the initial report that I find disturbing as it may be that my wife is not as well protected as I thought she would be. The research is only across a small number of people but alarm bells are ringing. Mrs B’s consultant is due to phone us later, as she is due to start her 4th course of chemotherapy next week and we need to know if the chemo should be delayed until after the second jab or if she can even have the jab when her immune system is being attacked by her cancer treatment. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-56351084
