Coronavirus

Noel Cold water is as good a mixer as any

Hi Peter, the principle behind this is to prevent the spread of the COVID19 virus from person to person. Close proximity to an infected person increases the risk of getting the infection (as far as we currently know). By doing isolation you deny the virus of potential host and spread thereby it will run its course and no one to re-infect. Currently there are no proven treatment for this other than supportive treatment (organ support, antibiotics for secondary bacterial infection etc.) Hopefully we will get our answers soon as research is on going.

1. If you are not having symptoms or proven COVID19 positive you still have to self isolate and social distancing because you are helping control the spread of the COVID19 virus and denying it of potential host. At the same time you are keeping your self safe.

2. If you have symptoms there is a guideline help line to call. If you are well and not requiring hospitalisation you will still self isolate as to still contribute to the society by not potentially spreading the virus and thereby help our fight against this issue. Symptomatic treatment and supportive measures. Provided that you don't require hospitalisation and organ support the virus will ran its course and if your immune system is well enough it will greatly help with the recovery.

3. If your are COVID19 positive you have 2 options: 1. if you are having mild symptoms and well enough not requiring hospitalisation then you have to self isolate. This is for you to protect other people from getting it and denying the virus of another potential host and thereby stopping the spread and controlling it. Unless your are very unwell and needs hospitalisation. 2. If you are unwell and requiring hospitalisation then you need to be admitted to the hospital.

Our situation is difficult in our local hospital. I was unwell with flu symptoms 2 weeks ago. I immediately self isolated very strictly ( like im a prisoner in my own home) and the only contact I have with me wife and daughter is through face time despite we are in the same house. I made one of our room as an isolate area. My food is being given to me on my doorstep by my wife. I have not been tested as when this first rolled out our hospital guidelines is to immediately self isolate and not to go to hospital unless I'm very unwell requiring admission. I have a total of 15 days strict self isolation. I might have caught this in one of many patients I see and treated. The problem is the incubation period where in there are very mild to non existent symptoms. I cleared myself and spoken to our chief of medicine colleague and I am now back to work treating patients again. Why I do this is my personal choice to continue to help sick people and to do my part to help with this issue. Re-infection is highly likely, I still practice full precaution when I go home and continue to self Isolate from my wife and daughter as I am now back working in the hospital. Hope my experience will shed light to some of your questions and also to help others here. Stay safe everyone and lets contribute to help with our situations and hopefully we all get over this soon.

Raphael

That is unfair. When i did my original shopping there was no hint that others were stockpiling and shops were full before and after my trip. Since we are prone to being snowed in etc here we keep good supplies at all times of basics. Gov guidelines are to avoid going out so my options would be lots of little trips or one larger one in keeping with those guidelines. If regular delivery slots were available it wouldn't be necessary. Local supermarkets limit amounts on certain things and we have no need of most of those anyway. My freezers have plenty of my own grown produce so it's more contingency planning . It's also 15 miles to the nearest large stores.

I'm not going to apologise for planning further ahead than others.

pgk

Raphael Val Golez 1 -

Bravo, Bravo sir! Well done both for your commitment to your profession and your impeccable commitment to the sensible guidelines recommended to us. It cannot have been easy and that you stuck with it and returned to work has value much greater than the actions themselves.

You are a credit to your profession and a lesson to the rest of us!

Very best regards

Bill

As far as the official statements are concerened I think the requirement is to stay at home rather than stay indoors. If you have the private space of a garden that would be construed as staying at home. By all means sit in the garden you are still isolated.

regards Martin

pgk

It wasn't meant as an attack on you personally it was just an observation of the actions some have the effect on others. My comments would have been a lot more harsh otherwise.

I apologise if you thought otherwise but as you said about planning ahead many have done and are doing that, by purchasing much larger quantities than usual and then taking up delivery slots to keep topped up, this is denying those who have to live week by week because their pensions dictate that and also those who prefer not to be selfish but I guess that is the world we live in.

Mine and my wife's health is such that we are not on the shielded list but if god forbid we come down with the virus and a decision has to be made who gets a critical bed we lose out and besides based on the stats we would not be in the 10% that recover hence I will not go to the shops.

My daughter did a small shop for us at the beginning of the week but was unable to get some items and my son did one yesterday but again couldn't get the same items, we can't get a delivery slot even though I have stayed up until 1:00 am trying on the 5 sites that deliver in our area.

I don't know when our son and daughter can do another as my son has had a new addition to the family, a 5 week old girl and my Daughters eldest son has had an operation to adjust his bite, a culmination of 10 years of braces and adjustment leading to an operation which broke his jaws in 4 places and his mouth wired up for a few months, the op was 4 weeks ago, so they are both very nervous about doing too many trips to the shops.

So that is the other side of the coin, I'm not calling those who 'stockpile/ plan ahead' names, it is their decision, they do whatever they decide to do to protect their own families, all I am saying is that every action has an effect whether it's good or not it's just sad that there are many who are in my position and much worse.

Sorry for the tome, just had to get it off my chest.

Roger

Edited By Rockingdodge on 26/03/2020 12:14:57

It's getting where I need to work out an emergency strategy for clipping the dogs claws...

I usually take her to get it done as it only costs £8, and doing it myself takes about a weeka s I can only do about 4 claws a day before she escapes...

Neil

Interesting article in a newspaper recently that suggested the virus has been in the UK for a while, possibly since early January. Got me thinking about how many may have been ill already with C-19 without realising it, and now presumably immune?

Late February I felt a little unwell for a couple of days, lingering dry cough, basically the symptoms of C-19. Could I have already had it?

John

As an introverted miserable old git with no ( geographically ) close relatives I have no personal problem with social isolation, or anti-social isolation as I prefer to call it. My biggest problem stems from my two miniature dachshunds who are very social and a magnet for everyone from small children to fellow geriatrics.

We are still allowed out in public here ( Western Australia ) although that may change. I will be perfectly happy with less outside time but the dogs definitely will not.

So while I am desperately trying to keep my distance the dogs keep stopping for their admirers, who still keep on insisting on patting them, aided and abetted by the dogs themselves.

While a long lead generally keeps me at a safe ( ? ) distance ( current recommendation is 1.5 m ) the possible transfer of the virus from an infected person onto the dogs fur and thence to me is of some concern.

I do try to pick times when there are few people about but how do you get the message across to people, especially to small children, that they should not approach the dogs. An also how do I get across to the dogs that they are no longer allowed to approach strangers and friends alike.

I'm sure there must be an engineering solution to this so if anyone has any good ideas I will be pleased to consider them. Dipping the dogs in alcohol at the end of each walk is a possibility but I doubt that they would approve!

Keep well all

Pero

I finally lost it...Was just in Safeway. Saw a man whose cart was FULL to the brim with hand sanitizers, baby wipes, soap and toilet rolls - everything that people need!! I called him a selfish A, and gave him a low down about the elderly, mums, and people who need these types of things. Told him he should be bloody ashamed of himself!

He said: “Are you finished? Cause I really need to get back to restocking the shelves now...”

* Danny *

JA

Don't stroke the ****ing dog seems to work for me

Edited By duncan webster on 26/03/2020 12:58:08

Personally I feel those who ensured that they started all this with their store cupboards full rather than empty some weeks before the panic buying stripped shelves and restocking was overwhelmed, did the system a favour by taking some of the pressure off the stores at the peak of demand. We are told there is no issue of supply but there are issues of delivery and distribution. So long as you didn't swamp the system and clearly you didn't by stocking up well before the wave of panic buying you have done a good thing by reducing demand at the peak and enabling yourself to isolate more effectively. Signs are that the situation is calming down as stores limit the number of any single item and them that stockpiled at peak panic cannot store any more.

I was buying a little extra tins and dry goods some weeks ago. Do I feel I should have bought more, well kind of. Am I pleased I didn't empty the shelves, definitely.

I should like to see a priority delivery slot system in place for the vulnerable but maybe that will come.

Overjoyed at the volunteer response by the way, must be the largest peacetime army every raised in such a short time and for purely peacefull purposes too. Learned this morning about members of our Lab being recruited to work in the Milton Keynes testing centre.

Best regards Martin

Edited By Martin Kyte on 26/03/2020 13:23:06

It's time supermarkets introduced basket only days

It's complex. What you don't want is everyone having to shop each day. If you can supply everyone on a weekly basis ideally you would like to limit everyone to a weeks worth of supplies. I'm not against a standard ration box in extremis but you do have to establish how many in the household. You cannot issue more chilled or frozen stuff than people can store and many of us do not have huge freezers or fridges.

The goal is feed everyone but reduce their need to shop often. As I said it's complex.

regards Martin

The 2 metres rule for social distancing can only be a compromise, if it’s windy and you are downwind of someone then you could very easily be contaminated. I remember in 1967 when I was serving in the Air Force in what was then Trucial Oman, there was an outbreak of smallpox in the village adjacent to our airfield, we were all addressed by the medical officer who illustrated how contagious the virus could be by stating that in the past, infection had carried a distance of 5 miles on the wind. Whether he was trying to frighten us or not I don’t know but we were all vaccinated against smallpox again that day, irrespective of our vaccination status. It was a serious outbreak of the disease and one of the last major episodes of smallpox until it was finally considered eradicated. There were no casualties within our unit but the villagers were not so lucky. I think with my experience then, I am going to ensure that I stay indoors as much as is possible, I think that this may be the reason we are encouraged to stay indoors at home. Hopefully you will all stay safe.
Dave W

Morrison’s have introduced a scheme whereby you can order a box of provisions for £35.00. You can state whether you are a meat eater or vegetarian but you have no choice other than that on the contents of the box. If you order by 3.00 in the afternoon then they will deliver the following day, boxes will be delivered by DPD. I assume the boxes are put together at a central warehouse and despatched using DPD’s next day delivery. There should be no reason that anyone need go without, however you won’t have any choice what you get but we are in an extraordinary set of circumstances.
Dave W

Interesting shopping trip. I hadn't been out since my Gherkin purchase. Sliced bread,eggs,pasta, some canned veggies, loo roll and kitchen paper in short supply - but we didn't need any of that anyway. Plenty of fresh fruit, chill shelves of cheeses, cold meats etc and their freezers were full. Pet food was noticeably reduced but still a lot there - useful since my wife feeds 4 cats, the dog and every bit of wildlife in North Wales. And plenty of panadol re-appeared.
4 neighbours down the chap has barn hens by the many thousand so eggs would never be a shortage here - wife's hens are all too old to lay. My neighbour the other side has a dairy herd so again milk is never an issue in a shortage.
Lidl are limiting folk to 4 of anything..again not an issue since I have to give some respect to my liver by limiting the gin reserves...

More interesting we finally saw someone else wearing a mask and the bin outside was half full of disposable gloves - not that any other shoppers were wearing them while we were in..

pgk

Edited By pgk pgk on 26/03/2020 14:55:20

I was not able to join the band of volunteers as I'm too old and being rather deaf, would not be of much use with the telephone help. It will help a lot if and when tests become available for antibodies which will allow people to finish their self isolation, and also more tests to find out if they actually have the infection. The symptoms vary so much in seriousness that the danger is that those with very mild symptoms can pass the virus to others without realising it.

I wish you and your daughter the best of outcomes, Dave - and soon. Hang on in there.