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This corona virus thing...

Some are dragons, some are decent.
It's the same thing when anyone rings the school of one of your children. In both instances, they can accuse you of Bad language, Condescension, being patronising, and they in turn can be supercilious.
Or just be a plain old t**t.
But they have the power, and with the position(s) they are in they can veto you or , actually , be reasonable.
The best thing to do is to play-the-game..... be cool, and calm.
All very easy to write, but damned hard to be, sometimes.
 
Some are dragons, some are decent.
It's the same thing when anyone rings the school of one of your children. In both instances, they can accuse you of Bad language, Condescension, being patronising, and they in turn can be supercilious.
Or just be a plain old t**t.
But they have the power, and with the position(s) they are in they can veto you or , actually , be reasonable.
The best thing to do is to play-the-game..... be cool, and calm.
All very easy to write, but damned hard to be, sometimes.
I posted recently that I had , for the first time in 20years, been on the receiving end of a battle axe of a receptionist. Very sad!
I used to always go into my surgery to order and collect my repeat prescriptions, specifically so I could maintain a relationship with the receptionists. Covid put a stop to that but until a couple of weeks ago there was no change.
Hopefully the lady in question will be shown the error of her ways by her more experienced colleagues.
 
I heard on the news the "new" variant which is now accounting for 1 in every 10 cases is more easily spreadable but the "good news" is that it comes with less/no symptoms. I'm not sure if this is actually good news or not. Obviously that people aren't becoming as ill but of course they may mean they are spreading it unknowingly...

Presumably if there are few or no symptoms it's being picked up by those who need to mandatory test for school/work.
 
I heard on the news the "new" variant which is now accounting for 1 in every 10 cases is more easily spreadable but the "good news" is that it comes with less/no symptoms. I'm not sure if this is actually good news or not. Obviously that people aren't becoming as ill but of course they may mean they are spreading it unknowingly...

Presumably if there are few or no symptoms it's being picked up by those who need to mandatory test for school/work.
Sounds like a good thing to me. The first question I'd ask is whether the vaccines are effective against it.
 
I heard on the news the "new" variant which is now accounting for 1 in every 10 cases is more easily spreadable but the "good news" is that it comes with less/no symptoms. I'm not sure if this is actually good news or not. Obviously that people aren't becoming as ill but of course they may mean they are spreading it unknowingly...

Presumably if there are few or no symptoms it's being picked up by those who need to mandatory test for school/work.
If that is true, it is pretty much what we expect from a virus as it evolves - becoming more transmissible, but weaker.

It's good news in the grand scheme of things - and it will become just another cold/flu-like virus over time.
 
GP receptionists have been criticised a few times in this thread and I'm one of the critics.

This is from the receptionists pov.

'We're not battle-axes', say GP receptionists
The vast majority aren’t, I will try my absolute best for our patients, yes you could bang your head on your desk with some of them, but at the end of the day we do our best, what some folk don’t realise is that in some surgeries the receptionist doesn’t just answer the phone, they process prescription requests and allocate them to G.Ps they do admin work and distribute it among the G.Ps sort baby clinics and do other work like safeguarding and contacting patients, all between answering the phone and booking appointments and some people think it’s fine and dandy to speak to you like you are something they just scraped off the bottom of their shoe. We have a tight knit group and we all pull together And in general have a good relationship with 99% of our patients.
 
David Buchanan tweets are making me slightly suspicious. Everyone is entitled to an opinion but I wonder how helpful it will be to a career in media 🤔🤔
 
John Campbell reports on VIT D paper.. "improving Vit D levels in the population could reduce Covid mortality effectively to zero"
He asks why government officials are not promoting this.

"It is very clear from the data the higher levels of Vit D the lower the number of deaths"

 
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So effectively we have governments pushing vaccines that have limited effect on Covid and need regular boosters but not promoting Vit D a simple low cost and effective alternative.

A golden opportunity missed to actively promote the benefits of good health particularly against this virus and some basics that any grandma could tell you. We got Eat out to Help out instead.
 
A golden opportunity missed to actively promote the benefits of good health particularly against this virus and some basics that any grandma could tell you. We got Eat out to Help out instead.

We had some decent weather during the pandemic if I recall, for those not working or at home, we could've been told to get plenty of sunlight.
 
John Campbell reports on VIT D paper.. "improving Vit D levels in the population could reduce Covid mortality effectively to zero"
He asks why government officials are not promoting this.

"It is very clear from the data the higher levels of Vit D the lower the number of deaths"



I've seen a few videos from this guy that really wind me up. But on this topic, he's bang on!

One small (but I think important) point where his explanation is slightly incorrect/misleading (actually he's accidentally underplaying, rather than exaggerating) - if my previous reading on Vit D is correct.... He says something like... at this time of year, when it's been so overcast, we need X units of Vitamin D.

However, I understand that the way the body makes Vit D from sunlight is pretty specific. It is not a straight line graph between sunlight intensity and Vit D production. The sun's intensity needs to reach a certain threshold before ANY vitamin D is produced... and at this time of year, at out latitudes, for most people, the sun never reaches that intensity. So it's nothing to do with it being overcast outside. It would be wrong for people to assume that next week's forecast sunny weather will do them any good - as far as Vit D is concerned, you might as well be sat in a cave.

Obviously, there are plenty of other variables involved, but I just looked at NHS website and it categorically states that we produce NO Vitamin D from sunlight between October and early April. So keep eating the right foods and Vit D supplementation.

 
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