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Hisham Ziauddeen Profile picture
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4 Dec, 6 tweets, 2 min read
RTing this for 2 reasons:
1. I think this is the only way in which we might get a sensible pandemic strategy (I'm not hopeful).
2. The lovely replies from pronoun warriors.

Neither of these is a compelling reason to read this little thread but 1 possibly narrowly beats 2.
1/6
We've learnt a lot about Omicron since I wrote the original thread and none of it is remotely reassuring. In the thread below I wrote about how this is what was expected and predicted especially by people who know about virus and immunology.
2/6
My worry is that a massive change of direction will be required to deal with the combined delta and Omicron pandemics. This is not going to be controlled by minimal interventions and continuing otherwise as before.
3/6
It will require effective measures and the creation of new healthcare capacity i.e. first make up for the deficit the govt has created and compounded through COVID, and then expand it. It will require more support for schools, families, businesses and workers.
4/6
A govt that has tried to do the least possible for people will not want to do this, will not want to reverse it's previous decisions or admit it was wrong in any way. The only option is for it to say that this is a whole new situation that requires a different approach.
5/6
To be clear, I am not saying that this is a whole new situation. This is the expected progression of the situation that started in March 2020, given the policies our govt pursued.
We need a massive change of direction and this may be the political opportunity to do that.
6/6

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More from @HZiauddeen

Hisham Ziauddeen Profile picture
4 Dec
🧵On complicated grief: losing someone who should have been close but wasn’t

For those of us who've lost people who should have been loved ones but didn’t really love one,
Who’ve lost parents, siblings, (sometimes children), and spouses, who were uncaring, and abusive.
(1/25)
Grief is the pain of the void left in life where someone used to be.
The void is the great discontinuity, the point where they will no longer be part of the unfolding story of your life, the point where your shared story ends, from when there will be no new memories.
(2/25)
All they were part of, all that they helped in making the world feel better and safer, in making you know you mattered, all of it ends at the void. The enormity of the void is overwhelming, and in the early stages of grief, it can be hard to see a future beyond the void.
(3/25)
Read 25 tweets
Hisham Ziauddeen Profile picture
4 Dec
🧵Ostensibly about necrotising fasciitis:

A flesh-eating bacterium is eating through your leg. This is a new experience. You have never seen bits of your leg disappearing like this. And the pain, well that's something else. And the smell, oh boy the smell.
1/8
This is not looking too good but we don't know how it's going to go. Perhaps you should sit & watch carefully to figure out what's going to happen next. What can you infer from the mysterious ways in which the bacterium moves?
2/8
Perhaps it's important to adopt the right attitude, one of caution but not rushing of to action. Perhaps fortitude may cause the bacterium to think again if this is perhaps the wisest strategy to pursue.
Read the entrails carefully (but quickly lest they become your own).
3/8
Read 8 tweets
Hisham Ziauddeen Profile picture
4 Dec
🧵Omicron update:
This variant is looking seriously worrying.
It's from a different lineage to delta i.e. it's not delta++ but another variant line all together & it has a helluva lot of worrying mutations.
It seems to be spreading rapidly even in people who are vaccinated.
1/9
This could be because it's like a novel virus we're susceptible to and/or that it is able to some extent, evade immunity acquired to previous variants and vaccines. This is called immune escape and looks likely to significant with Omicron.
2/9
Given that Omicron is very different from delta we may likely end up in a situation where we have two separate but simultaneous pandemics.
The NHS is in crisis with one pandemic, with two... However vaccines are still protective. Please get vaccinated and boosted!
3/9
Read 9 tweets
Hisham Ziauddeen Profile picture
2 Dec
🧵Living in survival mode and decision making:

When you are living in survival mode, making decisions can become particularly difficult & you can find yourself struggling with indecision, avoiding decisions or handing them over to others, or making suboptimal decisions.
(1/38)
Suboptimal decisions can range from those that are ok-but-you-could-have-chosen-better (especially for the longer-term) to those that are outright bad or dangerous (for you).
The aim here is not to criticise the decisions made but to try & understand why they were made.
(2/38)
i.e. why do we make (and keep making) decisions that are not in our best interest?
We'll think about the more general case of decision making in survival mode & emphasise some of the particular impacts of trauma, mental illness & disability.
(3/38)
Read 38 tweets
Hisham Ziauddeen Profile picture
1 Dec
RTing this given Steve Baker's speech in the Commons today and the outcry over the reintroduction of minor measures like partial mask mandates. People like Steve are a key reason why we are here, facing yet another new variant and all the risks and costs that entails.
(1/12)
He's raging about steps being taken to counter a calamity that he and his colleagues in govt were instrumental in creating. The way to have protected everyone and everything he claims to hold dear, including children's education, was to control the pandemic.
(2/12)
The costs now are much higher, whether you try to control things or not (much higher if not). You can always say, like he and many others do, 'you can't keep implementing restrictions each time there's a new variant', or 'look at the impact on children & businesses.'
(3/12)
Read 12 tweets
Hisham Ziauddeen Profile picture
28 Nov
🧵 COVID-19 & human capital: what we have lost and continue to lose

This is elaborating on the last bit of the 🧵below. If the devastating numbers of lives lost and damaged don't move you enough, perhaps the practical and economic arguments might?
(1/25)
A pervasive belief in many political and capitalistic systems is that human capital is just something to be slotted into necessary points in the system & that workers are interchangeable, replaceable & in plentiful supply 'we can just get/take more from elsewhere'.
(2/25)
I emphasise that this is a belief as any vaguely sensible model will make clear that this is not a feasible reality in any sustainable way (depends of course on what you are trying to sustain). But it is a belief that pervades a lot of thinking, especially in politics.
(3/25)
Read 25 tweets

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