On recent dog walk, got chatting to a lady I'd met a few times:
Her: Are you holidaying abroad this year
Me: I can't because of Covid & immunosuppressed family members
Her: But Covid is over now
Me: 1 in 45 people are infected & 1,000 ppl a week dying
Her: Not now though
1/
Me: Yes, those are recent numbers
Her: But you never hear about it anymore
Me: Yes because they'd sooner you ignored it
Her: It doesn't affect vaccinated people
Me: Well it does and you can still get bad outcomes & LC
Her: Well it's mild now and it'll soon be over
2/
Me: The 1,000 ppl dying every week are not finding it mild
Her: But they probably had something else and didn't die from it
Me: Yes, they'd like you to think that
Her: Well we've all had it anyway and so we're not worried
Me: But you can get it over and over again
3/
Her: But I was fine anyway. Had no symptoms at all so I'm not worried
Me: But asymptomatic infection doesn't mean it hasn't harmed you or weakened your immune system. It doesn't mean it will be asymptomatic with a subsequent infection
Her: But catching it again is rare
4/
Me: It's not rare. It's commonplace. Immunity is transient & lasting immunity is impossible
Her: Well the boosters will help
Me: So when's your next one planned
LONG PAUSE
Her: I haven't heard about getting another booster
Me: So how will you stay protected as this progresses
5/
Her: Well this will be the last wave. Omicron was a blessing
Me: There are already new variants that are expected to cause another wave
Her: But they just get milder until it's gone
Me: Where do you get your news from
Her: BBC and the Mail
Me: I see.
6/
Her: Well there's not much we can do about it. It's like getting a regular cold & we got those every year
Me: It's very different from a regular cold & there is plenty we could be doing about it
Her: Well we can't just keep everyone locked up
I explained clean air approaches.
7/
The propaganda has done a fine job in making people believe this is all over. It's clear that what I said was news to her & that she kind of only half believed me.
She & her family feel like there is no risk whatsoever. I can't change that no matter what I say.
8/
Many people seem to think that vaccines have solved the problem & any other kind of measure is a lockdown.
It's clear that the message about ventilation, measuring CO₂, high levels of air filtration, overhead GUV & FarUV have not yet reached everyone.
I'll keep trying.
9/END
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2.8M people with long term sickness.
"the do nothing trajectory is that it's set to rise to 4M; we have to act on this"
Well @patmcfaddenmp your party have expertise in doing nothing. You're creating more long term ill health by doing nothing to reduce Covid transmissions.
1/🧵
Perhaps instead of punishing people who have become ill through poor infection control everywhere but especially in schools as well as all health and social care settings, you could actually do something.
You know how to reduce infections.
Your party was very vocal about it.
2/
Your former Health Minister Andrew Gwynne knew all too well about the ongoing risk of Long Covid as well as the importance of masks in healthcare and clean air. In fact your health sec and Edu sec both made pleas to the Cons Gov to implement these changes in ventilation.
3/
There was a webinar on school air quality yesterday.
It was attended by the teachers unions and had some excellent presentations.
There was one presentation I must mention though.
Herts council were suggesting using the machines they bought should be a blueprint for others.
1/🧵
Whilst it's great that they invested in air filters, the choice of machine baffles me quite frankly.
It's costly, noisy, has default auto mode, power hungry and unnecessary tech like UV (which has no utility at all in this set up) and an ioniser that cannot be disabled.
2/
I'm struggling to find a plus point.
They are saying nobody needs to go through a procurement process because they have done all of the leg work and this can just be used by others.
This terrifies me 😬.
It's the wrong product entirely for suitability for classroom use.
3/
In Jan there was a conference:
Breathing achievement into every classroom
This conference was designed to probe the link between Indoor Air Quality (IAQ) in educational buildings and the health, wellbeing, and educational outcomes of students.
UKHSA presented & IAQ experts.
1/🧵
This was something of a surprise to me.
I'm faced with a presentation from @UKHSA and some of their Key Recommendations are:
• Use of air cleaners in naturally ventilated buildings.
• Ensuring provision of adequate classroom ventilation
This seems like quite a breakthrough.
2/
~90% of UK schools are naturally ventilated.
This recommendation is that air filters are put into all naturally ventilated classrooms.
I've been calling for this for a number of years now and I never thought I'd hear @UKHSA recommend this given the years of pushback from Gov. 3/
I don't normally spend time arguing on here but I have lately. I'm so fed up with misinfo. Thought I'd challenge some of it.
It's amazing how strong opinions are formed from such little knowledge or insight.
Often people are fooled by credentials; cos they must know, right?
1/🧵
However, when you consider how we ended up here, we have had no end of highly credentialed people who are just flat out wrong, 'helping' to direct policies.
Qualifications are all well and good but it doesn't = right.
But folk who don't know are guided by folk they think do.
2/
And this gives rise to pretenders who gain themselves a following and inflated self importance on the back of it.
Their followers become almost besotted with their icon; often because they're calm mongerers; providing a comforting version of events.
They back them to the hilt.
3/
Health minister @GwynneMP got sacked today.
He was useless on Covid anyway.
Some say he has been badly advised by 'experts'.
I think those experts were selected because they tenaciously defend flawed science.
Govs hide behind these 'experts' to limit costs & liability.
1/🧵
It isn't just in the UK.
In Canada for example, people like John Conly are doing the same thing as Lisa Ritchie in UK.
They are demonstrably wrong.
For @UKLabour to have any credibility, they need a clear out.
If I'd been elected, my first job would have been a sacking spree.
2/
Get rid of the CMO, head of UKHSA, head of infection control for NHS etc.
Strip them of any titles they've received...not for their service; simply for their compliance and for being the faces Governments can hide behind.
There are no excuses left - none whatsoever.
3/
Thoughts on recent UCL study of ventilation & air cleaners.
I've seen a lot of negativity towards it and I think that's mainly due to the headline used, saying it can increase risk.
The study also found it can decrease risk.
It complex to study fluid dynamics in a hospital.
1/🧵
The authors are urging caution to ensure that HVAC/PAC give the desired result by using predictive fluid dynamics models.
That's hardly a bad thing.
There's almost no point trying to measure anything experimentally if people write off the findings because they don't like them.
2/
But the important thing here: I don't think this was ever set up to deliberately play down effectiveness of ventilation or PACs. It was to study complex fluid dynamics and although I can see things I would have done differently, it's a worthwhile study.
3/