Thread by @ShannonB

This week I spoke to @JamesTGallagher at @BBCRadio4 about what it is like to be #immunocompromised and #shielding from covid for nearly 1000 days.👇

bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m0…

Here's a 🧵 about why I told my family's story. 1/15 @LUPUSUK @RAIRDA_org #evusheld #Forgotten500k

I am one of 500k people in the uk who is still #shielding nearly 3 years into the pandemic. We are all #immunocompromised due to #autoimmune diseases, transplants and blood cancers 2/15 @bloodcancer_uk @kidneycareuk @LUPUSUK @RAIRDA_org #Forgotten500k @evusheld4theuk

Like thousands of others, I am not only more vulnerable to severe illness from covid due to my illness #lupus, but I am completely unprotected despite vaccination. As a result I need alternative treatments like #evusheld 3/15 @DHSCgovuk @RobertJenrick @evusheld4theuk

The treatment #evusheld is available in +30 countries to protect people like me but the UK govt has refused to buy it despite licensing it in March. People like @NikolaBrigden @martin_eve @MarkOak04974342 @drlennardlee have been fighting tirelessly to get it on the NHS 4/15

Evusheld has been held to a completely different standard than other covid treatments in the UK and is now going through another review process not expected to finish until spring of next year. This is too late 5/15. #evusheldnow #forgotten500k

The #immunocompromised in the UK are being told to hide away or get covid and place their lives in the hands of an unreliable treatment process and risk #longcovid. 6/15

Many of us can't take the antiviral #paxlovid if we get covid because we take other drugs that make it dangerous and are contraindicated. This makes it even more important that we get #evusheld. 7/15

As #immunocompromised in the UK we are being forced to make impossible decisions every day to keep ourselves alive without any vaccine protection: living without families, not seeing friends, losing jobs, not living our lives.@evusheld4theuk @RobertJenrick 8/15

The impossible decisions we are forced to make as UK #immunocompromised cause damage: mental health issues, family separation, lost income and poverty. If we could stop #shielding we could get our lives back. 9/15

As UK #immunocompromised we are desperate to stop #shielding. We are missing out on years of our lives that we can't get back. 10/15 #forgotten500k #leftbehind

meandmyall.com/2022/06/08/loo…

It shows how desperate we are that many of us have tried to go abroad to get the treatment. After 18 months living without my family I decided to take a very risky trip to the US this week and I am getting #evusheld today. 👇11/15

meandmyall.com/2022/10/21/a-p…

I still don't know if I caught covid on the flight despite my careful mitigations. And not everyone is lucky enough to be a dual citizen and have this option which makes me sad. This is unjust. We need #evusheld on the nhs for the #immunocompromised 12/15

While I was enroute to the US,@AstraZeneca announced they were making #evusheld available to the #forgotten500k in the Uk privately at the cost of over £1000. This is unjust in a country with national health care where everyone else gets protection from the vaccine 13/15

We know #evusheld is not 100 percent effective and won't protect us forever. But it's a layer of protection we don't have today that's available in all other G7 countries. 14/15

We need #Evusheld now, while it's effective, to give us some protection from covid before the winter. With covid rates skyrocketing, it is our best chance of staying out of hospital and protecting ourselves and the nhs. Please @RobertJenrick do the right thing. 15/15