Quick thread 🧵 on the NHS crisis, particularly for folks who are healthy and don't spend much time in hospitals or GP clinics: things are bad and getting worse. Nurses are rushed off their feet due to staff shortages. Blood tests get messed up by poorly trained staff... 1/n ...and important medical procedures are being delayed due to the lack of beds, which is partly due to the lack of social care resources. Some patients are being sent home sooner than may be wise. It's even getting hard to find a wheelchair when taking in a patient. 2/n

I wonder how many UK politicians have considered the effect on public sentiment of smart energy monitors. Millions of UK households have one of these and they’re like always-on dooms-scrollers for those of us who are worried about the cost of living. Just FYI, and for American viewers, that's our energy monitor and we are on 24 hour time. That means we spent £4:47 on electricity and gas by 11:10 this morning. (To be completely accurate, about 50p of that is due to fixed daily fees called "Standing Charges".)

Man's persistent failure to make the best use of technical knowledge is often seen in medicine. My heart suffered permanent damage because I wasn't screened for primary aldosteronism when I developed high blood pressure. Sadly, this is not unusual, see: www1.racgp.org.au/ajgp/2018/octo… "Despite a reported high prevalence, patients with hypertension are rarely screened for primary aldosteronism [due to] the outdated teaching that primary aldosteronism is a rare and benign cause of hypertension." True! My primary care doc was v. excited to see such a 'rare' case.

Fifty years ago this month I had my own milk round, and was a fully trained member of the farm products supply chain, doing daily delivery of milk, yogurt, eggs, potatoes and more; all from a zero-pollution, all-electric vehicle like the one seen here. flic.kr/p/9rFzX3 1/9 To get your own round with Unigate Dairies you had to complete training and a trial period helping on other rounds. I started in January, 1971, having left school in December after securing a place at university for the following October (see Gap Year en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gap_year#…) 2/9

Can't believe I missed this last week: #Decimalday, the 50th anniversary of a massive change in British life. The pound (£) went from being made up of 20 shillings, each worth 12 pennies, to 100 pence per pound. Did confusion reign? Yes it did! I wuz there 1/5

https://twitter.com/Classicbritcom/status/1361127722878201862

On #DecimalDay 1971 it was my job, as a milkman who delivered 640 pints of milk a day to families in a low income part of town, to explain to my customers, all of whom paid cash, that a pint of milk now cost five pence, not one shilling.
npr.org/2021/02/15/968… 2/5

Really struggling with the word ‘retired’ right now. Yes, I retired from the corporate world of cybersecurity, but I’m still very much in the world, spending my time on other things: caregiving, independent research, personal reflection, documenting my affairs, and so on. 1/5 The “affairs” I’m trying to document are not those of the heart. I’m referring to things like financial accounts, email accounts, and all that digital stuff we have, i.e. everything that will need to be dealt with when I die. And let me tell you friends, ain’t no small thing. 2/5

The morphing of QAnon into a religion has me flashing back to my earliest days as a researcher. It was 1967, the Summer of Love, The Beatles were hanging out with Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, and I began my study of non-Christian belief systems. (See (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Beatl…) 1/10 Although I was raised by a church-going family, I am not, and never was, a Christian. Theologically-speaking my parents' church was very liberal and believed in adult baptism based on informed choice. My interest in other faiths was not discouraged. 2/10

This may be a thread: "Flu in a time of COVID"
If you "experience flu-like symptoms" today, it's a much bigger deal than it used to be, you know, before we had #COVID19 in our world. Before #COVID19:
1. Feel really sick, think "could be a cold or flu."
2. Take something for it, curl up in bed.
NOW:
1. Feel really sick, think "could be deadly virus."
2. Isolate, order test.
3. Feel much worse, like this could be it.
4. Ponder death while awaiting results.