Long Covid & Doctors as patients … could covid trigger autoimmune?

Arthuritis

This poor doc has long covid and worried about the government relaxation of covid restrictions.

What she highlights clearly is you do not have to have any underlying conditions to suffer serious outcomes following covid, and some of her symptoms may seem remarkably familiar to the autoimmune community… rash, swollen eyelids & weird dreams…

Bottom line … public health policy needs to be based on sound medicine, not the best funded lobby shouting loudest.

https://news.sky.com/story/doctor-with-long-covid-who-suffered-violent-shakes-and-hallucinations-attacks-boris-johnsons-plan-to-end-all-coronavirus-rules-12543375

Fif

Quite agree. All the scientists are of the view it's too early to relax restrictions and cut down on testing, but business interests come first. Living in Scotland, our First minister has a much more cautious approach, but if testing and self isolation are cut in England, the funding will stop coming to Scotland so our position is likely to be compromised.

scotleag

Getting a bit fed up with this 'Scotland has handled it so much better' line. It simply isn't true. Sturgeon's better in front of a camera than Johnson. That's about all there is to it. This has just come out today https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/early-covid-warning-met-by-sheer-disbelief-in-scotland-says-scientist-xqxjwh6mm It's by Mark Woolhouse, Professor of epidemiology at Edinburgh University. It says "Woolhouse was appointed to Sturgeon’s scientific advisory group in early February, but it only held its first meeting three days into lockdown, when the seeds of the huge wave of deaths in April had already been sown. Sturgeon resisted calls for a lockdown in early March, and only relented on March 23.¨

He wrote twice to the Scottish government in January and was told everything was under control. A lot of what the Scottish government has done is performance art. England has test and trace so they call the same thing test and protect. England has hands, face, space, Scotland has the same but calls it F.A.C.T.S (few people can say what it actually means). England does something. Scotland does it a few days later. Or as with vaccinations for 5-11 announces it a day before England does. It's all about being different. That matters more than actual action. Take the ridiculous football spectators ban from Boxing Day. Numbers were capped at 500 - regardless of size of ground. The argument it was for social distancing was risible. 500 at Albion Rovers is one in every three places permitted to be occupied. 500 at Celtic Park is one in every 120 spaces. Either it's one in three which would have allowed Celtic to admit 20,000 or it's one in 120 in which case there would have been no games at Albion Rovers as there would have been more people on the pitch than would have been allowed into the ground. Why did Scotland do this? Well, England didn't.

While the Scottish government weren't listening to Mark Woolhouse they were listening to Devi Sridhar, also of Edinburgh University and professor of global public health there. The difference is Woolhouse is an epidemiologist. Sridhar isn't. She claimed Scotland would be covid-free by the end of August 2020 and the Scottish government believed her. She cited the Indian state of Maharashtra as a model to follow. A few weeks later it had over 1.5M cases. After nearly two years of peddling the 'covid free' line - the mirror image of the anti-vaxxer crazies - she's now changed tack and urging us all to take a holiday. An utter charlatan who the Scottish government listened to because she told them what they wanted to hear.

On the whole Scotland (and Wales) have done slightly better than England. This, I believe is down to having fewer large urban areas, fewer homes in multiple occupation and fewer groups identified as having poor vaccine take-up.

Don't get me wrong. I think the UK government has, on the whole, handled things atrociously. The death figures don't lie. The rate per 1M is one of the highest in Europe (though it's not the absolute worst as often claimed) but Scotland isn't far behind. Sturgeon is fond of comparing Scotland with similar-sized countries in Europe. But not on this. Have a look at the rates for cases, hospitalisations and deaths in Denmark and Norway, both with similar sized populations to Scotland (just as England should be compared to France, Spain and Italy, not Hungary and Serbia as Johnson's apologists do). The Scottish figures are absolutely atrocious by comparison.

Admin Note

This post ended up in moderation - perhaps because of the link to the Times Newspaper, which requires a subscription to read the article.

Brynmor

Arthuritis

@scotleag I think my 7 year old god daughter has politicians sussed. She calls them toadstools because they are so toxic and nothing good ever seems to come of them! (She is a budding JK Rowling that does her own illustrations)!

Your eloquent summing up reminds me of one of her stories!

Completely agree, politicians like lawyers (and often are) will choose “expert” testimony & Marketing that suits their position, just as tobacco companies claimed “experts disagree on tobacco toxicity” (omitting the fact that 99 agreed and 1 in their pocket disagreed).

The oil lobby took up the same playbook.