Health Care

Well, doesn’t this disprove PHE?

Public Health England insists that we’ve an epidemic of child obesity:

A software mistake caused a Tui flight to take off heavier than expected as female passengers using the title “Miss” were classified as children, an investigation has found.

The departure from Birmingham airport to Majorca with 187 passengers on board was described as a “serious incident” by the Air Accidents Investigation Branch (AAIB).

Apparently not then. For if all were given that obese weight then this wouldn’t have happened, would it?

They want to kill us all

The new abouttobeOAP compuslory morning exercise centres will be alongside the A1, A2, A3 and A4…….for London. Other areas we’ll get to.

Someone having grasped that post-retirement and soon after it death makes the government a fortune.

This is amusing

Med3000 was originally the placebo used in a clinical trial of another of Futura’s erectile dysfunction gels, which scientists had been working on for more than a decade. That gel failed in the study, whereas the dummy treatment, Med3000, yielded “statistically significant and clinically meaningful” improvements. Futura decided to focus its efforts on the placebo gel instead.

The placebo worked better than the drug under trial……

This is not, perhaps, all that much of a surprise

One shot of the Pfizer vaccine gives inadequate protection to cancer sufferers, new research suggests.

OK.

“Our data provides the first real-world evidence of immune efficacy following one dose of the Pfizer vaccine in immunocompromised patient populations.”

You don’t say. Vaccines work with the immune system, those whose immune system ain’t working well don;t respond to vaccines all that well. Or, at least, worse than those with better immune systems?

NHS at the forefront of technology again

The NHS is to send text messages to 400,000 people, asking them to book a coronavirus jab, with reminders for those who do not come forward.

As part of efforts to boost uptake, text invitations will be sent to those aged 55 and over, with a link to reserve an appointment at a mass vaccination centre or pharmacist.

Health officials stressed that invitation letters would continue to be sent, and that those who preferred not to travel to the sites could wait to be invited by their GP.

But they said the move could allow the programme to move more quickly through the age groups, reacting to changing vaccine supplies and filling empty slots.

Sending texts about appointments is apparently such a new idea that it can only be implemented as part of pandemic measures.

Interesting

According to findings released on Monday, the prevalence of antibodies was 23% in the states of Lagos – which is home to more than 16 million people –
…
Up to now the country has recorded just 1,800 deaths from Covid

Measurement difficulties or just not very dangerous?

No, not really

Researchers have hailed the findings as a potential step in improving the health of people living with obesity.

For the first time it is possible to achieve through drugs what was previously only possible through weight-loss surgery, they said.

The drug, semaglutide, works by taking over the body’s own appetite regulating system in the brain, leading to reduced hunger and calorie intake.

It’s the only through surgery bit that’s wrong. Because of course there are other ways of taking over the body’s own appetite regulating system. By will.

“I’m going to eat less” or “I’m going to eat differently” or even “I’ll change how much I eat, what, and do a bit more exercise” all work assuming that the individual does actually do those things. As someone who has lost more than 10% of body weight on that third option I do know this works.

That the drug makes it easier, sure. But it’s possible without it.

Clearly true

A report from the Institute of Economic Affairs, released on Tuesday, argued that the NHS was “nothing special” and the Covid-19 crisis had been used to justify “conventional wisdom” that a state-run service is the best model for public healthcare.

“There is no rational basis for the adulation the NHS is currently receiving, and no reason to be ‘grateful’ for the fact that we have it,” argued Kristian Niemietz, the think tank’s head of Health and Welfare.

“It should go without saying that if the UK did not have the NHS, it would not have no healthcare system. It would have a different healthcare system,” he wrote.

Exactly that this questions the modern religion is why there’s so much screaming about it.

That didn’t work out well then

After a lifetime’s advocacy for the public model of healthcare and a career as an NHS psychiatrist, he died alone in hospital

The grieving son also doesn’t know what he’s talking about:

If the escalating costs of market-driven healthcare, drugs and technology had not created a crisis within the NHS in which lack of capacity means that doctors have to decide between which patients to save, I believe he might have had a fighting chance.

Drugs are cheaper than non-drugs as a treatment. That’s why we use them. So too technologies. We use the newer ones because they do the job for fewer resources. And someone’s really going to have to explain how allocating work to the lowest bidder increases costs…..

A bit too much of the waving of the bloody shroud here perhaps.

Idiots

Spain’s remaining vaccine stocks are dwindling rapidly, leading Madrid and the northern region of Cantabria to stop issuing first doses to concentrate on administering second shots.

Which should be preferred? Quite a lot of protection for someone unprotected or a bit more protection for someone already rather protected?

Use the scarce vaccine to provide first shots is the obvious answer.

Twats

NHS vaccine centres are offering Covid jabs to friends and family aged under 70 in breach of national policy, The Telegraph can disclose.

Senior NHS sources threatened to take disciplinary action against hospitals and GPs across the country offering leftover jabs to relatives and friends of staff despite being outside the top four priority cohorts.

Health bosses have insisted that drawing up a ‘friends and family list’ helps avoid waste by ensuring that they never throw away any Pfizer vaccine, which comes in boxes of 975 doses and can only be stored for five days once thawed.

However, ministers are understood to be determined that younger people with a connection to NHS staff should not be allowed to “jump the queue” over the vulnerable and elderly.

If the stuff would be wasted without an arm to put it into then there’s no queue being jumped, is there?

This is akin to that EU idiocy, not buying more Pfizer because that would be unfair to Sanofi.

Fairness ain’t the correct criteria here.

Calling BiG

Almost 30% of Covid patients in England readmitted to hospital after discharge – study
Readmission rate for Covid patients 3.5 times greater, and death rate seven times higher, than for other hospital patients

Covid affects the old with comorbidities more than others. We’d therefore expect those hospitalised with Covid to require more hospital care more generally than the general population.

So, is all this adjusted for this?

That’s the thing matey

but everywhere else you look, there are government blunders, delays and failures which – in a more predictable world – would already have had huge political consequences.

What kind of country allows this to happen? In the polls, the Conservatives are either ahead or neck and neck with Labour. Among many people I have interviewed and some I know, there seems to be a shrugging belief that, because the virus is unprecedented, disaster of some kind was always inevitable, and on balance, Boris Johnson and his ministers are doing as well as anyone could.

Where has done better?

No, NZ isn’t a good example, fewer people than Trowbridge 1,500 miles from anywhere else isn’t a good comparison.

As Polly refuses to grasp

Especially this one: the NHS took over all the capacity of private hospitals, its 8,000 beds, 680 operating theatres and 20,000 staff, to carry out non-Covid emergency treatments for cancer, stroke and heart patients. In a gesture of wartime necessity, the well-off could not commandeer special treatment.

But the beds were not requisitioned as they might be in wartime; they were officially bought at “cost price” and the sum has been estimated to be £1bn, steep according to many.

Therefore, people buying their own health care, after they’ve already paid their taxes for the NHS, save the NHS £1 billion, don’t they?