COVID

You're welcome

There are very few people I actually like in this world, so I'd prefer their numbers not dwindle - especially from an attach of the 'D'oh's.

Very interesting essay on why people react the way they do to pandemics (etc.) at this site. He makes some interesting arguments.

https://essaysyoudidntwanttoread.home.blog/2022/10/09/why-do-they-think-that/ 

Sigh.

And this is why I can't keep up with it anymore, despite my best efforts....

https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fea7819de-533b-44ad-89be-14c81089dbb0_1280x720.jpeg

(original author - )

So glad I managed to get my Covid and flu booster 2 weeks before being a staff member at a big family conference last weekend. Sunday, Monday, Tuesday last week soooooooooo many of the staff and kids all were testing positive for Covid. (Some for the first time catching it) and there were some flu bugs going around too.  I was hugging and ceilidh dancing with so many of the staff who tested positive.  But no Covid or flu for me, thank goodness!!

That's a great relief! 

So glad I managed to get my Covid and flu booster 2 weeks before being a staff member at a big family conference last weekend. Sunday, Monday, Tuesday last week soooooooooo many of the staff and kids all were testing positive for Covid. (Some for the first time catching it) and there were some flu bugs going around too.  I was hugging and ceilidh dancing with so many of the staff who tested positive.  But no Covid or flu for me, thank goodness!!

Keep testing, though. You can certainly be a carrier without exhibiting symptoms. (Hopefully not, but....)

I did several tests all week for various reasons (none of which were tests due to symptoms) and all negative. I’m 9 days out now, feel great,  so pretty sure I am all good!

Fingers are crossed for ya it stays that way!


Wow, so they just said on the news that there are no more pediatric ICU beds available in all of Ontario (Canada) due to a combo of the RSV, Covid, and Flu.  All three of which can be pretty much warded off by wearing a mask.  So sad for those kiddies. Especially the itty bitty ones. 

So, the results are starting to be pretty obvious. The studies are legit. You don't want Covid, and you definitely don't want repeat cases. And you don't want your kids to get Covid.  Now there's actually a really solid explaination why. Or, several, actually, that aren't like reading a medical textbook. This author pretty much sums it up.

https://jessicawildfire.substack.com/p/you-may-be-early-but-youre-not-wrong?utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web 

Given what it does long-term to kids... https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/children-are-hospitalized-with-covid-at-record-numbers-in-the-us/ar-AASoXzP is going to play out for decades in lost capacity, lost earnings, lost quality of life. If life is involved.

We have all been so willing to just "oh, well, it's everywhere so why bother" doing anything about it. That's going to bite us all collectively in the ars* in a big way. The kids most of all, I think.

I will be interesting to see more they find out about what Covid does to the immune system - it does look pretty dismal. Measles pretty much wipes it clean - takes out most of the memory that  the body needs to recognize and fight infections.  If Covid does that as well, it could certainly explain the horrifically high RSV hospitalization rates in children. Hopefully not also for flu, as that's nasty enough when everything is working.

And hopefully we won't have a generation of kids who have to deal with the equivalent of what my daughter deals with (dysautonomia, among other unpleasantries) for the rest of their lives. And a bunch of old (and not so old) people who've had early onset brain failure. I guess we'll know in ten or twenty years, then, how it turns out. Won't we?

Sad.

Saw this today and had to laugh at the "puzzle". https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-63625989

I had covid before they had tests, my inability to work from long covid isn't documented anywhere. If they don't write it down anywhere, they can't count it, and the problem doesn't exist? I wish I could say 100% I caught it at work because they continued international travel long after they were warned to stop, but I needed medical care in the week I came down with it too. I wore a mask 100% of the time at the doctor's/hospital because of my other conditions so the office was more likely.

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Yeah.  Not much one can say to that. Other than, damn, you're screwed. I wish it wasn't so.

I've just made arrangements to switch to a new medical group. In the last two years I've been to see my GP a few times, and every time she immediately sent me to specialists. I mean, literally - she heard what I was complaining about and wrote orders for outside consults. She did absolutely no physican care, took no histories, didn't read my history - which I was able to produce after much hassle with a prior provider. The one time I went in with all the symptoms of a reactivation of Bird Fancier's Disease she insisted I go to a pulmonologist (sp?) which took several weeks to make happen. Then my lab tests came back with white blood cell counts through the roof. And she wanted me to go to the hospital immediately.  (I demurred and recovered before seeing the pulmonologist.)  I finally saw the lung doc, who told me I had been hyperventilating due to stress. (I must have also imagined all those white blood cells, too. And the 02 sats in the upper 80s!) So I walked out of that appointment. I can only imagine what's in my record at this point, from his office.

Shortly thereafter the daughter had the same symptoms, the same astronomical bloodwork counts, and was told to go to the hospital ASAP (same doctor office). We did so. It was an 18 hour ordeal that led to nothing other than suffering on her part - especially when they started talking leukemia.  While there I mentioned to the resident that her symptoms were the same as mine had been, and that I had a history of BF Disease, and that we had both been shoveling around mouldy hay mulch at the garden.... diagnosis confirmed. Severe allergic reaction.  Well, confirmed on her records, anyway. Not mine. And given our symptoms (low 02 sats, etc.) we should have been tested at some point for Covid, but were never tested. Not once. Either of us - four different doctors, one ER stay.... no Covid test. 

I went to see the same doc for stomach pains. I asked for a stomach acid blocker. She sent me to have gall bladder surgery consult, even though I told her that antacids improved the symptoms. And also to the gastroenterologist. Who it took many more weeks to see, who saw me for 10 minutes, ordered a test for possible ulcer bacteria (negative), and who was to have contacted me with the results. It was six weeks before he contacted me with the results (yes I left many messages asking), and prescribed a stomach acid blocker. Which works a treat. 

However,.... given how shoddy everything has been with this one healthcare system, I'm to see a nurse practitioner at one of the big rival healthcare systems in town the week after Christmas (earliest possible "new patient" appointment). I imagine I will need to explain to her what's gone on. Botched blood tests - tests were ordered but they didn't run them because enough blood wasn't drawn. Being sent for surgery I didn't need. No followup - literally not once (other than the high white blood count situation) did I get any followup from my GP. Lung doc not reading my history before meeting me. Etc., etc., etc.

I hope this new one at least does a physical exam when charging Medicare for a physical exam! (I've watched the charges they've billed Medicare on the Medicare portal.) 

Yeah.  Not much one can say to that. Other than, damn, you're screwed. I wish it wasn't so.

I've just made arrangements to switch to a new medical group. In the last two years I've been to see my GP a few times, and every time she immediately sent me to specialists. I mean, literally - she heard what I was complaining about and wrote orders for outside consults. She did absolutely no physican care, took no histories, didn't read my history - which I was able to produce after much hassle with a prior provider. The one time I went in with all the symptoms of a reactivation of Bird Fancier's Disease she insisted I go to a pulmonologist (sp?) which took several weeks to make happen. Then my lab tests came back with white blood cell counts through the roof. And she wanted me to go to the hospital immediately.  (I demurred and recovered before seeing the pulmonologist.)  I finally saw the lung doc, who told me I had been hyperventilating due to stress. (I must have also imagined all those white blood cells, too.) So I walked out of that appointment. I can only imagine what's in my record at this point, from his office.

Shortly thereafter the daughter had the same symptoms, the same astronomical bloodwork counts, and was told to go to the hospital ASAP (same doctor office). We did so. It was an 18 hour ordeal that led to nothing other than suffering on her part - especially when they started talking leukemia.  While there I mentioned to the resident that her symptoms were the same as mine had been, and that I had a history of BF Disease, and that we had both been shoveling around mouldy hay mulch at the garden.... diagnosis confirmed. Severe allergic reaction.  Well, confirmed on her records, anyway. Not mine. And given our symptoms (low 02 sats, etc.) we should have been tested at some point for Covid, but were never tested. Not once. Either of us - four different doctors, one ER stay.... no Covid test. 

I went to see the same doc for stomach pains. I asked for a stomach acid blocker. She sent me to have gall bladder surgery consult, even though I told her that antacids improved the symptoms. And also to the gastroenterologist. Who it took many more weeks to see, who saw me for 10 minutes, ordered a test for possible ulcer bacteria (negative), and who was to have contacted me with the results. It was six weeks before he contacted me with the results (yes I left many messages asking), and prescribed a stomach acid blocker. Which works a treat. 

However,.... given how shoddy everything has been with this one healthcare system, I'm to see a nurse practitioner at one of the big rival healthcare systems in town the week after Christmas (earliest possible "new patient" appointment). I imagine I will need to explain to her what's gone on. Botched blood tests - tests were ordered but they didn't run them because enough blood wasn't drawn. Being sent for surgery I didn't need. No followup - literally not once (other than the high white blood count situation) did I get any followup from my GP. Lung doc not reading my history before meeting me. Etc., etc., etc.

I hope this new one at least does a physical exam when charging Medicare for a physical exam! (I've watched the charges they've billed Medicare on the Medicare portal.) 

That practically sounds like Medicare fraud at the other place. Wow!

They made me take my mask off during an appointment this week (it was truly the worst I've had on the NHS and there have been some doozies) and promptly came down with something a few days later. I've gone through waves of feeling okay and then feeling awful but no headache so I think it's just a cold for real. No one in the hospital or the doctor were wearing masks. I really don't get it, the NHS is underwater with A&E waits at record levels but you can't put a mask on to keep people safer?

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Yeah, every time I went in she ordered "blood work" and I didn't bother to ask what she was looking for (usually because I wasn't feeling well at the time and fuzzy).  Seeing what they billed Medicare - huge, just huge lists of lab tests. There are tens of thousands in lab tests in the last two years. (Thank God I don't have to pay for them!).  Medicare doesn't normally pay for A1C or calcium levels unless proof of medical necessity is in the file. She ran them in with the first labs, and after that I asked her to not run them again unless she could vouch that they were medically necessary. They were run again every time she had them do any blood work at all. (Thankfully I had a copy of my having asked her to not run them in writing, dated. I sent a copy to Medicare when I saw the charges hit the second time, along with a statement that I had not authorized or known they were going to be done).  Thankfully I have in writing that I did not approve of their being done, and NY has a law against "unexpected charges" so I am not responsible for them.

I will be more pushy with the new doc - I want to know "why" on anything they are doing as far as labs, and am not going to just trot off to another doctor if the basics haven't been covered by my primary first. (For the stomach acid thing, I was expecting a prescription for a stomach acid inhibitor to see if it worked first. It took months to get that stupid prescription! Thank goodness for Tums in the meantime!)

Yeah, I was surprised at some of the "medic" places I went in the last few years to see they were still wearing only surgical masks. Which are not very effective for Covid (or a lot of other airborne diseases). On the good side, I did have a minor biopsy done at about this time last year (maybe a little later) and those folks were PPE'd  to a textbook perfect level. Which was good, as I did have to de-mask for the procedure.

This is all still so ... nutz....

RBH is fully masked staff AYUK if you need to go again. Patients hit and miss, but I haven’t seen a staff members face since I started frequenting the place in August.

RBH is fully masked staff AYUK if you need to go again. Patients hit and miss, but I haven’t seen a staff members face since I started frequenting the place in August.

That was an appointment I'd waited years for at a London hospital. Lots of people with serious long term illnesses, not a mask in sight except a few of the staff. I will have to go back for physio and OT, but I am not looking forward to it after that experience.

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