Covid-19, personal thoughts to June 2021
In Decenber 2020 a little over a quarter of a million people who were aged 90+ or 80+ were invited to receive a Pfizer vaccination. Their 2nd vaccination was before the end of the first full week in January 2021 so they were fully protected by the end of January. I was one of those people. What benefit do I have compared with a person who has refused vaccination? Personal gain? Apart from the thought I may not be as ill as I would be without vaccination: none.
Fast forward to May 2021. Many unvaccinated people travelled from India to the UK without need for stringent testing or quarantine. They beat the Government time imposed system despite TV pictures showing masses of people by the river in very close transmissable contact. As many others I predicted the inevitable would happen; and so it has come to fruition. As a consequence we all must suffer increased Government control, even delaying further freedoms. The NHS and Government advisers are paranoid about overwhelming the NHS and its services - rightly so. Currently about 2 in 3 people who are admitted to hospital are not vaccinated. By comparing 2 groups of people we find there is a non-science bias. The first group who refuse to be vaccinated are treated equally with those vaccinated. The second group who need to go abroad (not to holiday) are requred to pay for 3 or 4 Covid tests to return to their own residence in the UK. The first group has no personal cost. For the second group it is around £200 per person. Additionally the first group has been targeted for months to take the vaccination. The tax payer, not the non-vaccinator has borne that cost. The second group is effectively "fined" to leave the UK even though they may have travelled to a less infectious country. Why? Politics over science. Perhaps a fairer system would be charging those who refuse vaccinations pay a fee should they need Covid related hospital treatment and those who need to self isolate and purchase several Covid tets are part reimbursed should all tests be negative.
At a personal level, we have owned an apartment in Tenerife for over 14 years. Over the years we have carried out some renovations within the apartment. During the past year some whole community improvements have been made needed to be checked. Internally we needed to organise some major work. We also had some administrative work. Whilst there we did not go to the beach, did not eat out except the first day because we had no food. We were never closer than 2 metres to anyone for more than a few seconds. We both have double vaccinations. We are longstanding volunteers to help solve the Covid problem for UCL. I give monthly blood samples for analysis; we complete weekly questionnaires. What more can we do? We have been home 16 hours and already had 2 telephone calls from NHS Track and Trace. They did not know our details of Covid testing etc etc. No liaison with a database, no data transfer from our Government location entry form. Most unsatisfactory - it felt like harassment.
If we lived in an extended family we could be out of the property and others could answer the phone. How do they know who is actually there? This brings me to the next point. The PCR packs are delivered. Have I done the swab correctly? Is it me who has completed the test? In Tenerife, as should be mandatory here, we had to present ourselves with our passport at the clinic for them to take the swab.
What increases infection rates? For over a year I have said it is related to population density - be it in the home, in the office, the supermarket, in cities and the politics of the country etcetera. The UK has a high population density. France, for example, is about half that of the UK. There sre other countries with a high density but their rules / laws are stricter than ours; and there are cultural differences. Take the wearing of masks for example. In the UK they are not mandatory, not challengeable, but elsewhere, not so. So does not wearing a mask make a person non infectious - of course not!