Day: 8 October 2020

By Gavin Phillips Where are all the patients? This is an interview with a nurse with over 20 years’ experience. Jessica (pseudonym) has worked in a large NHS hospital for the majority of the time from February through September. I have met with Jessica and have verified that she is a registered nurse. She wishes to remain anonymous at this time. Q. Do you work in the same hospital most of the time?Answer: Yes Q. What size is the hospital, how many beds are there?Answer: Over 800 Q. Different nurses often have different areas where they work in a hospital. In which departments do you usually work?Answer: All departments. Care of the Elderly, Medicine, Surgical and Emergency area. As well as specialities like Stroke, Gynae etc. Q. Please walk us through a typical shift for you. The types of patients you would help and what you would be doing.Answer: After handover from the night staff lasting about half an hour, I would then begin my morning medication round. This would probably finish between 9 and 9.30, by which time doctors would be on ward. I would prioritise and attend to my most unwell patients first, making sure they had the fluids or other products they need, like blood transfusions or antibiotic infusions. If on surgical ward I would prepare my patients for theatre, liaising ...

byMikko Paunio MD, MHS Medical Counsellor Smoked salmon is a great source of Vitamin D. Order some from Bleiker's Smokehouse in Yorkshire Main message As a cabinet officer in the Ministry of Social Affairs and Health of Finland, I am convinced that Finland’s COVID-19 control strategy should now include recommendations of vitamin D supplements to all age groups except children. Daylight is becoming shorter by the day. Thus, our ability to produce vitamin D in skin diminishes markedly. As a seasoned epidemiologist and public health specialist, I consider it scientifically proven that high levels of vitamin D provide both protection against severe COVID-19, but even more importantly there is strong evidence that high vitamin D levels slow markedly virus circulation and might even provide 'herd immunity' to populations according to a study published a month ago. It is as yet non-peer-reviewed but already can be considered a milestone study. It is a remarkable matched case control study of 52,405 COVID-19 cases and 524,050 matched controls picked up from Clalit Health Services (CHS), which provides comprehensive health services to over 4.6 million members in Israel. Vitamin D now appears to provide us with a silver bullet solution to protect the most vulnerable and provides us with the means to get rid of these socially disastrous lockdowns even before there is a ...

Second Lockdown For Scotland First Minister Nicola Sturgeon yesterday announced new restrictions in Scotland – a new lockdown in all but name. Christopher Snowdon is not impressed in the Spectator. So now we know the threshold at which Nicola Sturgeon pulls the trigger. If the number of daily hospital admissions for Covid-19 exceeds a tenth of the number recorded at the April peak, she will lay waste to the hospitality industry. From Friday, all pubs and licensed restaurants in Greater Glasgow and Clyde, Lanarkshire, Forth Valley, Lothian and Ayrshire and Arran – where two-thirds of Scots live – will be forced to shut their doors for at least 16 days. So too will snooker clubs, casinos, bowling alleys and bingo halls.In the rest of Scotland, pubs and restaurants will be allowed to serve food and soft drinks – but not alcohol – until 6pm. Cafés which don’t have an alcohol licence can also stay open until 6pm. Hotel restaurants will be permitted to open beyond 6pm but only for residents and, again, only without alcohol. Repressive stuff, and with a whiff of prohibition and temperance. And it's only October. The pub industry is keen to point out that only 5% of Covid infections take place in the hospitality sector, and there is certainly a sense of the trade being made a ...

by Professor Norman Fenton, Dr. Scott McLachlan, Professor Martin Neil and Dr. Magda Osman The focus of almost all current reporting on COVID-19 is on the sharp increase in number of 'new cases' – as shown in the above graph – and the accompanying narrative that we are in the midst of an exponential 'second wave' increase. For example, there were 12,000 ‘new cases’ on October 2nd compared to just 3,000 on September 2nd – a four-fold increase in four weeks, and more than double the new cases per day now than we had at the peak of the pandemic in March. This looks frightening. But the massive increase in ‘new cases’ is almost completely explained by factors that have nothing to do with an increasing population health risk. New cases are simply the count of those who get a positive test result. But almost all of those – as can be seen from the university student ‘cases’ – are either asymptomatic or false positives., i.e. they do not – and will not – show any symptoms of a ‘COVID-19 illness’. Nor will they ‘spread the virus’ to others. Also, contrary to widely believed assumptions, there is no ‘gold standard’ test for COVID-19. A diagnostic process, namely PCR, has been used, but since the outbreak there has been no attempt ...