The Alba household has been visited with various illnesses ailments and procedures of late.
Most with overlapping symptoms that play pop with diagnostics and said diagnostics are all being affected by Covid restrictions.
Throw into the mix that both of us have quite a few symptoms of Covid but still testing negative.
Think I ve got to the point now where I can admit to myself that I have Very Strong Opinions about covid itself.
But utter understanding surrounding the implications and knock on effects within the NHS.
Seriously
I don’t know how the staff within the NHS are keeping going
Combination of not wanting to let patients/the service down, grim determination and playing musical technologists... (just because you're down to do this role doesn't mean you won't find yourself doing that one as we have to shift you all around as person A is off sick and Person B has suddenly needed to take special leave of one sort or another). And leaving aside just about anything else that isn't directly providing the service (procedure review - it'll have to wait, support to other department - it'll have to wait)
I just did a positive Covid test. I had what I thought was a slight cold but I figured I should take a test to be safe. The one i took yesterday was negative and I thought I was OK< but I took another today just to be sure, and there's no doubt it's positive.
Get well soon, @NicoleMR. My brother was the same way -- symptoms of a slight cold, positive test. He's better now.
If symptoms of a slight cold is what this thing is turning out to be, then it would seem it's something we can live with. We really have no choice. Rhinitis, as medical folk like to call a slight cold, has always been the very textbook definition of contagious.
If symptoms of a slight cold is what this thing is turning out to be, then it would seem it's something we can live with.
Except for some vaccinated people it's still more like a very bad 'flu that has people in bed and unable to do anything for days, sometimes needing hospital treatment, and often off work for a week or more - with long covid too boot. The question is, to what extent is the personal cost of people being that sick, the costs to the health services (including lack of capacity for other treatments) and the costs to business of people off work and claiming sick pay small enough to "live with" or large enough that we need to work at reducing incidence.
This is what worries me, Alan. Government seems to have just thrown us to the wolves and my workplace, previously very good, has followed suit. Two of my colleagues who went through the whole pandemic without it, caught it this week. My health has been a bit ropey for over a year so the last thing I want is Covid but we've been pretty much abandoned.
I feel that China have it wrong (zero virus policy) you can never completely keep this virus out. I think we also have it wrong (complete abandonment of any mitigation) with the disadvantages Alan describes. I am in Germany now and I feel it’s about right here - mask wearing in public places and isolation if you have the virus.
There are no perfect solutions to this horrible disease.
Too snuffly to sleep last night, so I had a RAT test this morning, which was very clearly positive for COVID, so I'm in "isolation" for 7 days under Australian rules. I'm hoping that, being triple vaxxed, I won't get any severe symptoms. Me and Mrs T both had flu shots on Friday, so with luck we won't get that this winter.
Yet another begging message from the local schools today saying "please don't send your kids to school if they're sick".
Covid rates in the schools are up by a factor of 30 over mid-March. They are now the highest they have been all year - no doubt because there's no longer a requirement to wear masks and maintain physical spacing.
This morning our minister tested positive for Covid. Her husband was due to lead our worship (she was going to lead worship at his church) but it was decided that it would be better to minimise the risks. So, with about 90m warning I found myself leading worship this morning - admittedly reading the sermon and prayers already written.
Too snuffly to sleep last night, so I had a RAT test this morning, which was very clearly positive for COVID, so I'm in "isolation" for 7 days under Australian rules. I'm hoping that, being triple vaxxed, I won't get any severe symptoms. Me and Mrs T both had flu shots on Friday, so with luck we won't get that this winter.
We're fully vaccinated and boosted, as well as having had the normal flu vaccine. Despite that, we'd be very surprised if we did not acquire covid, but only mildly because of the vaccination. Prayers and best wishes to you for a speedy recovery.
We're reasonably certain we've all had it in the last couple of weeks. Little Miss Feet brought what appeared to be a cold home from school (aka the temple to Grandfather Nurgle) and she got a negative LF test. I got the same cold and thought nothing of it and didn't test as we only had the one left. My parents were up on holiday and Granny Feet tested positive shortly after leaving, prompting Mrs Feet to test as she was now feeling pretty grotty and got a very quick positive (~2 minutes). Grampy Feet, on the other hand, was full of something but returned 4 negative results in a row. We're mostly recovered now. The cough was not very nice but not the worst I've had either (no coughing so hard I vomit, and no burst blood vessels making me look like I have two black eyes, and no getting myself water drunk trying to soothe it).
Having avoided Covid for so long it finally got me yesterday. Annoying in itself but even more annoying as I was on a retreat. Decided to come home rather than isolate in my room. I felt dire last night, but not too bad today.
Numbers of cases up by half a million, in the last week, variously ascribed to jubilee and other events. It leaves me baffled, do we go back to restrictions? Masks very rare now in shops. I guess most people are looking the other way. If I don't look, it won't happen
Numbers of cases up by half a million, in the last week, variously ascribed to jubilee and other events. It leaves me baffled, do we go back to restrictions? Masks very rare now in shops. I guess most people are looking the other way. If I don't look, it won't happen
I have to confess to being one such, after getting covid a bit over a month ago. It's not at all clear now that the preventive effect of (cloth) mask wearing is sufficient to make a significant impact given how contagious omicron seems to be. I tried wearing FFP3 masks but they're (a) fairly expensive (b) only available as disposables because of how they're made and (c) produce huge amounts of condensation that leave my face soaking just from a brief shopping trip, and the prospect of wearing one for 4 hours on the ferry the other day was more than I was willing to endure.
I think that it's likely that I got Covid from being on a crowded train with a lot of people coming back from the Download Festival. If that's true I guess a lot of people who got it there will be passing it on to their families and friends.
I stopped wearing masks when my mental health deteriorated in February and I had to make contact with medical services to discuss medication for the first time in nearly 25 years. I am now having a course of CBT to help me manage my anxiety, which was caused by the pandemic and the war, along with a worsening of my depression.
I doubt very much if we will go back to restrictions anyway as the virus is here to stay. The virus that caused the 1890s Russian flu pandemic is thought to still be around as a cold virus and I see no reason why this one will be any different.
It’s the mutation rate that is the issue, until the whole world is either vaccinated or infected we will continue to get problem variants that have risk of vaccine escape.
Yes, the Russian flu became a common cold through its mutations over time. Covid-19 is also mutating and obviously we cannot guarantee how it will do so. But so far it has become more contagious but less lethal. This is because the qualities needed to be more contagious, such as remaining in the upper respiratory tract, make it less lethal, because it doesn’t get the opportunity to get lower down where it is more dangerous. Obviously there will still be people vulnerable and they need to be protected. But cloth masks appear to be pretty ineffective with omicron and vaccines are our greatest weapon.
But from my point of view, I have spent nearly 3 months with depression and I cannot live like that forever without it having serious consequences.
Sorry, very minor point of fact--the flu didn't turn into a common cold, those are different viruses. (virii?) What it did was to go on evolving and turning into an ancestral form of the flus we have today.
Sorry, very minor point of fact--the flu didn't turn into a common cold, those are different viruses. (virii?) What it did was to go on evolving and turning into an ancestral form of the flus we have today.
Plural is viruses. *virii would be the plural of a word *virius which doesn't exist.
Virus in Latin is a non-count noun so has no plural. Despite its form it's neuter so if it did have a plural, it would end in an a.
No biggie, just pedantic that way. Though I suppose the covid virus WILL ultimately wind up as a common cold, maybe in a hundred years, as I understand (possibly wrongly) that "common cold" includes other coronaviruses. (See? got the plural right!) I award myself a gold star on the forehead.
Yes - there are a lot of different viruses that cause colds, and a minority of colds are caused by a coronavirus. There are also a lot of different coronaviruses - SARS is caused by a coronavirus, MERS is caused by a coronavirus, Covid-19 is (obviously) caused by a coronavirus, some colds are caused by coronaviruses.
Re masks, anything lower than a well-fitting N95 or similar mask has never been very effective at preventing the wearer from being infected, but they do have a modest effect at preventing you from infecting someone else.
If you view a mask as roughly tripling the length of time an infectious person can spend in someone's presence before they're likely to get the virus, then you're not far wrong.
My suspicion is that the more infectious viral strains have reduced the mean contact time for infection transfer to a short enough length of time with respect to normal human social interaction times, that it gives the impression that "masks don't work".
It took some trial and error to find a comfortable N95 mask and I was very lucky to be able to configure my life to only need them occasionally (because I can default to doing things remotely or outdoors). But that's of course because I have a lot of control over my life and can afford it which for many people isn't the case and I don't have to take four hour ferry journeys...
I've also got a carbon dioxide monitor for checking ventilation to see whether a space is reasonably safe.
The reasons I worry are the danger of long covid (lowish - but if you keep catching covid then each time you roll the dice for it and omicron doesn't seem to confer much immunity), increased cardiovascular and other risks after a covid infection and the possibility seen with other viruses of long term effects which aren't fully known yet and I'm in a fairly risky group to start with (and after a chronic illness that lasted over a year which I've only recently got better from, it's the last thing I need)
I see other countries are talking about reintroducing masks but in the same way as we developed sewer systems etc. there probably needs to be a real push for ventilation to make things safer in the long run. I think we could also do with cheap over-the counter access to antiviral drugs and a vaccine against omicron but ventilation standards (like the ones for dentists surgeries which already exist in Scotland) would be a great thing and would make people like Heavenlyannie who can't wear masks safer.
I have long covid (in my case something similar to postural Orthostatic tachycardia syndrome which is seen with other viruses), having caught the original covid from my son in March 2020, so can understand the concerns about that. There are some positive signs that omicron is less likely to cause it, though obviously that needs to be balanced with the virus being more contagious https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-61828335
I'm getting a bit worried about my ongoing need for freaking long naps. I have to have either two short (1 hour or so) naps a day, or one long one--as in, 3-4 hours. I'm not used to that. But I'm only a month out from my COVID onset.
Sorry, very minor point of fact--the flu didn't turn into a common cold, those are different viruses. (virii?) What it did was to go on evolving and turning into an ancestral form of the flus we have today.
Plural is viruses. *virii would be the plural of a word *virius which doesn't exist.
Virus in Latin is a non-count noun so has no plural. Despite its form it's neuter so if it did have a plural, it would end in an a.
[continuing tangent]
In any case, in current English, virus is an English word, not a Latin word, so the plural is, as Karl says, viruses. Note, for example, that the plural of arena in English is not arenae but arenas, And the plural of forum is forums, not fora. Essentially, when a word becomes naturalized in ENglish, it's plural form follows English rules not the rules of the language from which it comes.
Sorry, very minor point of fact--the flu didn't turn into a common cold, those are different viruses. (virii?) What it did was to go on evolving and turning into an ancestral form of the flus we have today.
Plural is viruses. *virii would be the plural of a word *virius which doesn't exist.
Virus in Latin is a non-count noun so has no plural. Despite its form it's neuter so if it did have a plural, it would end in an a.
And the plural of forum is forums, not fora.
I'd always heard "fora" used until the widespread use of "forum" on the internet and even then it was a matter of debate. Also, English is really not consistent about this (quelle surprise), so "maxima" is absolutely the standard plural of "maximum" when studying calculus, while "formulas" and "formulae" compete as plurals of "formula".
Back to topic. Mr Cats has Covid. He took the test when away from home and now has to work out what to do, in terms of getting back (public transport). I am sorry for him, but I also know he is not good at being ill and doesn’t really in his heart of hearts believe in germs he can’t see, so I anticipate a difficult few days.
And I really mustn’t get it: I’ve been waiting a year to see my new dentist, for whom I have a slew of issues, and the appointment is on Monday!
Poor Mr Cats. I hope he gets home safety. I felt a bit guilty travelling with the lurgy but I would have had to have come home on Monday anyway and I'm still testing positive today. My husband has been away while I've been ill, but is back today. I think he was hoping I would be non-infectious, but we'll work things out when he arrives. This house is big enough that we can lead almost separate lives if need be.
Indices and indexes are both used as plurals of index.
Somewhat divided on the field of usage as well. Books have indexes, IME, whereas numbers raised to the power of another have indices.
Same with "codex" (as long-time players of Warhammer 40 000 will know).
It occurs to me that the teaching of Latin and the teaching of mathematics (rather than arithmetic) in the UK probably have a common root in the requirements for entry to Oxford and Cambridge (and presumably the ancient universities in Scotland) a century or so ago, so it's not surprising that mathematics preserves forms borrowed from Latin where upstart subjects like English have left abandoned them.
Gently interjecting with a (non-Covid) hostly cough,
We seem to be straying rather from the topic of this thread. Maybe start a new thread about plurals in Heaven if you fancy. Now back to the matter in hand.
Tens of pages (I imagine) back up the thread, I mentioned I had a friend who caught Covid last October, who spent several months in a coma, and who was not expected to live. I thought I would share the good news here that he is starting to talk about a phased return to work. The body - even a body with half a lung missing - is a wonderful thing, and medicine is remarkable in terms of the apparently hopeless cases which can sometimes be saved.
Comments
Most with overlapping symptoms that play pop with diagnostics and said diagnostics are all being affected by Covid restrictions.
Throw into the mix that both of us have quite a few symptoms of Covid but still testing negative.
Think I ve got to the point now where I can admit to myself that I have Very Strong Opinions about covid itself.
But utter understanding surrounding the implications and knock on effects within the NHS.
Seriously
I don’t know how the staff within the NHS are keeping going
This sucks.
If symptoms of a slight cold is what this thing is turning out to be, then it would seem it's something we can live with. We really have no choice. Rhinitis, as medical folk like to call a slight cold, has always been the very textbook definition of contagious.
Just my 2 bob’s worth as a “medical folk”.
And the good Dr Gauci is right: the pandemic sure as hell ain’t over.
There are no perfect solutions to this horrible disease.
Covid rates in the schools are up by a factor of 30 over mid-March. They are now the highest they have been all year - no doubt because there's no longer a requirement to wear masks and maintain physical spacing.
We're fully vaccinated and boosted, as well as having had the normal flu vaccine. Despite that, we'd be very surprised if we did not acquire covid, but only mildly because of the vaccination. Prayers and best wishes to you for a speedy recovery.
I have to confess to being one such, after getting covid a bit over a month ago. It's not at all clear now that the preventive effect of (cloth) mask wearing is sufficient to make a significant impact given how contagious omicron seems to be. I tried wearing FFP3 masks but they're (a) fairly expensive (b) only available as disposables because of how they're made and (c) produce huge amounts of condensation that leave my face soaking just from a brief shopping trip, and the prospect of wearing one for 4 hours on the ferry the other day was more than I was willing to endure.
I doubt very much if we will go back to restrictions anyway as the virus is here to stay. The virus that caused the 1890s Russian flu pandemic is thought to still be around as a cold virus and I see no reason why this one will be any different.
But from my point of view, I have spent nearly 3 months with depression and I cannot live like that forever without it having serious consequences.
Plural is viruses.
Virus in Latin is a non-count noun so has no plural. Despite its form it's neuter so if it did have a plural, it would end in an a.
Re masks, anything lower than a well-fitting N95 or similar mask has never been very effective at preventing the wearer from being infected, but they do have a modest effect at preventing you from infecting someone else.
If you view a mask as roughly tripling the length of time an infectious person can spend in someone's presence before they're likely to get the virus, then you're not far wrong.
My suspicion is that the more infectious viral strains have reduced the mean contact time for infection transfer to a short enough length of time with respect to normal human social interaction times, that it gives the impression that "masks don't work".
I've also got a carbon dioxide monitor for checking ventilation to see whether a space is reasonably safe.
The reasons I worry are the danger of long covid (lowish - but if you keep catching covid then each time you roll the dice for it and omicron doesn't seem to confer much immunity), increased cardiovascular and other risks after a covid infection and the possibility seen with other viruses of long term effects which aren't fully known yet and I'm in a fairly risky group to start with (and after a chronic illness that lasted over a year which I've only recently got better from, it's the last thing I need)
I see other countries are talking about reintroducing masks but in the same way as we developed sewer systems etc. there probably needs to be a real push for ventilation to make things safer in the long run. I think we could also do with cheap over-the counter access to antiviral drugs and a vaccine against omicron but ventilation standards (like the ones for dentists surgeries which already exist in Scotland) would be a great thing and would make people like Heavenlyannie who can't wear masks safer.
[continuing tangent]
In any case, in current English, virus is an English word, not a Latin word, so the plural is, as Karl says, viruses. Note, for example, that the plural of arena in English is not arenae but arenas, And the plural of forum is forums, not fora. Essentially, when a word becomes naturalized in ENglish, it's plural form follows English rules not the rules of the language from which it comes.
I'd always heard "fora" used until the widespread use of "forum" on the internet and even then it was a matter of debate. Also, English is really not consistent about this (quelle surprise), so "maxima" is absolutely the standard plural of "maximum" when studying calculus, while "formulas" and "formulae" compete as plurals of "formula".
And I really mustn’t get it: I’ve been waiting a year to see my new dentist, for whom I have a slew of issues, and the appointment is on Monday!
Somewhat divided on the field of usage as well. Books have indexes, IME, whereas numbers raised to the power of another have indices.
Same with "codex" (as long-time players of Warhammer 40 000 will know).
It occurs to me that the teaching of Latin and the teaching of mathematics (rather than arithmetic) in the UK probably have a common root in the requirements for entry to Oxford and Cambridge (and presumably the ancient universities in Scotland) a century or so ago, so it's not surprising that mathematics preserves forms borrowed from Latin where upstart subjects like English have left abandoned them.
Ah yes, that amazing apparently annual money sink - "I need the new Necron Codex!"
[tangent] I understand they're now producing 40k Magic: the Gathering cards. No nerd's money is safe [/tangent]
They're all at it. "But you really need Tasha's Guide To Everything and Volo's Book of Monsters and...."
We seem to be straying rather from the topic of this thread. Maybe start a new thread about plurals in Heaven if you fancy.
Now back to the matter in hand.