Impact of Government policies – All About Long Covid

“If you don’t tell people the truth about COVID, how can you expect people to make good judgements about risk.” Kernow Jones

This week’s blog is by Dr Evonne T Curran (@EvonneTCurran).

For me this pandemic is a simple ‘consequent argument’ (if P then Q), i.e., if airborne transmission is evident, then recommend airborne precautions. The challenge is that this argument is not universally accepted even though airborne transmission is considered the main route in this UK government document on ventilation. However, the importance of this argument has begun to seem moot in the eyes of many, as precautions have been lifted, personal experience of COVID, is ‘it’s not that bad’, and the government’s position of ‘let it rip’ has not killed anyone they know (yet). So, this blog must show that the ‘consequent’ argument’ is still worth fighting for. Which brings us to the above quote – what is the ‘current truth’ about COVID?

Getting back to work with Long Covid: Where is the creativity?

Today I attended, nearly three years into my Long Covid journey, a workshop run by my local Long Covid clinic and the Richmond Fellowship on employment. One of the key messages was that it is possible for people to return to work with Long Covid but that this needs creativity.

After attending the workshop, I went onto Facebook only to find yet another NHS worker with Long Covid has been dismissed because they can’t say when they will be back at work. Last week I posted on Twitter stating:

In the past few days numerous NHS staff with #LongCovid have posted on Facebook saying HR are preventing their return to work by insisting they can only have a 4-6 week phased return at 50% of their normal hours. This is setting people up to fail and goes against all the best practice guidelines. Anyone would think we didn’t have a workforce crisis let alone a moral obligation to support our staff. #NHSHeroToZero
Continue reading “Getting back to work with Long Covid: Where is the creativity?”

Part 2 – Prove to me it’s airborne – well it’s the aerosol scientists that have done that…

This week’s blog is by Evonne T Curran (@EvonneTCurran) and is the second in a series exploring the evidence that covid is airborne.

It’s not droplets (Part 1) showed that neither the WHO nor the CDC provided evidence for the ‘droplet only transmission route’. Before we explore airborne, it’s worth questioning why people were reporting ‘droplets’ in papers and guidelines. If you believe ‘close = droplets’, you will see droplets, you will report droplets and you will take comfort from everyone else seeing and reporting them also. Textbooks will confirm droplets (without presenting direct evidence for ‘droplets’).

So, was the reporting of droplets in the infection prevention and control literature, a case of belief in an unproven maxim? Well this report of influenza transmission shows that it can happen. It includes a re-evaluation of outbreak reports looking for whether the original authors had evidence to exclude any Mode of Transmission (MoT). The re-examination identified that in several reports, airborne transmission had been eliminated without evidence (Table 2 p40). Thus, a Sherlock Holmes MoT exclusion approach must be applied when outbreak reports state transmission is by a particular route, when they have failed to exclude other routes.

Where does the ‘guilt’ really belong?

This week’s blog is written by David Osborn (@SafeDavid3), a health and safety consultant, reflecting on the blog written by Anna Carey regarding her guilt about not being able to return to work because of her Long Covid.

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Anna’s is such an incredibly moving story. I’m confident that I can speak for the millions of people up and down the country who ‘clapped for carers’ at their doorsteps in saying that our hearts go out to her and all the health and social care workers who have acquired COVID-19 as a result of their work caring for patients and service-users. Let’s hope that time and rest (coupled with more focused research and treatment/interventions) will help her get better.

Long Covid: A catalogue of shame

This week’s blog is written by Roger Kline (@rogerkline).

One in nine nurses left the NHS last year. One Department of Health and Social Care policy will make things worse.

The Office of National Statistics estimated (18 May 2021) that approximately 122,000 healthcare workers and 31,000 social care workers were self-reporting symptoms of Long Covid. More than a third (35%) of the above patients stated they were experiencing Long Covid symptoms more than a year after their first suspected infection, and almost two thirds (65%) said their symptoms limited their daily activities. It was months before employers fully implemented statutory risk assessments on the workplace.

The Government’s decision to scrap extended sick pay for NHS staff with Long Covid is directly punishing some of the very staff who risked their lives to care for others with Covid. NHS staff who worked selflessly to save other peoples’ lives despite the risk of catching Covid themselves now find themselves being made redundant after being diagnosed with Long Covid. These staff (and their families) are now facing financial ruin.

Erroneous assumptions – it’s droplets…

This week’s blog is written by Dr Evonne Curran (@evonnetcurran).

In the Danish Museum at Roskilde there are the remains of 5 Viking boats which were deliberately sunk c1072, to facilitate the control of the waterways. The boats were rediscovered in the 1960s and originally known as the ‘Roskilde 6’. However, boat 4 never existed. What was thought to be boat 4 was in fact part of a very long boat 2. Yet ‘Roskilde 6’ continued to be the title used in reports for many years. So, an original interpretation based on insufficient information of remaining planks of wood was wrong. Further excavations provided evidence of the error. No harm was done in this erroneous misinterpretation of initial evidence. Vikings were not about to say, ‘Oh no we didn’t’. Archaeologists’ reputations were left intact with something like ‘…preliminary results suggested, but…’. Reinterpretation of historic events improves our understanding – but has no implications for health. Not so with the interpretation of evidence before and during the pandemic.