Trials offer hope, but no place for haphazard jabs
Good news. When I was a young cop in Huddersfield in the early 70s I fell asleep in there on nights. Called in for a brew and toast about 5am, fell asleep, should have been off at 6am. Woke up to the radio going mad at 6.15.
Gilberto Gil, Brazilian musician turned politician, 78; Georgie Fame, singer/songwriter, 77 (left); Mick Jones, rock guitarist (right), 65; Chris Isaak, singer, 64; Colin Greenwood, rock musician (Radiohead), 51; Sean Hayes, actor, 50; Chris O’Donnell,
50; Emma Noble, model/actress, 49.
WHO ordered nursing homes and other long-term senior care facilities to admit medically stable residents that may have been infected with coronavirus?
Inadequately protecting the frail and elderly in such facilities, where most of the Covid-19 deaths have occurred, then being horrendously alienated from their nearest and dearest loved ones.
At the same time, we’ve witnessed an articulated strategy of locking down and quarantining the healthy. How often in the past have the healthy, rather than the vulnerable, been quarantined?.. didn’t happen for SARS-CoV-2.
Based upon findings, using nursing homes created a situation where even more of the vulnerable and elderly resident patients would die. We annihilate our humanity when we destroy the lives of old-age home residents, or a dying person faced with an incurable illness. Alongside DNR tabbing, could we construe this action is somewhat comparable to organised euthanasia, on an unsuspecting person. What happened to the right to life?
A perceived rationale of government was to empty the hospitals in order to make space for the presumed influx of patients, presumably just the young and healthy, the elderly were packed off to care homes ostensibly to recover. Needless to say, the feared surge in hospitalisations never met their expectations.
Vaccines: There are numerous global laboratories in the race to develop a Covid vaccine, and a financially lucrative one to that end.
An immunologist professor states that “most vaccines are not 100 percent effective. It could take several years and longer, for study investigators to gather sufficient data to prove the safety and efficacy of the vaccine for participants”. Moderna Chief Medical Officer Tal Zaks recently said: “It is likely that we’re going to have a pile of vaccines before having actual data that proves its safety profile and benefit”.
As we speak, we’re talking of presenting a Covid vaccine within a year. That is, governments will likely approve and mass produce a vaccine before they have gold-standard evidence demonstrating safety and effectiveness. The data will read good, but not certain. Serious side effects have resulted from vaccines, just one example being Thalidomide.
Health authorities need to think carefully about how they will deal with the risks involved in rolling out a potentially ineffective, or worse, dangerous, vaccine.
Vaccine trials give hope, but we can’t risk haphazardly doling out a vaccine that begins with fireworks and ends with funerals.
Teaching pupils is a two-way process
ALTHOUGH education does influence pay and propects, this influence can work in two directions (T Earnshaw’s report,
June 15).
If a family or individual pupils don’t care much for demands made by the curriculum even a moderate level of attainment will likely be out of reach.
Teachers can’t deliver education – it’s a participative process. Perhaps the proposed debate should include parents, pupils, and teaching staff.