James LE FANU
There can be few more dramatic moments in the long history of medicine to compare with the past week: the prospect that science, in the form of the Oxford vaccine, will liberate us at the 11th hour from the remorseless pandemic.
Despite the unprecedented speed with which it has been delivered – concertinaing the usual five-year process of design, testing and manufacture into just 10 months – the vaccine fulfils all fundamental requirements. It is effective, safe, readily storable and almost three times less costly than its competitors. A truly astonishing achievement which, like the announcement of the first polio vaccine back in 1955, deserves to be greeted by the pealing of church bells across the nation.
The practicalities of immunising millions in the next few months might appear daunting but, as Yorkshire GP Dr Stuart Wallace observed in this paper’s correspondence column, is scarcely insuperable given family doctors’ long experience in organising annual flu jab clinics. Just a couple of months ago, he reports, the entire staff of his surgery turned out on a Saturday morning, immunising 900 socially distanced patients in just four hours. To be sure, some volunteering to assist in the mass vaccination programme have been stymied by the regulatory form-filling idiocy that plagues the NHS, but this can readily be addressed without too much difficulty.
Readers might reasonably wonder whether those who have contracted the virus – and thus already have natural immunity – need to be immunised or indeed whether it is necessary for the young, especially, who have a very low risk of serious illness. My colleague, Michael Fitzpatrick, addresses these and similar FAQS on The Telegraph’s website.
Let’s get smart
Smartphone technology means the health-conscious can these days keep constant track of their physiological functioning, monitoring heart rate and oxygen saturation while also recording their exercise performance: the number of steps taken, miles cycled, flights of steps climbed and so on. The value of all this information is debatable, and indeed it might even encourage a neurotic solipsism at the expense of more worthwhile goals and ambitions.
Still, this type of personalised monitoring can be readily adapted for some useful practical purpose – most obviously detecting abnormalities of heart rhythm such as atrial fibrillation. The most recent versions, which can identify the configuration of the pulse waves of blood flowing through the capillaries in the fingertip, are reputably as reliably accurate as a standard electrocardiogram.
Rather more unusually, the regulatory authorities in the United States have just approved a novel digital device for preventing distressing nightmares in those with post-traumatic stress disorder and similar conditions. Put simply, it works as follows: the fear and anxiety of a terrifying dream induces a surge of adrenalin into the bloodstream, boosting the contractility of the heart muscle – hence the thumping palpitations on waking. The Nightware device (as it is known), worn on the wrist, is calibrated to the patient’s usual sleep profile, responding to any change in body movement or increase in heart rate indicative
of the early stages of a nightmare with a powerful vibration. This apparently has the effect of interrupting the frightening dream sequence without awaking the patient experiencing it. Ingenious.
Brain training idea
This week’s medical query comes courtesy of Mr BC of Ashford, hearing-impaired for several years, though enhanced by wearing aids. His brain, however, has lost the ability to discriminate between words that when spoken quickly “get compressed into a hopeless gabble”. This is especially noticeable watching a DVD, when he has to resort to the subtitles option to comprehend the dialogue. Inspired by the recent mention in this column of the value of “smell therapy” in tuning up the brain’s sensitivity to the olfactory messages it receives, might there be, he wonders, some similar method for training his brain to separate out words.
Despite the unprecedented speed, the vaccine fulfils fundamental requirements