Health – Page 6 – Slugger O'Toole

The tricky business of vaccinating young people…

Terry Maguire on May 20, 2021, 12:07 pm

| Readers 1216

Wednesday and Saturday for the past 8 weeks have been vaccination days in the pharmacy. The community pharmacy Covid19 vaccination service (CPCV) was launched at the end of March and 340 out of our 525 pharmacies signed-up. It’s a well-planned service and pharmacists have considerable clinical freedom and autonomy to get on with vaccinating the age cohorts, in support of GPs and the bigger vaccination centres, with one key requirement; no wastage of the precious vaccine! We get ten, 4 …

Diane Dodds holds the key to getting the population fully vaccinated…

Brian O'Neill on May 11, 2021, 7:33 am

| Readers 1559

The Northern Ireland vaccine programme has been a stunning success. We have pretty much full vaccination in the over 60s and they have been doing a great job of going down the age groups. The issue is as you get younger you start to get more vaccine hesitancy. Young people generally think they are immortal, and when you have a disease that does not seem to affect them too badly you can understand why some might be tempted to not …

Experts estimate that Covid-19 in India has left over a million dead so far…

Brian O'Neill on April 25, 2021, 10:14 am

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It is hard to comprehend the sheer horror of the current C-19 crisis in India. This report from the New York Times makes harrowing reading: In India, people are dying while waiting to see doctors as the second wave of the coronavirus rapidly evolves into a devastating crisis, with mounting evidence that the actual death toll is far higher than officially reported. https://t.co/aWkyHU3qyF — The New York Times (@nytimes) April 24, 2021 Each day, the government reports more than …

Scottish hustings … via NUS Scotland

Alan Meban (Alan in Belfast) on April 21, 2021, 1:11 pm

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Election anoraks in need of a regular fix of political argie-bargie may want to dip into last night’s NUS Scotland’s Big Election Debate last night with Anas Sarwar (Scottish Labour), Carole Ford (Scottish Lib Dems), Douglas Ross (Scottish Tories), Nicola Sturgeon (SNP) and Ross Greer (Scottish Greens). Compared with any similar encounter with NI politicians, it felt remarkably calm and devoid of simple point-scoring.

Questions remain about the origin of Covid 19…

Terry Maguire on April 12, 2021, 7:49 am

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I try to avoid being duped by conspiracies theories. When I read about a cabal of paedophiles in the basement of a Washington pizzeria, I switch off. When Donald J Trump is too quick to say that Coivd19 was made in China, I know better. I always try to keep objectively to the facts convinced I can spot the lunatic fringe at their zany work from a mile off. But sometimes, somehow, a weird story cannot be easily dismissed. Things …

To 2031 and beyond … Neil Hegarty’s vision of this island in ten years’ time #imaginebelfast

Alan Meban (Alan in Belfast) on March 19, 2021, 9:01 am

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Talking to writer and novelist Neil Hegarty about the talk ‘2031’ he will deliver at next week’s Imagine! festival, imagining what this island might look like in a decade and asking whether we’re prepared for the political, societal, environmental changes that will surely have a huge impact on the way life is going to play out?

With an abundance of caution, Ireland shoots itself in the foot by deferred use of the AstraZeneca vaccine…

Terry Maguire on March 16, 2021, 11:00 am

| Readers 2452

In the 1960s, US President Johnson was considering mandatory vaccination to eradicate a number of infectious diseases but was advised against it. The move would, he was told, cause 30,000 cancer deaths and 100,000 heart deaths. The President asked how the advisor knew this to which the adviser replied that this was the annual number of deaths from cancer and heart disease in the US but with mandatory vaccination, each one would be causally linked to a vaccine. This was …

Build Belfast Back Better – #imaginebelfast wants your ideas

Alan Meban (Alan in Belfast) on March 15, 2021, 1:01 pm

| Readers 1048

Ahead of next week’s packed programme, Imagine! festival are calling for your ideas to imagine a better post-pandemic Belfast. How would you Build Belfast Back Better? You can submit up to three ideas that reimagine the city in the face of the pandemic and the challenges presented by Brexit, increased poverty, loneliness and mental health issues.

A lot can happen in a year…

Lynda Tavakoli on March 14, 2021, 11:29 am

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A lot can happen in a year as we all know and we’re certainly not out of the woods yet, but spring is waiting and with it the hope of better days ahead. It’s this ability to find optimism and positivity in even the direst of circumstances that helps to keep us human beings marching forward. However, there is much to be said for taking a scrutinising glance into the past and I’ve been thinking about that recently, and when …

The State of Us … Previewing the seventh annual Imagine! Festival of Ideas and Politics (22-28 March)

Alan Meban (Alan in Belfast) on March 13, 2021, 10:01 am

| Readers 399

A quick rummage through the Imagine! Belfast programme coming up between 22–28 March. Under the strapline of The State of Us, there’ll be exhibitions, workshops, lectures, film, comedy, music, spoken word, lectures, theatre and quizzes. Voices from at home and abroad. The festival isn’t afraid to challenge. It doesn’t expect participants to agree with everything that is said. It’s about making people think. Widening their horizons. Broadening their understanding. Developing their empathy. Helping them figure out why – and if – they truly believe the hunches and biases they may have been living with for a lifetime.

Where are we with mental health stigma?

John Moriarty on March 2, 2021, 12:34 pm

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On March 24th 2015, the world was hit by the news that a German aircraft had crashed into the French Alps, killing 150 people. Information quickly started to circulate about an apparently ‘suicidal pilot’ who had deliberately caused the crash. He would later be named as 27-year-old Andreas Lubitz: he had co-piloted the flight and locked himself into the cockpit while the principle pilot was in the bathroom. Prior to any formal investigation, news outlets reported that Lubitz had been …

My personal experience of our ever increasing health waiting lists….

Felicity Graham on February 28, 2021, 9:51 am

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A few months from now I will be able to call myself an octogenarian! I am lucky to have reached this moniker in comparatively good health as I take only vitamin pills and, if I bend my knees, can still touch my toes. My experience of the National Health Service in N.I. had been, until a few years ago, extremely good. Before, during and after the Troubles the service here was remarkable and, along with our doctors and nurses, deservedly …

A grim milestone reached as NI Covid 19 related deaths hit 2000…

Brian O'Neill on February 15, 2021, 6:59 pm

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It means the total number of deaths has doubled since December. This is quite an increase in such a short time period. Was it Christmas that did the damage or is it just these illnesses tend to be worse at this time of year? Like everything it is probably a mix of a lot of factors. The total number of positive cases in NI is now 109,147. I am curious what the multiplier is with C19. For example, for every …

New data showing “First Doses First” strategy is working may speed UK’s vaccination progress…

Mick Fealty on February 4, 2021, 10:15 am

| Readers 1198

This comes via the marvellous John Naughton’s substack feed… It’s from Alex Tabbarok on Marginal Revolution… First, as I mentioned yesterday, we now have epidemiologists and vaccine researchers saying that for people previously infected with COVID a second dose is not necessary and may be “overkill.” Given how many people have had COVID, this increases the net benefit to First Doses First for everyone significantly. Second, an important new study verifies that for the AZ vaccine a longer delay for …

Goodbye January 2021, the month that felt like a year…

Brian O'Neill on January 31, 2021, 7:13 pm

| Readers 1439

So here we are, the last day of January. I bet you are like me and glad to see the back of it. January can be a tough month generally, but throw in a lockdown and you have a recipe for a really grim time. The first lockdown will go down in history a fabled time of everlasting sunshine, but this one will be remembered for harsher conditions. There were some beautiful sunny days at the start of the month, …

Brexit may be working in favour of the UK just now, but a better future needs a radically different plan…

Mick Fealty on January 29, 2021, 2:13 pm

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I’m not a big fan of counterfactuals, not because I don’t think they are useful, but it’s more that some politicians seemsnot to understand that they are in fact abstract thought experiments rather than a rendering of some class of reality. I’m thinking here about Jim Allister and Sammy Wilson or even Ed Poots who told us not to worry about the potential downsides of Brexit and are now railing against a reality they helped bring to pass (and now …

New Poll shows 65% support all island approach to travel restrictions

David McCann on January 28, 2021, 12:01 pm

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A Lucid Talk poll has surveyed residents of Northern Ireland’s attitudes towards travel restrictions. As some of you have become aware there has been a topic of growing debate as the Northern Ireland Executive and the Irish government disagree over the level of cooperation between the two administrations. For those of you needing a catch up, the Irish government have since the new year started messaging their support for an all island approach for travel restrictions but the politics in …

Why does the government not give the public more useful advice on protecting themselves from Covid-19?

Brian O'Neill on January 27, 2021, 8:05 am

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Open up any newspaper and you get full-page ads telling you to stay at home, practice social distancing and wash your hands. Such is the volume of these ads I suspect they are using it as a subsidy to the newspaper industry whose ad revenue has been hit hard by Covid-19. It is useful to have simple messages repeated frequently, but after nearly a year of the same messaging is there anyone who does not know these rules by now? …

As the UK leads in the vaccine stakes, An Taoiseach is right to call for “a two nation strategy…”

Mick Fealty on January 26, 2021, 5:03 pm

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If it is true that the UK government has screwed up a lot of its response to the Coronavirus epidemic the one area in which it has excelled has been the development of the first and most practical vaccine. There are a lot of factors in that success. England is particularly strong in the area of biotech. Cities like Oxford and Cambridge have become hubs for all kinds of small industry based biotech companies such that the links between innovative …

We need to be vigilant against the antivaxers…

Terry Maguire on January 22, 2021, 8:07 am

| Readers 1846

Medical scientists are more positive than they have been for months. If the science is right – and we trust it is – twenty-one days after 95% of the most vulnerable have had their first covid-19 vaccine they should have 70% protection against the virus and then there should be a sharp fall in the numbers hospitalized and ending up in ICU. Mission accomplished in protecting the NHS and this should be happening mid-March. The Covid-19 virus will off course …