My sister and brother in law went for a holiday up the west coast of Scotland a couple of months ago, they live on the east coast, according to Irene it was hoachin with English maskless tourists everywhere wandering around without a care in the world and ignoring the remain rules that we still have in force in Scotland, it ruined their short break. So yeah the Scots are not too happy about sassenachs as tourists but they accept them quite well as residents. There are quite a few of the island populations that are quite cosmopolitan, Orkney has quite a mixed population with a lot of English residents.
I would love to live in Scotland, with my Ginger grey hair and freckles I look like a Scot, Not so sure about my wife she hates cold wet weather and looks nothing like a Scot.
It's the permanent darkness in winter that gets to me both in Scotland and England, I don't mind the cold too much. I've always found the more or less balanced length of daylight hours in the Phils a bit easier to live with, saying that I might miss the long late light summer evenings in the UK. My beard had some ginger in it and the gene is definitely in the family but mostly not expressed in me, this is my niece from Dundee who currently lives and works in China as a teacher and she definitely has the gene as does her twin brother
I have stated before that I thought it would be very hard to make effective antivirals however Pfizer have announced results from trials of their drug Paxlovid and it does look very promising. In a global trial of 1219 patients who received Paxlovid within 3 days of a positive Covid test 0.8% of those who received the drug required hospital treatment vs 7% who received a placebo, that's impressive over 7 times improvement in someones chances, New Scientist reports that it has approval (somewhere) but the BBC are saying not yet approved in the UK but we have bought 250,000 doses. This drug works by interfering with an enzyme that SARS-CoV-2 needs in order to replicate so it is likely to be something that the virus can't mutate around, I had reckoned that it would be hard to design such drugs and keep them safe but I am happy to have been overly pessimistic in this case. In combination with vaccination and then treating those still vulnerable even after vaccination this could genuinely turn Covid into just a bad cold, still worse than a cold as you could still die but way way less likely that you will die even if you have comorbidities. Here is the Beeb link as the New Scientist one is paywalled. Covid: Pfizer says antiviral pill 89% effective in high-risk cases - BBC News
Whoohooo!!!!! I got my booster and it was Moderna There is good evidence that the Moderna booster vaccine elicits a much better antibody response than the Pfizer when it is used as a booster some reports of a 36 times multiplier in antibody response for Moderna compared to 11 times for Pfizer. Really crowded queue outside and inside the centre everybody standing far too close together, woman in front of me coughing, but me as usual utterly paranoid and in my FFP3 mask and swimming goggles I'll forgive myself as a photographer for getting a finger in front of the lens it was a phone after all
That vaccination centre was probably the most dangerous place I have been in this year given the length of the queue the coughing in the background and the time you have to wait at the end before leaving. My work is pretty dangerous since we went back but we still have all the windows open in our back office where my team work, and I wear one of those FFP3 masks everywhere else in the building, I don't wear it in my own office as we are ventilated my goal at work is not to completely protect against the virus but to reduce the amount of virus or viral load I could be exposed to so no goggles at work, just need to hope no one brings covid into the office during the next two weeks while the booster is doing its thing.
In Canada at the moment, face masks at all times when in stores etc, have to show vaccination proof and ID when sitting in coffee shops and restaurants.
Well..i didnt expect to be 999d in to hospital on monday with severe stomach pain. Had ct scan yesterday.and now awaiting ultrasound. Stones in pancreas.
All very odd. Scan shows no stones..maybe already passed? Yet i was in agony again this morning. No pain tonight..ate a meal at 5pm. See what surgeon says tomorrow.