Health section.qxp_Layout 1 19/08/2021 16:13 Page 64
MENDIP TIMES
Opening up
ImAgINe where we’d be without Covid vaccines? Since having both of mine, I’ve been to a rugby final at Twickenham, the fabulous ValleyFest music and food festival and travelled to four NHS hospitals to make a radio series. I’ve interviewed staff, patients, carers and volunteers, collecting their stories about and before the pandemic, and said thank you with a comedy show. By Dr PHIL So far no symptoms, no positive tests and no pings, but HAMMOND plenty of fun and laughter. We may yet hit see a rise in Covid hospitalisations and deaths in autumn and winter, but nowhere near the thousand a day we had in January. We are far from back to normal but we are in a much better position than countries struggling to get vaccines. We need to donate all the surplus ones we have. So can vaccines do it all, or do we need to carry on with extra precautions? The most useful model of harm reduction was devised by Professor James Reason from the University of manchester. Reason reasoned that no safety intervention is perfect and each has flaws akin to holes in a slice of Swiss cheese. So a multi-layered approach of different interventions, with holes in different places, is most likely to reduce or prevent a threat getting through. Current vaccines dramatically reduce your risk of hospitalisation and death from the delta variant of the virus, but they only stop spread by around 50%. Unless vaccines get even better, we are not going to eliminate this virus, or reach herd immunity (when everyone in the country is protected, even if they haven’t had the vaccine). Instead, Covid will cause a certain number of deaths a year (currently around 100 a day) and full vaccination will always be your best protection. When there’s a lot of virus about, as there is at the moment, then washing your hands regularly, not touching your eyes, nose or mouth, opening windows wherever possible, socialising outdoors and wearing a mask in crowded indoor spaces can help. Standard or homemade masks don’t stop you contracting the virus (it hangs around in air and gets through the holes and gaps) but they do stop you passing it on to others (by trapping the droplets and spittle that escape from your mouth and nose, which may contain billions of virus particles). If you want to wear a mask that reduces your risk of contracting the virus, you’ll need to pay more for a N95, FFP2 or FFP3 mask. I still wear a mask walking around a crowded pub or restaurant. And I still advise people to get double vaccinated even if they’ve already had coronavirus. I worry a little that the government doesn’t seem to have much of a plan if infections do take off again when schools return and winter beckons and I particularly worry about pressures on the NHS and people not being able to get timely access to the treatment they need. Ambulance services have just had their busiest month ever, with over 1million 999 calls as people started to check out those emergency symptoms they’ve been sitting on for months. emergency departments are overloaded and 5.45 million people are on waiting lists. So it was a joy to visit NHS hospitals for my new radio series, thank the staff and cheer them up. In return, they told me some wonderful stories. Tune in and hear about the nurse with long Covid who slept outdoors in her underpants, the man who tried to turn a doorknob with his buttocks, the mum who ate her placenta raw, the woman who thought the emergency department could fix her bad perm, the chaplain who offered to pop the breast implants of a dying woman, the nurse who put a goldfish in a fluid bag and the mortuary technician who sings happy birthday to his patients. You couldn’t make it up. And, in the NHS, you don’t have to… Dr Hammond’s Covid Casebook was published on August 19th. Dr Phil’s Bedside Manner is broadcast on Radio 4 from August 26th, 6.30pm
PAGE 64 • MENDIP TIMES • SEPTEMBER 2021
Plop the Raindrop
I lIke autumn, when the leaves start falling down to the ground to make me a moist warm comfortable bed. Of course I’m not alone down there, sheltering with all the worms and bugs and sometimes baby frogs and newts. I’ve even known hedgehogs trying to barge their way in. They are all starting to look for somewhere safe to stay in the winter. As a water droplet, staying there long is a bit of a forlorn hope for me. If it gets too hot I’ll evaporate and get whisked back into the sky. Too cold and I turn to ice. Then there are other hazards like birds who like to turn over the leaves looking for food. And pesky kids who just like kicking leaves into the air. But it’s a fascinating world, where tree roots and fungi have a network, like telephone lines, linking each other. I am able to listen in to their messages, but only if I promised not to tell anyone. One thing I can tell you is you would not believe how much water a tree can drink. I’ve been sucked up through their roots millions of times, then transported up their trunks to help new leaves grow. Then towards the end of the year, deciduous trees shed their leaves. They add to the nutrients in the soil below which in turn help the tree grow even bigger. It’s a really interesting cycle of life, which I’ve watched ever since the very first trees started to grow about 400 million years ago. They had learned to use the energy of the sun to make food through something called photosynthesis, as most plants do. Clever aren’t they? As for fungi, which can be hugely smelly, they use something called mycelial networks to stay in touch. Sorry if that’s all a bit technical. Sometimes they appear like fairy rings on the grass. Of course fairies don’t make the rings – they just play in them. It’s a good time of year to go looking for fungus, especially in the woods. I like the big red ones with white spots, where fairies sometimes hide. But don’t touch them - some are poisonous. Naturally I’m immune. It can have its advantages being indestructible. If I get too close to heat I turn into steam and vanish into the air. If I get too cold, I turn into ice. If the ice melts I can turn into water. When you drink water, I can end up inside you, often for quite a while if I go into your blood stream. For far less time if you go to the loo! MENDIP GRANDAD
