Coronavirus Sars-CoV-2/Covid-19 Megathread

[viper37]

So an update on my brother.

Some of you may recall in late April he was taken to hospital and put on a ventialtor and then released after three weeks.

He's at home now, but unfortunately not doing very well. His latest CRT tests show he may have pulmonary fibrosis. Which isn't good. Alas he's having a hard time getting in touch with his hospital doctor to go over the results with him. He is at home, still on an oxygen tube though, and hasn't been seeing much improvement.

As an aside, he lost his job, a few days before he was diagnosed with COVID, so he also has to deal with employment issues, benefits, insurance etc. His wife is diagnosed with depression and he has a 10 year old daughter who's constantly seeking his attention.

I hope this pulmonary fibrosis can be reversed
In their case, with depression, and his disease, maybe he can get some help from a social worker attached to the hospital?  His doc will have to demand it for him though.  It could help with the 10yo daughter, at least. 

Also, are there any kind of community services where he lives, I mean cheap/free, to help with house chores?  We have something in our county, but it's not governmental services, a private charitable foundation that helps with these kind of things, for people who are too sick over a prolonged period of time or simply too old to do it themselves full time.  Sometimes, just having someone to clean the house once a week or prepare some meals can be tremendous help.

[viper37]

So an update on my brother.

Some of you may recall in late April he was taken to hospital and put on a ventialtor and then released after three weeks.

He's at home now, but unfortunately not doing very well. His latest CRT tests show he may have pulmonary fibrosis. Which isn't good. Alas he's having a hard time getting in touch with his hospital doctor to go over the results with him. He is at home, still on an oxygen tube though, and hasn't been seeing much improvement.

As an aside, he lost his job, a few days before he was diagnosed with COVID, so he also has to deal with employment issues, benefits, insurance etc. His wife is diagnosed with depression and he has a 10 year old daughter who's constantly seeking his attention.

hoping he does make some recovery; there was a recent article about people suffering from the after effects of covid/long-covid finding the being subsequently vaccinated seemed to help many to make significant improvements.

Yeah I was wondering if it would also help with pulmonary fibrosis.

[Jacob]

Oh man that sucks Josephus

[Josquius]

I'm booked for Portugal

And I'll still go. It's against the guidance but I made a booking/costs already and the main impact is when I return. On the Green List you don't need to self-isolate and only need to do a day 2 test; on the Amber List it's 10 days self-isolation and day 2+8 test; Red List you may be refused entry (I think if not resident in the UK) and you need to pay for a quarantine hotel plus day 2+8 tests.

Day 2? I thought it was 5. You're released early if you pass right?
Trouble is you must do the expensive tests not the widely available ones

[Tamas]

After les then 6 (out of 10) million Hungarians vaccinated, Orban has essentially washed the government's hand of the whole vaccination thing on his weekly radio "interview" today, announcing that only a handful of vaccination centres will remain open for those who might still want it.

He didn't explain what shall happen to the (hundreds of thousands if not more) people waiting for their second dose, whose vaccine centre will be closed (including my sister).

My sister's case is also interesting because she had AZ as her first jab (that was the only EU-approved on offer at the time) but since then it has been quietly removed from among the options and the country has started gifting the stockpiles away.

[Sheilbh]

I'm booked for Portugal

And I'll still go. It's against the guidance but I made a booking/costs already and the main impact is when I return. On the Green List you don't need to self-isolate and only need to do a day 2 test; on the Amber List it's 10 days self-isolation and day 2+8 test; Red List you may be refused entry (I think if not resident in the UK) and you need to pay for a quarantine hotel plus day 2+8 tests.

Day 2? I thought it was 5. You're released early if you pass right?
Trouble is you must do the expensive tests not the widely available ones

So the day 5 test means you can end self-isolation then but you still need to take the day 8 test. It does mean you can end self-isolation I suppose but I don't know that it's particularly worth it given the extra cost.

And yeah they are the expensive PCR tests. I don't mind that because they are far more accurate than the widely available lateral flow tests - and I also don't really object to you having to buy them privately because I think the public/free tests probably need to focus on monitoring the disease in the UK right now. But the cost of testing is significantly more than the cost of flights in Europe. It's expensive - I think some package holidays do them on the cheap and some airlines provide you with a discount for their preferred provider, but it's still expensive even if you go with, say, Boots.

[The Larch]

For some reason all these draconian travel restrictions being set up strike me as rather unnecessary at this point, with vaccinations already showing their effect and the disease a s a whole being kind of in retreat in Europe at least. I really hope that once the EU's vaccination passport arrangement comes into effect most of these measures will be quickly forgotten.

[garbon]

For some reason all these draconian travel restrictions being set up strike me as rather unnecessary at this point, with vaccinations already showing their effect and the disease a s a whole being kind of in retreat in Europe at least. I really hope that once the EU's vaccination passport arrangement comes into effect most of these measures will be quickly forgotten.

I think cases are slowly ticking upward in UK and Portugal?

[The Larch]

For some reason all these draconian travel restrictions being set up strike me as rather unnecessary at this point, with vaccinations already showing their effect and the disease a s a whole being kind of in retreat in Europe at least. I really hope that once the EU's vaccination passport arrangement comes into effect most of these measures will be quickly forgotten.

I think cases are slowly ticking upward in UK and Portugal?

By how much? if any uptick is going to cause countries to revert any border opening or travel easing being announced they should refrain from opening up at all.

[garbon]

For some reason all these draconian travel restrictions being set up strike me as rather unnecessary at this point, with vaccinations already showing their effect and the disease a s a whole being kind of in retreat in Europe at least. I really hope that once the EU's vaccination passport arrangement comes into effect most of these measures will be quickly forgotten.

I think cases are slowly ticking upward in UK and Portugal?

By how much? if any uptick is going to cause countries to revert any border opening or travel easing being announced they should refrain from opening up at all.

Personally, I'm not sure why the UK greenlit Portugal as quickly as they did.

[Sheilbh]

For some reason all these draconian travel restrictions being set up strike me as rather unnecessary at this point, with vaccinations already showing their effect and the disease a s a whole being kind of in retreat in Europe at least. I really hope that once the EU's vaccination passport arrangement comes into effect most of these measures will be quickly forgotten.

I think cases are slowly ticking upward in UK and Portugal?

Yeah the UK trigger for moving from green to amber appears to be 50 cases per million. But both countries are very low:

[The Larch]

For some reason all these draconian travel restrictions being set up strike me as rather unnecessary at this point, with vaccinations already showing their effect and the disease a s a whole being kind of in retreat in Europe at least. I really hope that once the EU's vaccination passport arrangement comes into effect most of these measures will be quickly forgotten.

I think cases are slowly ticking upward in UK and Portugal?

By how much? if any uptick is going to cause countries to revert any border opening or travel easing being announced they should refrain from opening up at all.

Personally, I'm not sure why the UK greenlit Portugal as quickly as they did.

Why Portugal in particular? What I wonder is why they set up this traffic light system in the first place when the only greenlit country of any interest for UK summer travel is backtracked at the earliest opportunity for the flimsiest reason. It's pretty ridiculous to set up such a system if the only greenlit options are either remote colonial outposts or countries that don't allow UK visitors themselves (you'd assume that reciprocity would be in place). I think that it's only Israel and Iceland left in the green list that are proper travel destinations, IIRC.

[The Larch]

I'm seeing that the UK still requests travellers to take a Covid test before coming back from a green list country and yet another test two days after arrival. That's pretty ridiculous, I'd say, it kinda defeats the purpose of such a system. In my book in such a system the safest category for travel should allow for completely free travel, with no testing at all, at least for those already vaccinated, which I don't think the UK system makes any allowance for.

[Sheilbh]

Why Portugal in particular? What I wonder is why they set up this traffic light system in the first place when the only greenlit country of any interest for UK summer travel is backtracked at the earliest opportunity for the flimsiest reason. It's pretty ridiculous to set up such a system if the only greenlit options are either remote colonial outposts or countries that don't allow UK visitors themselves (you'd assume that reciprocity would be in place). I think that it's only Israel and Iceland left in the green list that are proper travel destinations, IIRC.

Because it's not about holidays - it's about inbound travel. Obviously the reason people are interested in it is because of holidays which is how it's being positioned.

But I think that's why it doesn't necessarily align with what other countries are going or have reciprocity - it's not about holidays. The important stuff is the passenger locater, testing (and I've heard that they are actually following up on this now) for everyone, plus quarantine hotels for the red list countries etc.

Last summer I think it was about holidays and tourism and the attitude was go anywhere and it might be a risk. This time I don't think it is, I think it's in the context of politicians hammering away at the lack of border control - we still have tens of thousands of daily arrivals (which is nothing compared to pre-pandemic but is significant). I think it's probably better late than never - I totally opposed border restrictions, but I was wrong and I think the failure to introduce them has been one of the biggest failures here. There has not been a variant yet identified anywhere in the world that hasn't popped up in the UK within a week or two of being discovered.

I'm seeing that the UK still requests travellers to take a Covid test before coming back from a green list country and yet another test two days after arrival. That's pretty ridiculous, I'd say, it kinda defeats the purpose of such a system. In my book in such a system the safest category for travel should allow for completely free travel, with no testing at all, at least for those already vaccinated, which I don't think the UK system makes any allowance for.

Yeah - that is also the requirement for travel from the UK to Portugal for example.

I don't think we'll move to completely free travel for at least a year - it may be agreed blocks and common travel areas like Schengen, possibly the US plus Canada. I've always thought that requires more alignment on controls at all external borders but that's not happening yet. But I think as long as a significant proportion of the world is unvaccinated and there are still variants emerging, then we will not have completely free, pre-pandemic style travel. I think it's always going to be a combination of vaccine passports, testing, quarantine or self-isolation etc.

[The Larch]

Why Portugal in particular? What I wonder is why they set up this traffic light system in the first place when the only greenlit country of any interest for UK summer travel is backtracked at the earliest opportunity for the flimsiest reason. It's pretty ridiculous to set up such a system if the only greenlit options are either remote colonial outposts or countries that don't allow UK visitors themselves (you'd assume that reciprocity would be in place). I think that it's only Israel and Iceland left in the green list that are proper travel destinations, IIRC.

Because it's not about holidays.

Come on. It's announced in May and all the focus is on which potential summer travel destinations are greenlighted. It's about holidays.