Stress

My new fitness tracker watch thingy has lots of additional features – like having a hand wash timer. One of the features is a stress monitor. It had a few blips today. I just wonder how many of these devices in Wales went in to overload tonight. The six nations produced some good drama today, and drama right up to 2 minutes after the 80 minutes. It was a pity there was no crowd – it would have made a massive difference.

Otherwise I had a relaxing day – going for a long walk (for those step counters out there – well over 20,000 today), As I wandered through Birkdale I was surprised that every table outside all coffee shops had several people sitting at them. I can understand – it will be good to have a coffee with some friends. A coffee on your own just isn’t the same.

It is interesting thinking through the things I do and enjoy. Some are better with people, but others, like my walk today, I think are much better with less people around. I think this is one reason by thingy has recorded such low stress levels. Other than the rugby my thingy has hardly registered stress.

But it does feel like the sort of time to start putting a to do list together. I’m looking to getting out to some of the graveyards that I have found doing my ancestry research, and walking in the hills. So much so I looked out my OS maps today. I might even take a flask of coffee with me so if I bump in to you I can share a coffee with you.

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Asking for it

I’ve seen a few people posting about how women are never asking for it. Of course this is true – no woman is ever asking to be sexually abused. I remember one country I went to where men were unlikely to be prosecuted for rape if a woman was wearing a bikini – totally unacceptable.

I wondered what my nearest equivalent to this was. Maybe picturing myself walking down a dark alley counting out a wad of £50 notes between hands. Would I be asking to be mugged? In the precise interpretation of English I obviously would not be asking. But in the sense that I was putting myself at risk I guess you might say that. But that would not in any way reduce the wrong that a mugger would be doing. Physical abuse is physical abuse. It is wrong no matter what the victim does. In the same way the behaviour of women should not in any way reduce the guilt of an attacker.

We also can have another effect on others. Showing extravagance in a situation where people are suffering as a result of poverty can be offensive. I remember when we were in a refugee camp some of the western women wore headscarves to avoid causing offence.

To decide how we should behave in respect to others is tough. I look forward to a society where we are not constrained by the risk from others, or the risk of offending others, but we are not there.

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Pointing fingers

The briefing was interesting tonight – with one journalist asking why the Indian government had slowed down our deliveries. Boris was quick to say they had not.

But he didn’t go in to the information about which government had intervened to slow down our delivery. It is our old friends, our best buddies, the USA – and in particular that nice new president Joe Biden.

He has used the DPA to restrict exports of materials essential for the production of the vaccines – which is hitting production schedules in India. Another bully in the Whitehouse? Maybe the big difference is that the last one was honest about it.

I’m sure China will fill the gap. Why? Because that is what China does. It expands influence by being nice to people. Look at the expansion of their influence in Africa – they supported projects to make lives better. Now they have mineral rights in a lot of countries.

It can be interesting watching the politics play out. Quite often in the short term the bully wins, but over time the do good to you team creeps forward. People have long memories.

I had people I worked with from the USA that were really stumped at why the UK always had more political influence than them. The truth is that the UK uses the same approach as China. Yes we had all that Empire stuff in the past, but today we really do work hard to be good to others.

This is why we are the biggest funder of vaccine provision for the poorest countries (and I am not just talking about coronavirus – we have been leading this field for years). This is why we were one of the few countries that met the 0.7% support.

Some people might have seen this as a cynical approach – buying favours (truth is I’ve seen it done by some countries when being a bully fails).

At this time when the UK is trying to re-establish itself as important outside the EU we have a choice – continue to tale the China approach or adopt the USA bully approach. Reducing our overseas aid budget is a step in the wrong direction, it will not be good for us in the long run.

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Quietly moving forward

The briefing today was very positive. Lots of good news. And a lovely barbed comment about DomCum.

One of the points that came out was particularly stunning, and probably wasn’t given the emphasis it should have had because of the other positive news.

The first result have come out showing the vaccines reduce transmission. They had always expected and hoped this was the case, but had refused to be drawn on it. The initial reports are suggesting a 30% lower transmission rate.

In effect this is saying the vaccine reduces the R number by about a third. Add the reduced hospitalisation rate and you end up with a massive change in the outcome. And this is why we are looking at dramatic rapid changes over the next few months.

We are being asked to carry on with precautions for a few months. Some people are asking why so long – but in reality most of us will find it hard to cope with the speed of the change in my view. Just think – in 12 weeks time we could have o restrictions. Are you ready for that?

Personally I just don’t believe it – I will not be able to cope. And with that I admit that, after watching a few episodes of One Foot in the Grave I have decided I am becoming Victor Meldrew.

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Clots

Interesting word – it can have different meanings. At the moment people are talking about the risk of a blood clot following vaccination. I decided to look in to the numbers.

I found an interesting paper by NICE that suggests the risk of venous thromboembolism in the over 80s is 1 in 100 a year. There are over 2.5 million in this age group in the UK that have been vaccinated. That means we would expect 70 cases within a day of being vaccinated. There have been around this number of reports from both vaccines combined (and that covers a lot more than a day).

That is just the over 80s.

Looking at the yellow card reports this is the number of cases, not the number of deaths – the number of deaths as a result venous thromboembolism reported on the yellow card system is less than a tenth of this – less than 10.

Given that there are 20 million people vaccinated in the UK this would give a 1 in 2 million chance of death from venous thromboembolism following vaccination (that doesn’t mean they are caused by the vaccination – but to be on the really really worst case we can assume it is).

Okay – that would be 30 deaths from all of the UK being vaccinated.

Italy has stopped vaccination with AZ because they think ere may be a risk. They have 300 deaths a day. Every day they delay vaccination kills more than 300 people – because they are worried that there might possibly be a slight chance that 30 people will die.

To say this is a scientific decision is not accurate. It is a decision of a system that is designed for normal life – not pandemic life. And leaders that fail to recognise the need to change the system leads me to the other definition of clot.

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Happy birthday

Tonight makes it a year since I started this daily blog, so happy birthday dear blog, happy birthday to you.

Would I have expected to be still doing this a year on – not really – I had hoped we would be a bit further ahead. But then who knew what things would turn out like.

We have got away fairly lightly from this pandemic. I know it may not feel like it. This week I found out about an old friend that had died. Another smiling face I won’t see again. But it really could have been much worse. A little nudge one way or another and the outcome could have been much much worse. It could even have been something that broke society.

In fact it still could be – so make sure you stay safe.

This is where our society is. We are pushing the limits of the planet. Unless we change our behaviour we will face more pandemics – and maybe much worse ones.

Despite the ideas of building back better I have only seen window dressing so far. It seems to me that we are like naughty children – pushing the boundaries of what we can do, then stepping back when we get spotted, only to go back to pushing again when we think the coast is clear.

Will we grow up in time?

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Maintaining the equipment

Since the introduction of inanimate mechanism into British manufactories, man, with few exceptions, has been treated as a secondary and inferior machine; and far more attention has been given to perfect the raw materials of wood and metals than those of body and mind.

If you look at a business you will see the equipment has a maintenance schedule. On a regular basis it is looked at to make sure it isn’t wearing out, to make sure it can perform as well as possible. How often does a business do that for people that work for them?

The civil service adopted a principle that 1 in 10 staff must be marked as failures, irrespective of how good they were. How many businesses throw out one of their conveyor belts if it is performing fast enough, but slower than the other 9?

Why do we treat machines better than people?

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Can racism be humorous?

I’ve seen the trailers for Coming 2 America.

I find it offensive. But what I find offensive is the stereotypes of black people created by two black men. Am I allowed to complain?

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I’m afraid of the dark

I’ve been to the Grand Canyon a few times, and I’ve hiked it twice. In places there are pretty big drops, over 2000 feet in places. One time I hiked the Bright Angel Trail the top was iced over and I had to carry crampons just in case. Did I say I’m afraid of heights.

I saw people doing things – like standing on walls at the edge – that I would have been terrified doing. Then I bought the book “Death in the Grand canyon” that listed all of the times people had died. That didn’t make me feel like posing on rocks at the edge.

I’ve been amazed at how many white women are standing up to talk about how wrong it is that they are afraid on the streets this week. An MP read out a list of women killed.

The ONS statistics show that last year shows that if she had read out a list of men it would have taken her a lot longer. Last year the number of women killed dropped by over 15%, the number of men killed rose by 20%. And if your skin happens to be darker than off-white the risk of being killed is much much higher.

I’ve just come back from my late night walk. I’m lucky I live in a really safe area. But I walk along main roads – I don’t walk down dark alleys. There are nice parks near me – but they are dark – I would never walk through them at night. In fact I would never walk through Clapham Common at night. I would be too afraid. But I’m a man – and us men don’t talk about being afraid.

I’m sure this is party of why the white women speaking out think this is a women’s problem. I also have a sneaking suspicion part of it is because white trophies need to be protected. But the facts are that white women are the least at risk of being killed, it would be interested in knowing why they appear to be the most afraid.

Am I right – are men just as afraid – and just too macho to admit it?

I once heard the Bishop of Bruges give a talk about the fear of nuclear power. He said that making sure there was no risk was not the same as making people feel safe. Yes, white women have the lowest risk, this does not mean they feel safe. I’m white and live in a safe area but I still am afraid of some areas on my night walk – truth is I am much safer than somebody that is black.

The Bish was right – being risl free and feeling safe are two different things.

It got to thinking about our “return to normal”. The risk from coronavirus is reducing – in fact the risk of death has reached fairly low levels. Do people feel safe? Some don’t, and spouting facts will do little to help that. When hiking the Grand Canyon the guidance is “Let the slowest walker set the pace”.

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Remembering

Ten years ago I was going to bed early – I had plans to rive into the hills the next day to catch the last of the low lying snow. I was going to snow shoe – and a colleague was going to cross country ski. I got up early and drove my car out of the gate. I was closing the gate when the phone rang – I was called in that evening to do a night shift in the emergency room because of the earthquake in Japan.

Because I was worked a lot of the following evenings there was normally a couple of hours of little activity. There would be non-stop television from Japan on one of the big screens, and we would watch them to get a better idea of what was happening. While the world was concerned about a nuclear disaster it was clear to me that the real disaster in Japan was not being covered because it didn’t really affect “us”.

Around 20,000 people died from the tsunami. People couldn’t drive to safety, roads were damaged, they had to walk to emergency shelters. I remember one woman who had carried her mother on her back for three days to get to safety. She said she only had two biscuits with her to feed both of them.

Shortly before this one of my staff had finished her term and returned to Japan. Her workplace was in the town hit hardest by the tsunami. It was impossible to contact her. No use trying email, or facebook, or telephone. I spent my spare time in the first week trying to find out if she was still alive. Eventually she managed to post a message on a notice board that I found (a second hand china selling site of all places).

This was the situation for tens of thousands of people in Japan. They suffered terribly – while we concentrated on the nuclear accident that was just a small part of the main disaster. I gained a lot of respect for the people of Japan as I watched them cope with the disaster. And I was disappointed at how little of what was happening in Japan was reported in the West.

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