i know I've been very quiet on this particular blog for the last couple of months - I've had a lot going on personally which has left me with very little time to maintain this particular blog. I do have some more writing on Covid-19 coming soon.
This video from Medlife Crisis has unfortunately fallen foul of YouTube's Covid-19 disinformation filter - so I'm posting it here as a way of single boosting it.
You
may have noticed this blog has been a little quiet for the last couple of weeks.I’d been taking time to focus on PhD work for
a week or so and then the events dealt with in this entry happened – hence my absence.
I’d
been in pain for hours, unable to stay in one position for more than a minute.I knew something was wrong.The pain was between my chest and my abdomen
on the right side.It was second worst
pain I had ever been in, rating higher than a lot of more serious
injuries.I checked my symptoms on the
NHS 111 App which confirmed my suspicions – I needed to get myself to the
hospital.
Due to problems with my internet service provider I will not be able to post here on a regular basis for the next 5 or 6 days. Please do not worry. I am in relatively good health and am safe. Normal posting will be resumed next week.
This blog is a collection of my writing and insights on the on-going Covid-19 pandemic from the UK.
My brain blog (about neurology /loved experience of brain injury / chronic pain) is here - https://neuronaljunction.blogspot.com/?m=1
My work blog (about my ongoing research, the history medicine, the archaeology of disease, historical epidemics, magic, and my field more generally is here - https://judeseal.blogspot.com/?m=1
TL:DR – A Do Not Resuscitate note (DNACR - Do Not Attempt Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation) is not a Death Warrant. It’s a clinical decision, only taken when all evidence suggests that a complex, last resort procedure with approximately only a 1 in 4 survival rate, is unlikely to succeed. DNRs are a clinical decision, which is always taken within the guidelines set out by the law. and medical ethics. The law in the UK has not changed.
Content Warning - Discussion of death, resuscitation, injury - below the read more tag.
There has been a lot of discussion in the last few weeks of the UK Government’s original strategy towards Covid-19 – which was in summary to allow the infection to spread to create herd immunity given the fact that, based on the data being shared at the time, only around 15% of cases required hospital treatment. Obviously, this did not correctly factor in the exponential spread of the infection. (It is worth noting that some factors potentially skew the statistics – the general under-reporting of Covid-19 infections being one – if the infection rate is, as predicted, higher than currently shown in the statistics the death rate as a percentage may in fact fall). This strategy has become known by the general short hand of Herd Immunity. However this had led to some problematic reporting and some frankly dangerous statements being made - such as in this tweet from Emma Kennedy (who is a writer, actress, and television presenter, whose academic training is in corporate law, human rights law, and intellectual property law, not epidemiology, virology, immunology, or medicine).
Anyone seriously advocating for Herd Immunity is happy for the vulnerable in this country to die unnecessarily.
The concept of herd immunity is not
unique to Covid-19 or the coronaviruses.In fact building herd immunity is one of the clinical purposes of vaccination
programmes.There will, in any human
population, be those who cannot be vaccinated for a number of reasons – the most
common being immunosuppression – either naturally or through immunosuppressant medication
to treat autoimmune disorders.These individuals
cannot be vaccinated safely – however they can be protected.Mass vaccination of those who can be
vaccinated breaks the chains of transmission – allowing the unvaccinated to
move freely within the population surrounded by the generally immune ‘herd’.Thus the mass vaccinated act as a screen for
those who cannot be.This has been the
strategy behind the treatment of dozens of conditions – including measles.Herd immunity is therefore a vital method of
protecting the vulnerable from dangerous, potentially fatal infections.The use of Herd Immunity as a convenient
label for the UK government’s initial strategy is causing some to equate the
entire concept with this strategy and its potential impact on vulnerable populations.In reality the clinical concept is the exact
reverse of this – it is a method of protecting vulnerable populations.Such rhetoric is not only inaccurate, but
plays into the hands of one of the most dangerous ideas to have spread into society
in the last two decades – the anti-vaccination movement.This mistaken use of a label with a clear clinical meaning plays into the hands of
those who argue vaccination is in fact designed to damage society’s most vulnerable.Herd immunity may not be appropriate for
rapid spreading infections with Covid-19 with severe clinical impacts – but in
other cases, it literally saves lives.
