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Coronavirus - how is it/has it affected you?

KenL said:
Funny the talk of haircuts. I watched the Rangers game last night and thought they all had fresh looking haircuts - unlike me.?
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It is strange when you think that a large part of the country wee in lockdown in November and in Tier 4 after that and then in lockdown again and so a large number of footballers (and other people, including other sportsmen and women), would not have been able to have a trip to the barbers or hairdressers for over 3 months now. On that basis, anyone with neat, trimmed hair either has someone in their house with the right skills or has been breaching that rule.
 
Our neighbours hasn’t cut his hair or trimmed his beard for nearly a year now. He plans a big charity thing to the 1 year anniversary of the 1st lockdown. I think he works for quite a big tech company and there will be value in there.
But that would be quite impractical for profess football players to do so.
 
GB72 said:
Am i right in thinking that, unless there is a change in supply that allows a massive increase, we are soon going to hit a big slow down in the numbers vaccinated. Delaying the second jab is all well and good but soon the first of those are going to start hitting the 12 week period and so the focus will be on second injections rather than new people having the first one. With millions needing the second jab, we could see a big gap before those in the less at risk categories see jab one. Not being pessimistic, just seems inevitable
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I've done some checking into the numbers and it appears that in the first 3 weeks after the first vaccination was given, 8-29th Dec, about 543,000 got their first jab.
Last weekend, almost 600,000 got their jab in one day.

There will obviously be a reduction in first jabs when the second dosers come along but the numbers will be tiny, compared to how many jabs will be given in 4 weeks time.
 
GB72 said:
Sadly for those with almost endless riches, a fine is never going to be a deterrent. There should be sanctions for the clubs involved.
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Sorry, why; did the club instruct the player to get it cut? I've got no problem with the Premier League (or any league come to that, but the Premier League seems to have a higher percentage of halfwits) issuing an edict that any player caught doing this will be suspended for 5 games or whatever, and the club being entitled to withhold wages for the period the player is suspended, but actually sanctioning the club for something that they cannot directly control short of actually locking them up is a bit off for me.
 
Blue in Munich said:
Sorry, why; did the club instruct the player to get it cut? I've got no problem with the Premier League (or any league come to that, but the Premier League seems to have a higher percentage of halfwits) issuing an edict that any player caught doing this will be suspended for 5 games or whatever, and the club being entitled to withhold wages for the period the player is suspended, but actually sanctioning the club for something that they cannot directly control short of actually locking them up is a bit off for me.
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Sorry, yes agree to some extent that the suspension of the player and fines from the league or club over and above those that can be imposed by the police was my thought to start with but clubs are in a privileged position and a failure to control players, of persistent or wide spread, should be punished at a club level.
 
In the case in question I suspect the club are banging their heads against a wall in frustration. Not only was the player stupid enough to break the law, he took a picture of it happening and posted it up on social media. All this after being given clear guideline, etc. What can you do against that level of stupid?

Thankfully, my wife has been cutting my hair for the last 10 years or so so no 70's style long hair for me :D. Planning ahead ;)
 
There have been a number of first hand reports of people in the UK with cancer showing improvement after Covid vaccine. This is thought to be due to the immune system being activated and cleaning up various intruders it spots. These include an older woman who had a number of skin cancers for some months. GP examined her yesterday, lesions gone. Checked record, got vaccine about 3 weeks ago. A younger patient with lymphoma, similar effect, lymphoma significantly reduced. The immune system is powerful when it gets going.

One of the evolving techniques for cancer treatment is a technology called CAR-T. This basically involves taking a sample of the tumour, identifying a target on it and then programming your T-cells to go get it. Can be very successful and curative in some.

Cancer Research UK
 
Ethan said:
There have been a number of first hand reports of people in the UK with cancer showing improvement after Covid vaccine. This is thought to be due to the immune system being activated and cleaning up various intruders it spots. These include an older woman who had a number of skin cancers for some months. GP examined her yesterday, lesions gone. Checked record, got vaccine about 3 weeks ago. A younger patient with lymphoma, similar effect, lymphoma significantly reduced. The immune system is powerful when it gets going.

One of the evolving techniques for cancer treatment is a technology called CAR-T. This basically involves taking a sample of the tumour, identifying a target on it and then programming your T-cells to go get it. Can be very successful and curative in some.

Cancer Research UK
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This is a far bigger picture I guess but has the approach to the covid vaccine been any different to how cancer research has gone on over the years. From an outsiders point of view, it has appeared to be a more globally cohesive effort with a singular focus whereas cancer treatment and research always appears, to me at least, to be a more disparate one. Is there anything that medical science can learn from the process towards obtaining a covid vaccine in a miraculously short time that could be taken up in other areas or (and this is not meaning to belittle the efforts at all) strike it lucky in finding a vaccine so quickly.

Either way, hoping Nobel prizes are on the way for those at the forefront of covid vaccine development
 
GB72 said:
This is a far bigger picture I guess but has the approach to the covid vaccine been any different to how cancer research has gone on over the years. From an outsiders point of view, it has appeared to be a more globally cohesive effort with a singular focus whereas cancer treatment and research always appears, to me at least, to be a more disparate one. Is there anything that medical science can learn from the process towards obtaining a covid vaccine in a miraculously short time that could be taken up in other areas or (and this is not meaning to belittle the efforts at all) strike it lucky in finding a vaccine so quickly.

Either way, hoping Nobel prizes are on the way for those at the forefront of covid vaccine development
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Immune effects have been a focus of cancer research for a while. There are other technologies in use or development.

The vaccine programme has illustrated the value of technologies like mRNA. mRNA therapies are a very specific and focussed type of gene therapy, where a genome is used, in this case to programme the body to produce an immune response, but other mRNAs are used to replace missing enzymes in people with genetic diseases. The viral vector method (like Oxford/AZ or Janssen) is also now validated and will no doubt be used for other diseases. One of the objections to the vaccines is 'It tales 5 years to produce a vaccine!'. Well, it doesn't have to, but a lot of time was spent on stuff that can be bypassed when you have the genome and a way of producing segments of code. And once you have a working vaccine, you can update the genetic code as new variants emerge. So this natural disaster has stimulated some ground-breaking solutions which will be useful for other stuff too.
 
Ethan said:
Immune effects have been a focus of cancer research for a while. There are other technologies in use or development.

The vaccine programme has illustrated the value of technologies like mRNA. mRNA therapies are a very specific and focussed type of gene therapy, where a genome is used, in this case to programme the body to produce an immune response, but other mRNAs are used to replace missing enzymes in people with genetic diseases. The viral vector method (like Oxford/AZ or Janssen) is also now validated and will no doubt be used for other diseases. One of the objections to the vaccines is 'It tales 5 years to produce a vaccine!'. Well, it doesn't have to, but a lot of time was spent on stuff that can be bypassed when you have the genome and a way of producing segments of code. And once you have a working vaccine, you can update the genetic code as new variants emerge. So this natural disaster has stimulated some ground-breaking solutions which will be useful for other stuff too.
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Thank you, one of the few positives out of this whole thing that it could lead to some breakthroughs on other illness that has impacted on so many.
 
Just a thought - and I have no idea whether its valid or not - but given that elite footballers and club staff are regularly tested for Covid, and are legally able to operate - could it be that clubs (are able to) have a tested hairdresser on the books? Cant see that it would be good PR but I guess it might be an explanation??
 
I guess if I would run a vaccination facility and have left overs I would check where I can quickly get enough people not to waste it. Where I got the jab on a Sunday evening there is a bus depot next to it, that would be my call. My GP practice where they vaccinate is directly opposite a nursery, I would call them because the school next door will be shut by the time the decision about left overs are made. I guess in Chesterfield the nearest bulk but organised assembly is the stadium.
The last thing I would want to do is calling people one by one, killing the vaccine by going slowly through a list. Call someone, ask to send 6 people, done. Possibly even prearrange that there might be a possibility.
 
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