Coronavirus

[oddoneout]

I've just been reading through the newly amended list of symptoms, listed here https://www.theguardian.com/world/20...solate-england on the basis of which I appear to have the virus most of the time...
Existing chronic conditions and now the beginning of the pollen challenge muddy the waters somewhat.

[french frank]

on the basis of which I appear to have the virus most of the time...

If you've never tested positive for Covid, I think having the virus 'most of the time' probably means you don't have it. Given that the Zoe people have been trying for more than two years to persuade the government to amend the list of most common symptoms so that more people will get tested, amending the list in this way at the same time as stopping testing means … well I'm not quite sure what it means but I feel they may be connected.

[antongould]

If you've never tested positive for Covid, I think having the virus 'most of the time' probably means you don't have it. Given that the Zoe people have been trying for more than two years to persuade the government to amend the list of most common symptoms so that more people will get tested, amending the list in this way at the same time as stopping testing means … well I'm not quite sure what it means but I feel they may be connected.

Are you well up on Zoe ff …. ???? …. I report every day for myself and Lady Gould but have never tried to fully understand their figures although I do record them daily alongside the government set ….. The Zoe figures for infections, both local and national, have started to fall since 1 April but I presume this is due to the end of free tests rather than a real drop …. .???? Are we saying the only true figures now are the ONS Friday figures …. 1 in 13 people with COVID last Friday ….. ?????

[Sir Velo]

I've just been reading through the newly amended list of symptoms, listed here https://www.theguardian.com/world/20...solate-england on the basis of which I appear to have the virus most of the time...
Existing chronic conditions and now the beginning of the pollen challenge muddy the waters somewhat.

"It is a most extraordinary thing, but I never read a patent medicine advertisement without being impelled to the conclusion that I am suffering from the particular disease therein dealt with in its most virulent form. The diagnosis seems in every case to correspond exactly with all the sensations that I have ever felt.

I remember going to the British Museum one day to read up the treatment for some slight ailment of which I had a touch – hay fever, I fancy it was. I got down the book, and read all I came to read; and then, in an unthinking moment, I idly turned the leaves, and began to indolently study diseases, generally. I forget which was the first distemper I plunged into – some fearful, devastating scourge, I know – and, before I had glanced half down the list of “premonitory symptoms,” it was borne in upon me that I had fairly got it.

I sat for awhile, frozen with horror; and then, in the listlessness of despair, I again turned over the pages. I came to typhoid fever – read the symptoms – discovered that I had typhoid fever, must have had it for months without knowing it – wondered what else I had got; turned up St. Vitus’s Dance – found, as I expected, that I had that too, – began to get interested in my case, and determined to sift it to the bottom, and so started alphabetically – read up ague, and learnt that I was sickening for it, and that the acute stage would commence in about another fortnight. Bright’s disease, I was relieved to find, I had only in a modified form, and, so far as that was concerned, I might live for years. Cholera I had, with severe complications; and diphtheria I seemed to have been born with. I plodded conscientiously through the twenty-six letters, and the only malady I could conclude I had not got was housemaid’s knee.

I felt rather hurt about this at first; it seemed somehow to be a sort of slight. Why hadn’t I got housemaid’s knee? Why this invidious reservation? After a while, however, less grasping feelings prevailed. I reflected that I had every other known malady in the pharmacology, and I grew less selfish, and determined to do without housemaid’s knee. Gout, in its most malignant stage, it would appear, had seized me without my being aware of it; and zymosis I had evidently been suffering with from boyhood. There were no more diseases after zymosis, so I concluded there was nothing else the matter with me.

I sat and pondered. I thought what an interesting case I must be from a medical point of view, what an acquisition I should be to a class! Students would have no need to “walk the hospitals,” if they had me. I was a hospital in myself. All they need do would be to walk round me, and, after that, take their diploma.

Then I wondered how long I had to live. I tried to examine myself. I felt my pulse. I could not at first feel any pulse at all. Then, all of a sudden, it seemed to start off. I pulled out my watch and timed it. I made it a hundred and forty-seven to the minute. I tried to feel my heart. I could not feel my heart. It had stopped beating. I have since been induced to come to the opinion that it must have been there all the time, and must have been beating, but I cannot account for it. I patted myself all over my front, from what I call my waist up to my head, and I went a bit round each side, and a little way up the back. But I could not feel or hear anything. I tried to look at my tongue. I stuck it out as far as ever it would go, and I shut one eye, and tried to examine it with the other. I could only see the tip, and the only thing that I could gain from that was to feel more certain than before that I had scarlet fever.

I had walked into that reading-room a happy, healthy man. I crawled out a decrepit wreck.

I went to my medical man. He is an old chum of mine, and feels my pulse, and looks at my tongue, and talks about the weather, all for nothing, when I fancy I’m ill; so I thought I would do him a good turn by going to him now. “What a doctor wants,” I said, “is practice. He shall have me. He will get more practice out of me than out of seventeen hundred of your ordinary, commonplace patients, with only one or two diseases each.” So I went straight up and saw him, and he said:

“Well, what’s the matter with you?”

I said:

“I will not take up your time, dear boy, with telling you what is the matter with me. Life is brief, and you might pass away before I had finished. But I will tell you what is NOT the matter with me. I have not got housemaid’s knee. Why I have not got housemaid’s knee, I cannot tell you; but the fact remains that I have not got it. Everything else, however, I HAVE got.”

And I told him how I came to discover it all.

Then he opened me and looked down me, and clutched hold of my wrist, and then he hit me over the chest when I wasn’t expecting it – a cowardly thing to do, I call it – and immediately afterwards butted me with the side of his head. After that, he sat down and wrote out a prescription, and folded it up and gave it me, and I put it in my pocket and went out.

I did not open it. I took it to the nearest chemist’s, and handed it in. The man read it, and then handed it back.

He said he didn’t keep it.

I said:

“You are a chemist?”

He said:

“I am a chemist. If I was a co-operative stores and family hotel combined, I might be able to oblige you. Being only a chemist hampers me.”

I read the prescription. It ran:

“1 lb. beefsteak, with
1 pt. bitter beer
every 6 hours.
1 ten-mile walk every morning.
1 bed at 11 sharp every night.
And don’t stuff up your head with things you don’t understand.”
I followed the directions, with the happy result – speaking for myself – that my life was preserved, and is still going on."

Jerome K Jerome, Three Men in a Boat

[french frank]

Are you well up on Zoe ff …. ????

Less so now, having finally given up my faithful daily report (having clucked disapprovingly at the two members of the family who 'couldn't be bothered' and gave up after a year). I gave up when they kept trying to get me to sign up for some nutritional study. I usually watch the Youtube videos though and I know Tim S was getting really annoyed that the findings of the one study which had been concentrating on tracking symptoms - with 4m+ reporting daily - was being ignored. I suspect the NHS felt that if they publicised the fact that the symptoms were similar to those of a cold, masses of people with colds would be turning up to be tested. So Covid sufferers with cold-like symptoms were being turned away when they reported for PCRs. ("Not the right symptoms.")

Are we saying the only true figures now are the ONS Friday figures …. 1 in 13 people with COVID last Friday ….. ?????

Goodness knows. I've just checked today's (i.e. March 31) figures and, yes, they have been easing back since March 23rd. But what that means in terms of reduced testing, who knows?

All I know is that 'expert opinion' wants to quash 3 common myths:

No, the pandemic is not over
No, Covid is not yet endemic in the UK
No, each new variant is not necessarily weaker than the last.

PS Sir Velo: JKJ

[Pulcinella]

...
Jerome K Jerome, Three Men in a Boat

I probably suffer from every possible adverse reaction listed for my blood pressure pills, which I recently succumbed to accepting, despite the supreme annoyance of no longer being able to have grapefruit.
Surely that's every Englishman's right (especially when offered it as part of the breakfast spread at a hotel or B&B)?
The 'instructions' said: Not to be taken with grapefruit.
The pharmacist was not amused when I asked if I could take it BEFORE or AFTER grapefruit, which seemed to me to be a perfectly simple and sensible question.

[Dave2002]

I probably suffer from every possible adverse reaction listed for my blood pressure pills, which I recently succumbed to accepting, despite the supreme annoyance of no longer being able to have grapefruit.
Surely that's every Englishman's right (especially when offered it as part of the breakfast spread at a hotel or B&B)?
The 'instructions' said: Not to be taken with grapefruit.
The pharmacist was not amused when I asked if I could take it BEFORE or AFTER grapefruit, which seemed to me to be a perfectly simple and sensible question.

You need to watch out for pomelo too I think, which is so similar to grapefruit that it probably has the same effect.

I doubt that you'd actually die if you did eat the occasional portion of grapefruit - though the same could also be said of people who might just eat one or two peanuts. [some who have allergies die remarkably quickly ...]

Re the grapefruit, what might happen is that the effects of your medication might get amplified, so that your BP goes very low.
Firstly your BP goes down (intended) due to the medication, and then it goes down even further due to the grapefruit effect.

Just take care.

[Bryn]

I probably suffer from every possible adverse reaction listed for my blood pressure pills, which I recently succumbed to accepting, despite the supreme annoyance of no longer being able to have grapefruit.
Surely that's every Englishman's right (especially when offered it as part of the breakfast spread at a hotel or B&B)?
The 'instructions' said: Not to be taken with grapefruit.
The pharmacist was not amused when I asked if I could take it BEFORE or AFTER grapefruit, which seemed to me to be a perfectly simple and sensible question.

https://www.nhs.uk/common-health-questions/medicines/does-grapefruit-affect-my-medicine/

[Frances_iom]

the medication I understand comprises many small doses each coated with a sugar? compound to different depths - the stomach acid releases the drug in a slow release as the coating dissolves - grapefruit contains an enzyme that attacks the coating causing rapid release - apparently killed many from heart attack until the cause was recognised - there were suggestions of genetically modifying grapefruit to remove the enzyme.

[EnemyoftheStoat]

I ate some grapefruit once and thought I had died.

It didn't help my Dad, who loved his grapefruit and keeled over at 65.

[Dave2002]

the medication I understand comprises many small doses each coated with a sugar? compound to different depths - the stomach acid releases the drug in a slow release as the coating dissolves - grapefruit contains an enzyme that attacks the coating causing rapid release - apparently killed many from heart attack until the cause was recognised - there were suggestions of genetically modifying grapefruit to remove the enzyme.

That's not the mechanism I read about for my own medication. If your explanation is the reason, then one might expect many tablets for many other conditions to have the same problem. Also, one might think such a problem could be avoided by using a different type of slow release mechanism.

[Dave2002]

Follow up to msg 5801 - allegedly there are at least 85 drugs which are affected by grapefruit or grapefruit juice.

Here is an article from the FDA which explains some of the mechanisms - so the mechanisms may be different for each drug and each condition.

https://www.fda.gov/consumers/consumer-updates/grapefruit-juice-and-some-drugs-dont-mix

Further, I don't know if there are other commonly eaten foodstuffs (fruit etc.) which also cause problems when on a medication regime. Is grapefruit the top contender?

[oddoneout]

Bit more here https://onlinefirstaid.com/grapefrui...ll%20intestine.
I hadn't realised it gets you both ways - too much and too little.
There was a thing years ago to eat grapefruit before a meal as a slimming aid, possibly based (erroneously/loosely?) on the above facts. More than 50 years ago I was told the reason for having grapefruit as a starter, particularly for rich meals, was that the acidity helped digestion of what was to follow. There was also the obvious advantage of something that wouldn't fill the stomach before embarking on the more substantial fare...

[Pulcinella]

I didn't intend to send this thread veering off into the effects of grapefruit, interesting though they are.
My (poorly worded, I now realise) comment was more to say that, though I'm pleased to see more symptoms recognised as possible effects/signs of Covid infection, I wouldn't be surprised if they were all also possible side effects of my BP medication. The list is so long that it would be very hard to tell if any symptom was real or induced, and, though one understands the need for such lists, they might result in one misattributing the cause.
At least I don't seem to have one of the most common though: swollen ankles!

[cloughie]

I didn't intend to send this thread veering off into the effects of grapefruit, interesting though they are.
My (poorly worded, I now realise) comment was more to say that, though I'm pleased to see more symptoms recognised as possible effects/signs of Covid infection, I wouldn't be surprised if they were all also possible side effects of my BP medication. The list is so long that it would be very hard to tell if any symptom was real or induced, and, though one understands the need for such lists, they might result in one misattributing the cause.
At least I don't seem to have one of the most common though: swollen ankles!

I think the list of Covid symptoms is long enough now to make one of two choices.
1 A slacker’s charter as any of these can give an excuse for staying off work.
2 Pick you symptoms - decide it’s not Covid but a hangover, hay fever, a cold, food poisoning or any other ailment of choice!