Still here and largely fine but getting sick of a lack of physical activity. I just have no idea how I'm supposed to get exercise these days. I was biking the kid to school until we got hit by a car, but even if we hadn't been, these days it might be too cold anyway.
I've been increasing my heart rate by arguing about masks on Facebook.
Yeah. That doesn't seem like something I'd be able to endure.
Cyrus, I got a bike trainer (trainer bike?) and love it dearly. I feel like we just had this thread.
I can report a small triumph over the not-at-all broken NHS: on my fourth phone call to the cardiology secretaries I got a real person who told me -- of course -- that there was no record of a follow-up appointment I had been told to expect in December, and that the consultant who had seen me in November had left already. The state-of-the-art electronic record system showed that he hadn't bothered to register my condition either, so the only record of my talk with him was a note to say I had been sent off for a covid test. That was the meeting at which he told me I had this interesting condition with a death rate, if untreated, of 50% in two years.
So where is my fucking treatment? The human secretary did arrange an appointment with another consultant for Feb 8th. And that is what I have to look forward to. Still, I reckon that a 50% death rate over two years translates to to a one in two thousand chance of dying on any one of those days, so the odds for any particular day are pretty good. But it's a pain, and one not entirely to be suppressed by getting on with work.
7 is very bad. Very sorry to hear it. Shows that any system is only as effective as the people who operate it.
Very sorry to hear that NW. Hopefully the person you see on the 8th if more helpful/proactive.
For what it's worth, my own experiences with Cardiology at the moment are about the same. I don't have any life-threatening condition, so it's not of the same magnitude as the shit you are going through, but the general handling and incessant delays are about the same.
I'm about 18 months in from first raising an issue, and I've still never seen a cardiologist in person, and the one I spoke to on the phone was enough of a prick** that I'm still considering whether or not to make a formal complaint.*
* he very definitely made some assumptions along the lines of "fat, Scottish, working class" and then went with them. Including making recommendations that I might want to consider taking a little exercise, e.g. walking a few steps each day. When, I'd told him, literally five minutes before, that I do about 5 hours of intense cardio exercise a week on top of approx 12-15,00 steps a day of walking. Also his letter to my GP states that I'd told him my condition had gone away, which was the direct opposite of what I'd told him--which was that my symptoms were not as bad as they were a year ago, but were still present--and where I'd explicitly told him on the call that if he made that statement, I'd make a complaint. On the plus side, I am still in the program for further cardiac event monitoring.
** full on Boris Johnson style posh blustering
well, Addenbrookes has been run down for years. I once went to a fascinating talk by the statistics man David Spiegelhalter, who explained that he had tried to analyse the algorithms or "performance measures" which had led to the hospital losing a three star rating and so so some of its funding way back in 2004
"The system was immensely complicated. I don't think anyone understood it. I didn't, and I helped to build it".
Jesus, ttaM: you should have hit him with your lihPD, preferably rolled up into a serviceable club.
I'm sorry about the delay. That's awful.
Both of those do sound terrible.
Yes. My doctor is much nicer with me. But he only sees patients one day a week, so not the guy for a crisis.
7, 10: sorry about the cardiology issues. That sounds dire.
6: Over the summer I was jogging. In the fall I was biking. Any such discussion then wouldn't have been very relevant to me. Or maybe I paid attention but thought the suggestions wouldn't work for me? I don't know, maybe I was too quick to reject them.
12: you should have hit him with your lihPD, preferably rolled up into a serviceable club wrapped 'round a baseball bat.
Because it's been that kind of a day in these parts.
Those both are super shitty.
I'm having two symptoms still, which I'm assuming are Covid-related: persistent stomach pain and inability to regulate my body temperature.
(I know that the hot flashes aren't related to perimenopause because I'm on HRT. Because otherwise I'd be convinced it's that.)
NW, Ttam, those sound terrible.
Heebie-geebie, glad to hear that, on the whole, covid has not been a long-lasting sickness.
re: 12
Yeah, outside of some narrow professional contexts, I never use the title. The one exception, years ago, was a supercilious Doctor who was lecturing me on some shit, and when he said my name, for about the 10th time, with a heavy emphasis on the _Mr_ I interrupted him ... "It's _Doctor_ nattarGcM".*
I found it really hard to get him to listen, which is an effect of the phone. If we'd been face to face, I'd have made damn sure he was paying attention.
Still, that's all small potatoes compared to your situation. So hopefully that gets sorted out.
* like pasty version of Sidney Poitier in "In the Heat of the Night".
re: 2 and 6
I got a bike trainer. I like it--although I think I need a bike fit as it can sometimes be very uncomfortable--and it's making me train in a more programmatic way as I'm following a proper structured 6 month "program". But, I do still prefer riding outside, even in cold weather.
So it looks like Breyer is (finally) retiring. Hooray!
I imagine Sinema is going to really try to fuck over the Dems on this one.
Truly surprising to see an old liberal put country ahead of their personal grip on power. Good for him!
Jackson passed cloture 52-48 for her current gig, I'd expect the same for SC. No reason to think Sinema is going to start pulling shenanigans on judges now.
Sorry, 52-46. Would have been 53-47 if everyone voted. Rs were Collins, Murkowski, and Graham.
Interesting note about Breyer's resignation: https://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2022/01/open-up-the-tired-eyes
(1) I was told last week by somebody in the know that this was likely to happen. Today this same person tells me that an important component of Breyer's decision and its timing is the nonsense that's gone down at the SCOTUS in the last few weeks, specifically the handling of the Texas abortion litigation, and the mask kerfuffle. (Good job Neil Gorsuch!).
And some light haunting.
I've been doing Zwift on some of the days when I'm not skiing, but man, I do not have the motivation for the trainer at all right now. I signed up for an early summer century though, so I'm going to have to get my motivation back or it's going to be a sufferfest.
I've been using TrainerRoad. It's straightforward enough, and I listen to music or podcasts while I am doing it. I can't do more than an hour, though, as the discomfort is too high. I don't have any problem going out for 90 minutes - 2 hours when I'm outdoors. I think it's the lack of movement. When I'm outside I'm in and out of the saddle, shifting position, stopping at lights, moving through traffic, etc. whereas on the trainer I'm more or less locked in one position for ages. It's my 50th birthday in 2 weeks, so I'll probably arrange a proper bike fit to coincide with that.
My plan is to try and do the London to Brighton off-road* in September, which would easily be the longest ride I've done to date. I've done 50km before, and i ride 40km regularly, but this is 61 miles (approx 100km).
* I'll do it on a road bike with fat gravel tyres, rather than a MTB.
NHS delays made the front page of the NYT. Some poor lady missed a kidney transplant and Stage IV breast cancer diagnoses are up 48%. I wonder whether the US has similar number we aren't seeing yet.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/26/world/europe/coronavirus-uk-nhs-backlog.html
The NHS isn't only dealing with coronavirus, Brexit hit simultaneously. I wouldn't be surprised if together, the UK is genuinely struggling more than the US health care system on this one. (It still has the advantage of distributing the problems more fairly rather than focusing them primarily on the poor, of course.)
re: 33
Massive long term underfunding since 2010, too. Both as a result of stupid "austerity" measures post the financial crash, and as a result of a mixture of malice and corruption on the part of the Tory party. I suspect an NHS that had kept the same broad trajectory of funding that it had under the Blair/Brown governments would have been in pretty good shape for COVID and everything else.
33: Brexit isn't actually causing that many serious problems for the NHS at present, at least not as far as I can see. It hasn't helped, of course; there are more supply chain problems than before, and fewer EU nationals. But neither of those are talked about as major contributors to current problems. The pressures are staff absence, COVID cases, the care backlog and staff fatigue.
I think it would be very difficult to measure which is struggling more - partly because the US health care system doesn't really have a unified collector of performance data - but it is worth noting that the US is under way more COVID pressure right now. It has way more COVID patients (population adjusted), and eight times as many COVID intensive-care patients.
(The number of COVID patients in intensive care in the UK is now the lowest it's been in six months. In the US it's close to an all-time high.)
Wordle 222 2/6
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I get that we don't want to do this all the time, but I just wanted to point out that I was brilliant today.
You can partially control for the massive underfunding by looking at Scotland NHS, which has been less massively underfunded.
38: I thought that too, but in fact it may not be the case. The IFS is a very reliable centre-left think tank and they write: https://ifs.org.uk/publications/15396
But increases in health spending in Scotland have been significantly smaller than in England, under both Labour and SNP-led administrations. For example, during the 2000s, official estimates imply that real-terms spending per person increased by 63% in Scotland, compared with 80% in England. And during the 2010s, it increased by 3%, compared with 10% in England. In contrast, the last decade has seen bigger growth in spending on adult social care in Scotland than in England.
As a result, spending on health per person in Scotland went from being 22% higher than in England in 1999-2000, to 10% higher in 2009-10 and just 3% higher in 2019-20, according to official estimates.
Some of that may be due, they go on to say, to much higher spending on social care in Scotland. And this is, arguably, spending on health care, because people who can't get social care end up in hospital, costing the health service money that it shouldn't be spending. England's overall health outcomes might well be better if they put more of the budget into social care and less into the NHS.
But it is still very striking that the real situation (assuming the IFS is right, which I do) is so different from everyone's perception.
38: I thought that too, but in fact it may not be the case. The IFS is a very reliable centre-left think tank and they write: https://ifs.org.uk/publications/15396
But increases in health spending in Scotland have been significantly smaller than in England, under both Labour and SNP-led administrations. For example, during the 2000s, official estimates imply that real-terms spending per person increased by 63% in Scotland, compared with 80% in England. And during the 2010s, it increased by 3%, compared with 10% in England. In contrast, the last decade has seen bigger growth in spending on adult social care in Scotland than in England.
As a result, spending on health per person in Scotland went from being 22% higher than in England in 1999-2000, to 10% higher in 2009-10 and just 3% higher in 2019-20, according to official estimates.
Some of that may be due, they go on to say, to much higher spending on social care in Scotland. And this is, arguably, spending on health care, because people who can't get social care end up in hospital, costing the health service money that it shouldn't be spending. England's overall health outcomes might well be better if they put more of the budget into social care and less into the NHS.
But it is still very striking that the real situation (assuming the IFS is right, which I do) is so different from everyone's perception.
Interesting, I had quickly googled to double-check and got some hits saying NSF Scotland has more resources (e.g. hospital beds per person) and better outcomes, and had assumed that was directly funding related.
NHS Scotland does have more hospital beds per person, but England seems to have slightly better outcomes than Scotland. Depends how you define good outcomes though.
The "hospital beds" figure is complicated. When you've recovered enough to leave an acute hospital bed, but you still need some continuing care (say, physiotherapy, or help looking after yourself), NHS England will generally put you into some sort of care facility. That doesn't count as a hospital. In parts of Scotland, though, you're likely to get moved into a cottage hospital ("community hospital"), which obviously does count as a hospital for bed-number purposes. (There are a few cottage hospitals still in England, but they're much more common in Scotland.)
So not only is Scotland spending more on social care than England, but a bit of its NHS budget is, effectively, going on stuff that would come out of the social care budget in England.
Maybe for NHS purposes, that's the same as England?
NHS Wales is separate from NHS England, but I don't know very much about how it works, how it differs from NHS England, etc.
I feel bad but passed my covid test. I think what's happened is that part of being old for me is that I now feel slightly sick whenever it's 0 degrees outside. Is that why Florida is full of the olds?
I signed up for an early summer century
I don't have any problem going out for 90 minutes - 2 hours when I'm outdoors. ... I've done 50km before, and i ride 40km regularly, but this is 61 miles (approx 100km).
I feel very tired and out of shape (I have a bike commute that's about 18 minutes each way; just enough to keep me from being completely hopeless in terms of conditioning but fairly short).
re: 49
Cosmetically, I'm in much worse shape than I was 2 years ago, because I'm not lifting, and I'm tired all the time, so definitely empathise. Doing some regular bike riding is about the only healthy habit that has stuck/progressed throughout the whole pandemic period, and that's partly because it's quite self-centred: I enjoy it because I'm away from everyone else.
One of the biggest problems I have with the whole pandemic is that I've spent most of the last 2 years almost never being alone, and that literally drives me insane. Especially because my wife was sick for a few weeks before Christmas, and then on holiday, and then sick again (with COVID), so I've literally never been alone except when exercising for about 6 weeks. I enjoy her company, and I enjoy other people's company, but I don't do well without _any_ periods of solitude. Those would normally just emerge during the daily rhythms of work and family life, and now they don't.
A bridge just collapsed near me. Hopefully Biden can work that into his infrastructure speech today.
Biden really is a genius timing his Pittsburgh visit like that. A whole, crucial piece of infrastructure failing is not more than once or twice a month here. Regents Square is now cut off.
Let's all repress thoughts of how many bridges of similar age and construction we drive over every day.
ttaM, embrace long stints in the bathroom.
Regents Square is now cut off.
52: Or alternatively, they go up to Forbes to cut over. But of course you are in to the sensationalism for the clicks.
embrace long stints in the bathroom
IYKWIMAITYD
This is Questionable Curriculum week at the Geebie household. First I got a call from Pokey's GT teacher. He's had her for 5 years and they usually get along, and she was irate.
Apparently she was being observed by the principle and so she thought a good activity would be "Enigmas" - she had the kids research an enigma and then present it to the class. The problem is that she picked enigmas that were straight out of Time Life Mysteries: Bermuda Triangle, Atlantis, the Pyramids, etc. There could be a legitimate academic angle, but it's going to take a clear-headed teacher to keep 5th graders from descending into hocus-pocus.
The teacher was not bothered by the hocus-pocus in the presentation, and Pokey was incensed and turned into a massive jackass who was nit-picking and debating every last thing that any student said. Fundamentally, it sounds like the other students wanted to believe in a bit of mystery and magic and Pokey lost his goddamn mind at how wrong they were. He behaved badly.
Next up with have Hawaii's GT teacher, who decided they were going to have class debates yesterday. The teacher offered topics like "Immigrants" and "Is there a God" and "Trans rights". Again, perhaps a deft teacher could guide a meaningful debate with 7th graders, but this was not that. It sounds like in every class that he did this, it deteriorated into shouting and people getting angry and hurt. (I'm on a group thread where everyone is sharing the earfuls they heard from their kids.) Also I'm told this teacher has a habit of deadnaming and baiting trans kids by deliberately using the wrong pronouns. So he sounds like an ass who deliberately provoked meltdowns in every period.
We ask too much of teachers. But these are both pretty questionable decisions.
So he sounds like an ass who deliberately provoked meltdowns in every period.
That's like the way the internet has been going since Christmas. Not the meltdowns, but everyone grinding whatever axe they are fixated on as being something that needs said just right then and then repeated.
Anyway, I don't like it and everyone seems to want me to worry about some disaster if I/Biden/"the liberals"/whatever doesn't act now. So I'm ignoring lots of things these days just because running around saying all is lost is pretty much what was Lord Haw Haw's job.
I also can't with the doom. The doom is correct but there's only so much that we can do to forestall it.
Pokey lost his goddamn mind at how wrong they were.
Pokey needs to learn the distinction between a classroom and a blog.
(Actually, Pokey is my hero.)
59.4: and that's why you don't hire GT teachers via the IDW!
I don't know if I mentioned here before that in fourth grade, our teacher began reading the class a book that existed in only one tattered copy and was, in 1989, basically irreplaceable. I got sucked into the story completely and then somehow the book got lost before the end, and I kind of lost my shit. (I know I wrote a letter to the paperback publisher asking if it could be ordered. No luck.) Years passed and then around 2002, in the age of ABEBooks, I looked it up and discovered that a) it had been reprinted and b) it had been written "to introduce children to the philosophy of Ayn Rand." See for yourself. I think the moral is that Ayn Rand seems fucking great to a 9yo lost in dystopia. Of course I ordered and read it; just terrible, but in a wonderful way.
Pokey needs to learn the distinction between a classroom and a blog.
I basically told him, "You're not wrong, but those are comments that you have to save for home. Vent to me about all those things. It sounds like the other students were not open to having the conversation you wanted to have."
I used to be terrified of the Bermuda Triangle. My parents flew to Italy and I was tracing my fingers over the globe to reassure myself that the plane wouldn't go over it.
Being able to enjoy anything even vaguely "paranormal" even in fiction has been one of the very last bits of deprogramming from Christianity for me. I would have been at least as annoying as Pokey here, maybe more because I'd have probably accused someone of Satanism. This kind of scenario is why I was homeschooled.
58: The bridge was on Forbes.
Shit, I meant Penn. Never comment.
62: I also can't with the doom.
Semi-related, bit it seems that Fetterman and Shapiro were avoiding the Biden event because his numbers are low. Fuck 'em bth; just lost some respect for me you big shits. Fetterman went to the bridge collapse site so really fuck that big shithead (whom I otherwise have liked).