Public Health

Filtered coffee has been linked to lower risk of type 2 diabetes by an epidemiology group ... Before you get too excited about this "filtered" coffee preventing diabetes, we need to remember what they are measuring - numbers, not coffee. This is not a science finding, it is an "exploratory" result. Drinking coffee, filtered in paper or Turkish in a pan, is not going to prevent diabetes any more than a juice cleanse prevents whatever that stuff is claiming to prevent. That was written last year, but another story making a similar claim about a coffee brewing process has caused corporate…

Asthma is a chronic condition which causes a sudden inflammation and narrowing of airways in the lungs. The resulting “asthma attack” causes the patient to suffer periods of wheezing, chest tightness, shortness of breath and coughing. Asthma is a truly global, non-communicable disease which afflicts people of all ages from infant to elderly adult. Indeed, Asthma is globally ranked 16th among the leading causes of years lived with disability and 28th among the leading causes of burden of disease as measured by disability-adjusted life years. It is estimated that 300 million people have…

The proposal is to select a small town of 200,000 people. While the rest of the UK follows the exit strategy proposed by the government, this small town will experimentally use a much stricter strategy. Everyone in the town gets tested for Covid-19 - whether they have symptoms or not. This is voluntary but they assume 90% compliance. Letter with signatures here: Expert Public Health Covid-19 Forum Article in the Lancet: Universal weekly testing as the UK COVID-19 lockdown exit strategy The authors sent this proposal to the UK government on the 10th April. Their proposal is a strategy…

We need to protect our health workers and find a way to fix this serious gap in personal protection equipment in the UK. The survey was open over the Easter Bank Holiday weekend – from Friday 10 April until Monday 13 April 2020. RCN publishes results of member survey about PPE| Scotland | Royal College of Nursing Dr Nisreen Alwan tweets : This language of heroism & self-sacrifice around healthcare workers who died of #COVID19 is not helpful & shifts responsibility. These people had a job to do that they couldn’t quit. They’re victims of an occupational hazard & should’ve been…

In the UK prince Charles, Matt Hancock and others who get COVID-19 isolate for only 7 days. Yet the WHO say to isolate until all the symptoms resolve plus 14 days. 25 professors of public health, virology, immunology etc have signed a letter asking the UK government to share the evidence for their much shorter isolation period. The long isolation period for COVID-19 should come as no surprise after SARS. For SARS the isolation period required by the CDC in the US is until 10 days after the resolution of fever, provided respiratory symptoms are absent or improving SARS | Isolation and…

Cristina Cuomo, the wife of journalist Chris Cuomo, who had been setting progressive hearts aflutter with his jovial sort-of interviews with his brother, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, before contracting COVID-19, has also tested positive for coronavirus. Nothing surprising there. What is shocking is that she is founder of The Purist, a "wellness" (read: rich white people) brand which promotes woo like homeopathy, "energy medicine" and "oxygenated herbs" as how you prevent disease. And yet she got the disease anyway. That has not stopped her and him from promoting all of the above plus…

First, as a reminder to all of you, do protect yourself using the simple methods recommended by the WHO, not just physical distancing. Learn how to wash your hands thoroughly, and avoid touching your eyes, nose and mouth with unwashed hands, also cover a cough with your elbow not a hand. COVID-19 is not like flu. It's only transmitted via the larger droplets that fall to the ground in seconds. These methods only reduce your risk of flu but are very effective in stopping COVID-19. These methods work and can save you from a potentially serious disease and may even save your life. They also…

This is one of the biggest differences between the UK policy and the WHO recommendations. The UK think that Covid19 is very infectious like flu, and only for a very short time and that if you have it then likely everyone in your house already has it or will get it soon. But the data from China and now many other places is the opposite. Covid19 is mildly infectious for a long time. It can be infectious through to death if you die and up to two weeks after recovery if you recover. If you catch it early, often nobody else has got it from the first case. This story is often in the news - couples…

This is a trimmed down version of my last article with just the cites from the Imperial college paper to show that in the UK we are indeed using a simulated flu pandemic to guide UK policy and that it differs in almost every detail from the real disease. I know this is hard to understand or believe. But please check my cites carefully and you will see they do. Before I go any further, if you are in the UK, be sure to protect yourself. This disease is not airborne (except for certain medical procedures). For details see my How To Protect Yourself From COVID-19 - And Help Stop The Spread…

Few of us in the UK even know that the UK government is ignoring WHO's advice. Allyson M Pollock, professor of public health at Newcastle university is the lead author of a recent paper in the British Medical Journal: Covid-19: why is the UK government ignoring WHO’s advice?. The authors say that Case finding, contact tracing and testing, and strict quarantine are the classic tools in public health to control infectious diseases. WHO says they have been painstakingly adopted in China, with a high percentage of identified close contacts completing medical observation. In Singapore, Vietnam,…