Travels of a Fish Nut

Almost 18 months ago I wrote about the uselessness of the British government when it came to their advice regarding masks. At the time we had seen some of the highest rates of coronavirus infection and death in the world - 303,110 confirmed cases and 42,589 deaths - and yet were in the process of reopening non-essential shops and services. Since then we have gone through a further two lockdowns and have had, to date (21/11/21),  9,845,492 confirmed cases and 166,730 deaths . In the last seven days over 1,000 people have died of coronavirus. Those numbers are shameful. Every single one of them represents a failure of our government to protect us. And a huge part of that failure is due to their woefully inadequate messaging and inability to follow the science. When I wrote my original post I avoided discussing the research around coronavirus. Mostly this was because it was irrelevant to the piece but partly it was because I'm not a virologist or epidemiologist and didn't feel ...

  “PM Heralds Vaccine Victory for Care Homes”, “Vaccine rollout to care homes complete”, “UK Breaks Vaccination Record with 600,000 Jabs in a Day”, “9M Jabs… On Our Way to a Great British Summer!” All front-page headlines from today's papers . All deservedly praising the amazing rate of vaccinations in the UK. But these papers are portraying this as a triumph for the government and for Johnson in particular. Yet this is not a triumph for the government, nor for Johnson, and we must not buy into the propaganda. Instead the success of the vaccine roll-out highlights just how badly Johnson and his government have fucked up at every step of this pandemic.   How, you ask?    Simply this:   The vaccine roll-out is not being run by the government, but by the NHS . It's their long-standing organisational and logistical skills that are being used to get this vaccine out to so many people so quickly. The government has (at last) taken a hands-off approach and left the exp...

This is, as the title says, a rant. I'm throwing any claims of objectivity, balance and calm out the window. I'm angry. In fact, I'm fucking furious. I'm furious about the way the government has responded to the coronavirus pandemic. And this isn't because I'm a liberal leftie who would be furious with anything a Conservative government does. The Australian right-wing government - currently headed by a man who once brought a lump of coal to parliament in a strange attempt at allying the concerns of opponents of fossil fuels, and who handled the bush fires so badly he was told to "piss off" by victims - has managed to successfully lead their country through the pandemic with only 102 deaths and around 7,000 cases out of a population of about 25 million. This isn't about Left vs Right, this is about Competent vs Incompetent. And our government has been incredibly incompetent. That's not just my opinion, statistics bear this out. We currently ha...

I love citizen science. I think it's a fantastic way of engaging people who don't normally engage with science and also a way of giving people ownership of their information in a way that traditional methods can't always achieve. So when I heard that Kings College London were creating a COVID Symptom Tracking app for people I jumped at the chance to take part. Last week I reported a sore throat. It was most likely due to me not drinking enough while the weather had been particularly hot but it was something out of the ordinary and I felt I should report it just in case. A few days later I was asked to take a COVID-19 test. They noted that, This does not necessarily mean you have COVID-19 as we are also inviting some people we believe do not have the virus. I was pretty confident that I fell into this category but have been curious about the Home Testing kits and felt I would take the opportunity to give them a go. Ordering the Test The first task was to apply for the test....