Covid and Work, Covid Advice and General Chat

[Max68]

Have to go for a hearing appointment next week. Hearing aid is playing up and no test, no new aid so no choice. However this letter I received shows a massive difference in how some businesses are opening as safely as they can compared to say schools who seem to be accepting kids going in via taxis, buses and whatnot. Prior to receiving this I was asked if I could get there by not using public transport and if I had been far out of the area in the last 14 days. Not sure how long that socially distanced Otoscope is going to be mind!!!

We look forward to welcoming you to your Hearing Assessment audiology appointment. *** has strict infection control procedures in place to keep you safe from infection, including Covid-19, based on NHS and government guidelines.

Face-to face contact will be kept to a minimum. *** premises are thoroughly cleaned in between patients and all employees are trained in infection control. This sheet contains important information about your appointment so that you will know what to expect.

A member of our staff will speak with you 24-48 hours before your appointment to ensure that it is safe for you to attend the appointment.

Arriving for your appointment you must not use public transport to attend this appointment. If you are arriving by car, there is a car park behind the premises and three disabled spaces in front of the premises. Please arrive on time for your appointment.
We cannot admit you to the premises before the time of your appointment and may not be able to see you if you are late. Please keep all belongings to a minimum and leave unnecessary items (coats, bags etc.) in your car as these can carry infection.

All patients are required to wear a face covering. Unfortunately, we are unable to provide these. You will not be given access to the premises without a face covering. We are unable to give anyone access to toilets or any other facilities on the premises.

You should ring the doorbell on arrival. You will be greeted by an audiologist who will be dressed in Personal Protective Equipment (PPE). He or she will take your temperature and ask you some questions. If you have a high temperature or do not give the required answer to any of the questions asked then he or she will ask you to leave the premises immediately as we will not be able to proceed. The audiologist will ask you to sanitise your hands with hand sanitizer.

If you have a companion with you, they must not come onto the premises with you unless you have previously advised us that you need to be accompanied by a named carer who we will have spoken to 24-48 hours before the appointment. If a named carer does need to accompany you to the appointment they will be subject to the same infection control procedures outlined above. June 2020 Reviewed August 2020.

All patients and employees must maintain a 2 metre distance on the premises at all times unless wearing PPE. You will find the floor is marked to indicate a 2 metre distance and chairs will be spaced out accordingly. Please do not move any furniture.

Your appointment - Your audiologist will take you into the clinical rooms, keeping a 2 metre distance. He or she will explain the appointment . Patient consent for audiology treatment will have already been returned to *** in the ‘Clinical Questionnaire’.

During the appointment your audiologist will:
• Check inside your ears using an otoscope.
• Conduct a hearing test - You will be asked to sit inside an acoustic booth wearing a pair of headphones. You will hear high, low and mid-range pitched ‘tones’. You will be asked to press a button each time you hear a tone. Some of the tones will be very quiet but you should make sure you press the button every time you hear a sound even if it is very faint. The audiologist will record the quietest sound that you can hear at each frequency and he or she will mark it on a chart called an audiogram. The audiogram is a chart of your hearing. .
• The audiologist will explain the audiogram results. If this test suggests that you would find a hearing aid useful, the audiologist will discuss options with you.

 

[lucylocket61]

I know exactly what you mean. My nephew is absolutely terrified of going back to school and terrified of bringing a bug back that will kill mummy. Know how he feels!!

Their mental, physical and social wellbeing may also be affected if students, school staff, parents, siblings and grand parents became very ill or died due to a viral outbreak at a school. Not to mention what this could do to Head Teachers wellbeing if they lose children or staff on their watch.

As you say it's purely and simply down to getting mum and dad back to work. Boris and co weren't too concerned about their mental, physical and social wellbeing when they downgraded their exam results!!!

There is no point in looking for common sense or logic for schools going back, from a health point of view. There is none.

 

[Mr_Pot]

Quite right too, children don't need an education. As long as they can say "Do you want fries with that" they will be fine.

 

[Mr_Pot]

I keep hearing this nonsense spouted.

The government needs kids to be back in school so parents can go back to work.
Don't fall for the propaganda "it's for there well being"

 

[JohnEGreen]

Quite right too, children don't need an education. As long as they can say "Do you want fries with that" they will be fine.

You do not need to be in a school environment to gain an education.


Grant Colfax (1965- ) is the Director of the Office of National AIDS Policy. He is the President’s lead advisor on domestic HIV/AIDS and is responsible for overseeing implementation of the National HIV/AIDS Strategy and guiding the Administration’s HIV/AIDS policies across Federal agencies. Dr. Colfax is the eldest of the four sons homeschooled while building the family homestead and goat farm with their parents, David and Micki Colfax. The Colfaxes wrote about their homeschooling experiences in the books “Homeschooling for Excellence” and “Hard Times in Paradise.” They did not follow a “school at home” approach and once commented that months went by without books being opened (his parents reported that young Grant was nine before he even learned to read). Dr. Colfax graduated from Harvard Medical School and previously worked as the Director of the HIV Prevention Section in the San Francisco Department of Public Health. Upon appointing Dr. Grant to his current position, President Obama said, “Grant Colfax will lead my Administration’s continued progress in providing care and treatment to people living with HIV/AIDS. Grant’s expertise will be key as we continue to face serious challenges and take bold steps to meet them. I look forward to his leadership in the months and years to come.”
Francis Collins (1950- )is the current Director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH). He is also famous for his leadership of the Human Genome Project. He has received the Presidential Medal of Freedom and the National Medal of Science. He founded and served as president of the BioLogos Foundation, which promotes discourse on the relationship between science and religion and advocates the perspective that belief in Christianity can be reconciled with acceptance of evolution and science. In 2009, Pope Benedict XVI appointed Collins to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences. Dr. Collins was homeschooled until sixth grade.
Erik Demaine (1981- ) was named “one of the most brilliant scientists in America” in 2003 by Popular Science magazine. The MIT professor of computer science is considered a rising star in the area of theoretical computer science, specifically computational geometry, data structures and algorithms. The Canadian was homeschooled until he entered Dalhousie University at twelve. He completed his bachelor’s degree at age fourteen and completed his PhD by age twenty. He joined the MIT faculty in 2001 at age 20, reportedly the youngest professor in the history of the the university. In 2003, Dr. Demaine became one of the youngest people ever selected for the prestigious MacArthur Fellowship, commonly called “the genius grant.” He has been recognized with many other grants and awards, and his mathematical origami artwork (created in collaboration with his father) is part of the Museum of Modern Art’s permanent collection. It is worth noting that Demaine was raised by his father, a glassblower and silversmith, who had only a high school education.
http://magicalchildhood.com/homeschool/2016/07/07/25-modern-stem-leaders-who-were-homeschooled/

 

[JohnEGreen]

Continued
John Linsley (1925-2002) was an internationally recognized astrophysicist who was nominated for the Nobel Physics Prize in 1980 for his work studying cosmic rays and who won the Premio Internazionale San Valentino d’Oro in astrophysics in 1982. He is best known for being the first to detect an air shower created by a primary particle with an energy of 1020 eV. Dr. Linsley’s observations suggested that not all cosmic rays are confined within the galaxy and showed the first evidence of a flattening of the cosmic ray spectrum at energies above 1018 eV. Dr. Linsley was homeschooled by his mother for most of his childhood.
Philip Streich (1991-2012) had already won the prestigious Intel Foundation Young Scientist Award, been honored by Discover magazine as one of the Discover 50 “Best Brains in Science,” been named a Davidson Fellow Laureate and had co-founded a nanotechnology company by the time he entered Harvard as a self-made multimillionaire in his teens. Streich, who was homeschooled from 7th grade on, was the youngest and first non-faculty member to be named a University of Wisconsin System “Innovative Scholar of the Year.” His work was published in magazines such as Science and Advanced Materials. The company he cofounded, Graphene Solutions, was featured in Business Week and won the Wisconsin Governor’s Business Plan top award. As an Intel Science Talent Search finalist, Streich was elected by the other finalists to win the Glenn T. Seaborg Award for scientific communication and the Creativity Foundation’s Legacy Medal for his exceptional creative promise as a scientist and entrepreneur. Streich’s research on carbon nanotubes and their thermodynamic solubility showed promise in finding the key to using nanoparticles in revolutionary applications. He already held numerous patents for his discoveries at the time of his death at only age 21. The Harvard Crimson called him, “an enthusiastic entrepreneur, a scientific prodigy, a political activist, a record producer, and a grandiose party host.”
Margaret Mead (1901–1978) was one of America’s most famous and influential cultural anthropologists. In her early years, her family moved frequently and her education alternated between homeschooling and traditional schools. Dr. Mead focused her research on problems of child rearing, personality and culture. She served as executive secretary of the National Research Council’s Committee on Food Habits, curator of ethnology at the American Museum of Natural History, president of the American Anthropological Association, president and chair of the executive committee of the board of directors in the American Association for the Advancement of Science, as well as working as a professor and prolific author. She was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Carter.
Samuel Chao Chung Ting (1936- ) is an American physicist who received the Nobel Prize in 1976 for discovering the subatomic J/ψ particle. Ting was born in Michigan, where his parents met and married as graduate students at the University of Michigan. His parents returned to China two months after his birth and due to the Japanese invasion in China he was mostly home-schooled by his parents. Dr. Ting is the principal investigator for the international $1.5 billion Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer experiment which was installed on the International Space Station in 2011 and a professor at MIT. He is a member of the United States National Academy of Sciences, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and an academician of Taiwan’s Academia Sinica.

This is just a few of those listed in the link below

http://magicalchildhood.com/homeschool/2016/07/07/25-modern-stem-leaders-who-were-homeschooled/

 

[There is no Spoon]

I think all childeren need to mix with their peers. For many childeren school is an escape from abuse and or social deprivation

For many children school is a traumatic hellscape of physical and mental torment.

I an not having a go at you@JRT, anybody can pick one line from a post and contradict it out of context, so please don't think I am trying to do that. I just disagree with a couple of things you have said "All children need to mix with there peers" Not during a pandemic

School is not a safe haven for children.

 

[JRT]

For many children school is a traumatic hellscape of physical and mental torment.

I an not having a go at you@JRT, anybody can pick one line from a post and contradict it out of context, so please don't think I am trying to do that. I just disagree with a couple of things you have said "All children need to mix with there peers" Not during a pandemic

School is not a safe haven for children.

I appreciate your point. Indeed school for some is a horrible experience and some flourish through alternatives. Although childeren and young people physically appear to suffer less from the affects of the virus(as far as we know)the social and psychological impact is worrying and at times heartbreaking.

 

[lucylocket61]

Quite right too, children don't need an education. As long as they can say "Do you want fries with that" they will be fine.

There is a huge difference between going to school, and getting an education. Ask any child who is different, or bullied by pupils or staff, or a combination of these things.

It's not either/or. Children can get an education in many ways, outside the education system. Children can go to school every day and not get an education.

It all depends on a variety of things.

 

[HSSS]

Well I have my own views on the validity of all of these measures in any setting, but they're not particularly relevant here since the majority will disagree and I don't wish to debate them. My point was only that general lockdown skeptics are viewed in the main as whackjob conspiracy nuts who are fools for thinking that government might not always have the best interests of its citizens at heart. In large part by those who are now accusing government of a coverup.

Again, not pointing the finger at anyone here necessarily. It's just an observation.

To be fair I think those of us thinking the government aren’t doing enough (as opposed to too much) are being considered whack jobs by many too, perhaps not so much in here but in the wider world.

 

[Daphne917]

Who have hopefully taken the opportunity over the past few months to improve their metabolic health and reduce their personal risk?

Unfortunately that’s not always possible. My 64 year old OH has Parkinson’s, Afib which is treated with beta blockers that have caused asthma, a heart valve replacement, aortic aneurysm and pacemaker means he’s on Warfarin but he still works, albeit part time. He’s not overweight, eats healthily but, with the best will in the world, we’ve had to accept that he’s never going to be 100% healthy.

 

[Tannith]

Unfortunately that’s not always possible. My 64 year old OH has Parkinson’s, Afib which is treated with beta blockers that have caused asthma, a heart valve replacement, aortic aneurysm and pacemaker means he’s on Warfarin but he still works, albeit part time. He’s not overweight, eats healthily but, with the best will in the world, we’ve had to accept that he’s never going to be 100% healthy.

The parents will be only too happy to get their free babysitting service back and will turn a blind eye to the risks to teachers. I agree that it would be nice to have the children back at school and their parents at work, but what possible excuse is there for not making schools safe? Why actually FORBID masks? I believe feckless Boris simply doesn't want the Govt to have to pay for 8.8 million children to have 1 or even 2 face masks per day. He probably wouldn't even buy enough, as happened earlier with care homes and hospitals. He would be perfectly happy if teachers died or were made very ill as a result.

 

[Max68]

Didn't take long! The quote that would be funny if it wasn't so serious was "Each child in isolation has also been issued with an iPad so that lessons can be taught remotely. It is understood that there are between 20 and 25 pupils in the class." So once the infection has already occurred they then go to the safest way of teaching, working remotely, which is exactly what has kept infections in schools down between March and July anyway!!

Glasgow primary school class told to self-isolate after pupil tests positive for Covid-19

https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/ukne...sitive-for-covid-19/ar-BB18a3v5?ocid=msedgdhp

 

[There is no Spoon]

I appreciate your point.

No my point is we are putting kids in big classrooms telling em its safe "it's for there well being" and some of them are going to go home with Covid and kill there parents.

Again not having a go at you.

 

[lucylocket61]

Lets face it, even before Covid-19, schools were struggling with soap and toilet rolls in the toilets. Here is just one link to a pre-virus article, there are many more on Google. How are they going to keep the children clean?

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/...irty-unsafe-funding-cuts-essity-a8891641.html

 

[MrsA2]

I keep hearing this nonsense spouted.

The government needs kids to be back in school so parents can go back to work.
Don't fall for the propaganda "it's for there well being"

Maybe it is needed for their education and learning

 

[Tannith]

Who have hopefully taken the opportunity over the past few months to improve their metabolic health and reduce their personal risk?

Diabetes isn't the only cause of added covid risk. People with cancer/transplants/lung conditions/immune deficiency etc etc usually can't do anything to mitigate their risk. People who are overweight or have high blood pressure or high LDL cholesterol may be able to, as well as diabetics.

 

[lucylocket61]

People who are overweight or have high blood pressure or high LDL cholesterol may be able to, as well as diabetics.

sorry, I dont understand your post...........did you press post too early?

 

[There is no Spoon]

Maybe it is needed for their education and learning

Ohhhh I see what you did there.

 

[Tannith]

Didn't take long! The quote that would be funny if it wasn't so serious was "Each child in isolation has also been issued with an iPad so that lessons can be taught remotely. It is understood that there are between 20 and 25 pupils in the class." So once the infection has already occurred they then go to the safest way of teaching, working remotely, which is exactly what has kept infections in schools down between March and July anyway!!

Glasgow primary school class told to self-isolate after pupil tests positive for Covid-19

https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/ukne...sitive-for-covid-19/ar-BB18a3v5?ocid=msedgdhp

I agree with you Max. However since I am convinced that the Govt's only purpose in reopening schools is to get the parents back to work, I fear they will never support a sensible procedure to get kids educated at home. The Govt has no great interest in educating kids. To them it is just a "nice to have" which takes much lower priority than getting parents back in their offices. I too would like to see parents back at work,but not at the expense of the lives of teachers and others.