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Lockdown Effects : Self Assessment

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Edited by Richard Walker, Tuesday, 5 Jan 2021, 23:50

Prompted by a YouTube post from Tim Spector of the ZOE Covid symptom study, I thought about how I have fared. In health terms, where have I improved, where have I done worse, and where have things stayed more or less the same?

Diet. +3: More fresh produce, more veg, more fibre, trending to less meat, especially red or cured. Ready meals right down.

Keeping in touch with family and friends. +2: In these times I’ve reached out a lot to others and they to me. So more contact, but not as good as meeting in person of course.

Exercise. -1: I’m restricted anyway in what I can do but it’s been notched down now.

Sleep pattern. -0.5: it’s always been erratic and lockdown has made it a little worse.

Alcohol. The same: a bit high but little change if any.


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Richard Walker

Is Smoking Good for You?

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The modern consensus is no, but early in the pandemic there appeared to be evidence that smoking protected against Covid-19. This seemed surprising, but when dealing with an unknown quantity conventional wisdom might be overturned. Perhaps the smoke kills virus particles, it’s plausible.

Here’s a study that compared test-confirmed Covid rates among hospital patients who smoked and those who did not.

https://www.qeios.com/read/WPP19W.3

The article abstract concluded

“Conclusions and relevance: Our cross sectional study in both COVID-19 out- and inpatients strongly suggests that daily smokers have a very much lower probability of developing symptomatic or severe SARS-CoV-2 infection as compared to the general population.”

Should I resume smoking after all these years?

No. As discussed here

https://rss.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1740-9713.01413

the correlation is likely to be an example of Berkson’s paradox, not a real effect.

Smokers are more likely than non-smokers to need hospital treatment for reasons that are unconnected to Covid. So if you test everyone on a respiratory ward, a smaller proportion of the smokers will have Covid relative to the non-smokers.

But the idea that smoking could protect against infectious disease, and confer other other health benefits is old.

“During the London plague of 1665 children were instructed to smoke in their schoolrooms; and in 1882, in a Bolton outbreak of smallpox, tobacco was actually issued to all the residents of a workhouse.”

See 

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1079499/


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Richard Walker

Tim buys a mask

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Richard Walker

Quarantine

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Edited by Richard Walker, Saturday, 20 Jun 2020, 23:33

I'm so glad dockers are exempt from quarantine rules. The're quay workers, after all.

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Richard Walker

Out Of Tune

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Edited by Richard Walker, Wednesday, 3 Jun 2020, 22:04

Don't understand why piano tuners aren't available.They're key workers after all.

Permalink 2 comments (latest comment by Richard Walker, Sunday, 7 Jun 2020, 02:02)
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