Guilt Free Railing 16

[WouldBeGood]

The festive special!

As always, all railing welcome, along with good things or humorous asides. No resilience wankery. This is the safe place to let out anything that’s doing your head in.

South Africa think they are òver the peak.
I also think things will relax very quickly.

I'm surprised that so many people can have had flu yet not know it. I've only had flu once and it's is nothing like the cold, temperature and wabbit but no sore throat or sinus pain

@Icannever those Northumberland cottages look gorgeous.
Might book for a November weekend to have something to look forward to ( waiting until DS is 16 so we can go without him as he doesn't do country cottages and dog walking weekends).

@Lockdownbear yes I really hope it peaks quickly and not horribly. Apart from anything else I don't think many of us have the stamina left if it's a truly serious strain .

@ecceromani

Where is your DH flying to *@Scottishskifun* Is there anywhere that will have us at the moment?

He's flying to Barcelona (skiing in Andorra) they aren't accepting children over 12 unless double jabbed at the moment so depends on age of children it's to be reviewed in Jan. Currently no PCR test for double vax people.

He found Switzerland accepted with a PCR test and vax, Finland and Sweden (all had to be vax not sure on children for those).
Austria accepted triple vax and PCR test but terrible rules again for children over 12.

Are you taking your 15 year old to see if you can wing it for a 2nd jab @rookiemere? Having read a few examples of people getting their teen done I've been tempted but the Lothians nhs page is still saying 'no 12-15s' yet.

@WhatWouldTheDoctorDo there was an updated post on FB and apparently now it's ok to bring them. Don't know if that's true or not but we'll give it a go and report back.

@WhatWouldTheDoctorDo

Are you taking your 15 year old to see if you can wing it for a 2nd jab *@rookiemere*? Having read a few examples of people getting their teen done I've been tempted but the Lothians nhs page is still saying 'no 12-15s' yet.

NHS Lothian tweeted yesterday that 12-18 year olds can get 2nd jab via drop in. They obviously haven't updated their website yet as I looked after seeing the tweet. And someone locally tweeted that they took their 13 year old so I'm taking DS today to see if he can get it.

@TeenTraumaTrials brilliant, thanks. I missed that. Great news.

Thanks also @rookiemere! Will be good to hear how you get on.

Just saw that Michelle McManus tested positive whilst pregnant

Wonder if she was jagged, as many women who are pregnant or trying to get pregnant are not jagged.

And she's overweight so that won't help either

@ASpookyUsername yes she is double vaccinated going by her twitter page!

Hopefully will keep things mild but they now give women who are pregnant and test positive blood thinner injections because of the risk.
The risk in pregnancy is now high with nearly 1 in 5 ICU being pregnant women (unvaccinated) with early c sections done.

Oh no, fingers crossed she isn't really ill with it. But even vaccinated people can test positive just not take a serious illness.

I can understand pregnant women being reluctant to get vaccinated but they need to get the message out that pregnancy lowers your immune system and raises the risk of you becoming really ill, and needing treatment.

Been there, done that, got the t-shirt. "Eh we want to x-ray your lungs. We'll drape a lead apron over your bump first. Don't worry it's normally 1st and 2nd tri baby's we worry about with x-ray, but just incase..."

Got ds' letter about a second vaccine today (he's 14) - not exactly a rail but it's a lot of pressure to decide whether it's in his best interests or not - need to look up latest on myocarditis/teenage boys. Don't want to make the wrong decision. (Obviously he gets a say too!)

We just got that letter too

Well we'd decided to go for it and then he has announced he wants to get it "in a few weeks" I think it's more a now or never thing! Expect he will have the illness not the vaccine in a few weeks.
Can I just do a general rail about life with a teenage boy?

Just had a look on travelling tabby.. over three times the amount of deaths per population in England versus the rest of the UK countries .

In more positive news, I've just read that Scotland is third in the world for booster roll out, behind only Iceland and Chile.

Can you link or screenshot that as I can't seem to be able to see what figures you are talking about?

Also, over what time period is this?

That is good news @StarryEyeSurprise
I think we have very very high vaccine uptake, we're lucky there.
I'm not surprised England has higher deaths, there are pockets where vax uptake is pretty low. Not sure how they can address that as a lot of it is cultural differences

Excess deaths for the whole pandemic were broadly the same between England and Scotland a few weeks ago (slightly higher in Scotland actually), so to have suddenly jumped to three times the others seems unlikely.

This is Travelling Tabby's latest death data, and it doesn't seem to show what you're describing @StarryEyeSurprise. Where was that?

My thoughts exactly. A number of posters follow the stats pretty closely and the deaths still hadn't been updated since before Christmas when I looked, so I'm wondering (once again) what the poster is talking about.

So just to update on DS15 getting his second vaccination.
His letter actually came along today so DH took him to the Bonnyrigg centre and he was seen straight away. He said had he not had the letter there was a small queue of a couple of people.

Now all that stands in our way of Feb half term French skiing is being able to demonstrate that DS has had the vaccinations ( anyone know how that works here for a 15 year old ? ) , any Omicron related restrictions on travel at the time from Scotland and of course the darn Frenchies letting us in which seems determined by how much willy waving Johnson and Macron want to do in the interim period. So who can tell !

According to the Travelling Tabby chart Scotland has slightly more excess deaths per head of pop than England @StarryEyeSurprise

@rookiemere, assuming the UK drops from Red to Amber on the French scale of danger.
12-15 can enter unvaccinated if they are with a fully vaccinated adult.

Look up Gov.uk entry to France.

@Lockdownbear the issue with unvaccinated teens in France is that they have to test every day in order to be allowed into restaurants etc.. Anyway moot point as none of us are allowed in France atm .