well you're most welcome to today's talk
it's
wednesday the 21st of april now globally
cases and deaths i'm afraid are both
climbing again
let's look at a few graphics just to
contextualize that to start off today
cases going up globally now we know the
data is incomplete
we know some countries aren't reporting
at all but that is definitely an upward
trend and i've put a link into the
latest world health organization
bulletin which is here
so what what this shows is cases here
it's a bit of a complicated graphic
and uh they're color-coded so we can see
which parts of the world have what
proportion of cases so
for example we can see that the
proportion of cases here
relating to southeast asia are
increasing
and deaths is on this side here and the
death line
of course the deaths given per region
you can't tell from this graph
but this is the line of deaths and and
sadly we do see it going up so we've had
cases going up for quite a long period
of time now and death's also
starting to climb so um
there's no question this this is a
worrying this is a worrying trend
and countries are particularly
problematic united kingdom
india going up sharply now we've looked
at this several times
we know that the cases in india are way
more than officially reported because of
the limited testing in many many areas
so um that this graphic greatly
underestimate underestimates the reality
on the ground in india
well of course we are concerned about
india at the moment but even on official
numbers it's going up
united states the vaccines do seem to be
working in the states canada got a
report from canada tomorrow so we won't
mention too much about that
brazil france would be about here but
turkey unfortunately going up
really quite quite steeply so that just
gives a bit of um
a bit of context for various places
in the world at the moment now um oh
let's start off by uh
confessing yesterday's errors uh
yesterday i said that it's all adults or
all people
over the age of 18 in the united states
that are now eligible
well i've just taken this directly from
the cdc website and as you'll see
it's uh everyone over the age of 16 is
now
eligible so apologies uh to people in
the united states but it is impressive
anyone now in the united states over the
age of 16 can just um
everyone 16 years of age and older can
just just book a test this is uh
the envy of many places uh not book a
test book of vaccine what am i talking
about
but booking a vaccine i'm still waiting
for my second one it's been about nine
weeks now and i still haven't heard so
it really would be nice to get the
second one done
so that's the situation in the states
that is good
now the issue in the states may become
vaccine take-up fairly soon
if it does when vaccine take-up becomes
the
limiting factor then we'll start talking
about it until then i don't think it is
the limiting factor and i think
more and more people are just waiting to
get the vaccine which is good news
uh global increase in cases so this is
the latest publication from the who
which does collect very good information
it's uh it's forward thinking might be
questionable but it's a simulation of
what's happened
is is excellent the data is there so
cases increasing for the past
eight weeks another 5.2 million cases
just in the past
uh seven days alone deaths increasing as
we saw on the graphic for the past five
weeks
and there was 83 000 deaths in the past
seven days up seven percent on the
last week so these increasing cases
uh and increasing deaths are not what we
want to see and as we saw southeast asia
india
western pacific region are the areas of
particular increase at the moment
now um i know a lot of you kind of um
follow this story how how mandatory a
vaccine is going to be well i've got
just a few examples here
united arab emirates smallish population
but uh
we've followed it on in terms of uh it's
excellent vaccine roll light with
chinese sino farm and the pfizer vaccine
at least one dose 65
of the population two doses 38 of the
population so going well
um but united arab emirates and israel
seem to be leading the
way in considering restricting movements
of the unvaccinated
so um this is from the national
emergency crisis and disasters
management of the united arab emirates
delaying or refraining from taking the
vaccine will pose a threat to the safety
of society
pretty strong words but it's hard to
disagree with
as it poses a major challenge to the
national efforts to recover
so um pretty hard to disagree with that
statement really strict measures are
being considered now you can agree or
disagree with that
but this is what they are reporting
restrict the movement of unvaccinated
individuals
implement preventative measures such as
restricting entry to some places and
having access
to some services so what what's going to
happen here well
we don't really know but um a lot of
countries are going to take this path
for the people that get vaccinated um
really why should they suffer for people
that are not vaccinated
what one's vaccine is universally
available and rolled out of course
it's a good question um we'll carry on
discussing it
um but whether you agree or not this is
what's starting to happen
israel is another example uh some indoor
venues theaters and restaurants now
require
proof of vaccination or infection
and uh the countries that are sort of
moving this way you do seem to be
reasonable they're saying if people have
been infected
or or they've been vaccinated now i
think it was i'm pretty sure it was
israel i'm writing saying that
you get a full green passport if you've
had the disease and one dose of the
vaccine so having the disease
counts as the first vaccine which i
think
immunologically does make a fair degree
of sense that the israeli approach
italy this might surprise some people
national government decree
if a healthcare worker hospital so
that's healthcare worker in hospital
nursing home or other facilities
where they're in contact with patients
um
they have to be vaccinated it's
basically mandated
uh then they have to accept if they're
not vaccinated they have to accept a
different work position with pay
without patience or they can be
basically uh
sacked so israel taking a very
strong line there but again looking at
it from the other
the other point of view if and we'll see
we'll see an example of this later
actually
if you are going into a healthcare
facility you want to know that you're
safe
and surgeons for example have to be
vaccinated against hepatitis
b every one of my students in the first
year was vaccinated against hepatitis b
hundred of them a year or whatever it
was this is just axiomatic
and uh really why would the covered
vaccine be
any different you know the idea of going
to your health care provider and
contracting
hiv or hepatitis b or covered 19 is
something you really don't
want you know patient safety has to be
considered so
interesting interesting um
italy generally is introducing the green
pass while waiting for the european
union health passport which is is coming
is coming so if you want to travel
around within the european union
or you want to travel in or out of the
european union
although they haven't said this yet but
it's even if you need to travel around
within the european union it's
inevitable
you're going to need it to fly in and
out or drive in and out of the european
union you're going to need this uh
green passport it's just going to happen
um whether you like it or not i don't
see any
alternative it's the way things are
going um
now the bizarre story indian airline
flight delhi to hong kong
4th of april just before we do that this
is the number of new cases in india and
basically it's not getting any better
so we're basically we're edging 300 000
official cases
now who would like to guess by what
degree
these are underestimated because these
are people that have officially tested
positive
so is this an underestimate of what a
half a quarter
you know the real cases are much much
higher than this
but again we see this very very rapid
increase in cases in india and i am
i am concerned now um
getting back to this flight from delhi
delhi to
uh hong kong fourth of april uh
now we don't know how many passengers on
this flight the airline won't tell us
but the
the the flights the the plane in
question takes up to 188.
um all tests all tested negative within
72 hours of departure
but when they got there 53 tested
positive and that emerged during the
mandatory three-week quarantine in hong
kong now without that
that could have meant that hong kong had
a outbreak of the new
india variant um now how many of these
were the new india variant
we don't know we just know that 53
tested positive
at some point during that three week
quarantine
if you'd like to fly from india to
england today of course you don't need
to do
a quarantine in a hotel
and you can just do it on your own
mixing with other members of family
going in and out who go shopping
who go to school it won't become hotel
quarantine until
4 a.m on friday the 23rd
so uh gives you a nice window of
opportunity to to get into the uk i mean
why aren't these things done more
proactively
anyway so just think about it
53 cases and and we know that in india
at the moment it's about 60
in some areas at least of the new india
variant
which is looking more contagious which
is looking like it's causing more deaths
which
which is looking like it's causing some
immune escape now i'm not going to say
more than that because we're not certain
but
um from what we're seeing in india it
would be pretty
surprising if the if the pure science uh
contradicts the epidemiology that we're
seeing unfolding
in india in front of our eyes
unfortunately
um now also there's been positive cases
picked up in hong kong from uh
flights from mumbai uh and
uh introduced an emergency two-week ban
on flights from india pakistan and the
philippines as well in hong kong so
hong kong doing a very good job of
keeping the uh
the virus and perhaps more importantly
at
the moment the new variants out whereas
in the uk we are
not doing such a good job um
so still concerned about that india i'm
not going to go on about it until i've
got more
hard data but it will be coming out in
the next few days
brazil is often also a bit of a concern
so the case is here we see
we see you know they're not far that's
the 100 000 line there so
new cases in brazil they're going down
slightly still very high and we know
that the deaths in brazil
are high so um countries with particular
difficulty there
india brazil turkey that we know of
right uh just briefly now johnson
johnson
vaccine the anson vaccine um
european medicines agency met yesterday
uh confirms the positive risk benefit
analysis so it's back on
back on the menu which is good to see
lots of discussion about that
the actual papers from the european
registers to themselves of that one
concluded that a warning about unusual
blood clots with low platelet accounts
should be added to the product
information so they are accepting this
link albeit very rare so it's
excuse me it's this combination it's the
it's the uh
unusual blood clots particularly
in the uh spanish system in the abdomen
and the cerebral sinus veins
but with it's when it's with the low
platelets when it's with the
thrombocytopenia
so they are saying this link is there
but
there's a actually a pretty huge risk
benefit analysis
they're saying this should be listed as
a very rare side effect of the vaccine
and this is based on seven million
vaccines in the u.s and they've analyzed
eight cases now
this is news to me the last time i
looked at it it was 6.8 million vaccines
and there'd been six cases and we know
all of these six cases were women
and we know that they're aged 18 to 48.
so that's what we did know this is fresh
information that's come to light
good to see that the cdc are publishing
this but as we look to those other
side effects of other vaccines that do
seem to be less publicized
anyway so the european medicines agency
7 million vaccines in the united states
eight cases so we're dealing about what
what one complication here every
nine hundred thousand vaccines or so
so a very rare complication around not
far off one in a million
all cases occurred in in people under 60
so we can assume that there was a case
so given that the oldest before was 48
uh
we can assume that a couple of these new
ones were older one or more were
older uh they all occurred within three
weeks of vaccines that hasn't changed
and the majority were women so we can
conclude that one or two of the extra
ones were men as well
because the original six from the united
states were all um
all we pre-menopausal women
um specific risk factors have not been
confirmed so quite why this is happening
they don't know
but there is this rare condition
plausible explanation they say
uh an immune response similar to heparin
and juice thrombocytopenia so
heparin is a pla a drug uh anticoagulant
drug
and that can induce clotting and
thrombocytopenia it's called heparin
injurious thrombocytopenia so they say
it's similar to that
and they're also saying it's similar to
the rare side effects that have been
identified with the oxford
estrogenic vaccine but as we looked at
before all vaccines have potential
side effects so they are basically that
basically that's reinstated and johnson
and johnson itself actually suspended it
originally i think but now that's back
on
for european union countries of course
individual states will now have to act
on that
um united states is making an
announcement on
friday two days time um
but the the risk benefit analysis is is
so
favorable and um
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that there are there are potential
complications from all effective
treatments
i'll certainly be getting my second dose
as soon as i can
and and indeed would have a dose of the
uh
without hesitation i would have a dose
of the oxford astrazeneca
or the uh or the anson johnson johnson
vaccine as my second dose
it's just not on the protocol at the
moment but personally i wouldn't
hesitate to have that
studies are going on to work out about
the the likelihood of mix and match
of vaccines um how efficacious that is
so uh basically the the european
emergence agency are saying if
if any of these things happen this is
not for junior doctors to decide
it should be specialist uh hematologists
and uh people that know about immunity
and things like that senior doctor
very senior doctor should decide this
how to treat this
because what the data from this now the
european medicine agencies don't seem to
mention this but in the united states
they've pointed out the importance of
not giving heparin
which of course is the standard
treatment for blood clots so the the
point of that is very important
not to give that but the european
emergency
agency don't say what the treatment is
they just say basically kick it upstairs
to senior doctors so this is
it it's not a it's not a treatment
strategy that a junior doctor in a e
would decide it would go to
senior consultants and rightly so until
we know much more about it
they say to look out for shortness of
breath which could be blood clots in the
lungs
chest pain which could be blood clots
near the pleural membranes or things
affecting the heart
leg swelling which could be uh blood
clots in the major veins that drain the
lower part of the body
persistent abdominal pain which could be
the splanchnic
the portal vein the portal venous
thrombosis that we
looked at a few days ago neurological
symptoms such as severe or persistent
headache or blurred vision that could be
the cerebral sinus
venous effects and tiny spots under the
skin we call these petechial hemorrhages
beyond the site of the injection tiny
blood clots under the skin
so basically when you get little bits of
bleeding under the skin
um that's what they want you to look out
for now
this is actually um just quite similar
to um
you can actually get you can't see that
let me pull up a bit there you go
you can actually get um i mean i'm not
saying this is in any way at all related
to meningitis but
if someone's got meningococcal uh sepsis
or well you can it's the bacteria that
causes meningitis the ninja coccus it
can it can cause meningitis or it can
cause sepsis or it can cause both
um but what it does is it damages the
small blood vessels and you get blood
leaking out into the tissues
and it's hard to tell sometimes whether
that's a rash or whether it's blood so
what you do is you get a glass
a see-through glass and you press it i
haven't got one i'll show you
but um you could do it with my glasses
maybe you you um
basically what you do is if you've got a
rash there
that then you press a glass on it like
that yeah that's working
now can you see when i press there
through my glasses there
can you see my skin's gone white
underneath i think you can just about
see that
so my skin's gone white underneath um
that's called blanching
so rashes will blend normal rashes will
blanch here you can see the skin
blanching there look
with the pressure um
so normal rashes will blanch but if
there's blood in the tissues you won't
blanch and it will still
look like the same rash when it's under
pressure like that and it would be the
same with these particular hemorrhages
if they stay obvious under pressure
that would be one indication that it's
blood in the tissues
they don't mention that i just thought
i'd add that so but the the official
guidelines is tiny blood plots under the
skin
not related to the injection site so um
good news that that's back on the the
janssen vaccine of course has got
massive implications for the world
stored at fridge temperatures only one
dose you know people that it's hard to
get in for two doses they're just one
dose of that
and it's a single dose vaccine and it's
relatively cheap as well
so um good news
i think good news that that's back on
now um
uh carla and roger have sent me an
interesting reporting so
it does two things really it shows some
interesting principles that we'll
we'll talk about but it's also people's
experience in this pandemic and um
that's one thing we've always been
interested in on this channel it's all
very well looking at
the big global picture in the numbers
but
you know the human beings behind those
numbers and this is an excellent talk
excellent video
not sure about the guy in the back but
apart from that it
is really good so uh carla roger thank
you
very much hi from miami
uh i am carla i am
54 years old i'm 53 my kids keep telling
me
i'm 53 years old this is my boyfriend
roger
he is 39 years old uh he is very healthy
i have covered so does he
now uh i was very surprised to find this
out i've been watching you for over a
year i've been following all your advice
on vitamin d on vaccination and proper
hygiene
and starting january last year
i was already wearing face covering
this is from january because of you and
because of you i consulted with my
physician as everybody
should if they're going to take a
vitamin d supplementation
my physician recommended 10 000 units 5
000 in the morning 5 000 in the evening
but you must consult your fair physician
before taking any medications
um and i've been thinking my levels were
very low
like 25 at the start currently there are
68 and i've been
socially isolating roger and i have we
live in the same household
we have the same diet we uh
pretty much don't leave the house and if
when we do
and we just started going i mean leaving
the house since december maybe going
you know outside uh going to you know
eat or something you know but always
outdoors
and being very very careful uh
so i'm very surprised that i have this
diagnose
i am going to tell you that i did take
the vaccine
on march 19th of this year i took the
pfizer the first dose
then on april 9th i took my second dose
and the same day that i got the vaccine
which i get i got it in the morning
i was uh you know going to make a
sourdough bread i was very very tired i
couldn't believe i'm like oh my gosh
the second dose really hit me hard and
no didn't think anything of it the next
day body aches
everything no fever just body aches no
headaches nothing like that
uh brought your head started for a
little bit on saturday this was
friday on sunday more so sunday night
having uh like symptoms like fever
uh stuffiness body aches and
by sunday i was already feeling better
but um the reason for me
finding out that i had and being past
covid was that
i have some stomach issues that been
going on for about a year
and they have not gone away and my
doctor suggested i go visit
the uh the emergency room so we both
went and the the doctors recommended
that i have a cat scan
of my abdomen uh but before they took me
and they said you got to be tested for
covid and i'm like
call it i just took my second dose like
if you're admitted you must have a kova
test i'm like okay
so they did it by the time it came back
from cat scan the tuners came in they're
like
you have covered am i no i don't yes i
did
so um they uh went through everything
they said my symptoms could be related
to covet
you know the stomach i'm like no this is
something firm a long time ago
but um other than that i don't have any
other symptoms of covet
so they said that there's this
monoclonal therapy
that they are prescribing to
individuals who have a severe
respiratory as
i do i have acute bronchitis
and asthma and when i uh get it i
usually have to be hospitalized
or have a lot of therapies including
steroids
for me not to become so sick and i'm
usually sick for anywhere from two to
four weeks
skipping through that i you know
just said to my doctor no why did i get
this
and he goes well you got it because
you're probably not fully vaccinated for
some reason
you got it and so did roger roger uh
has chosen not to be vaccinated he's
healthy he is
okay we have proper diary follow-up
procedures
but he has had horrible symptoms
i mean he has a fever now for nine days
this is the first day that his fever is
under
100 fahrenheit and i
uh for the first couple days i was
you know like you know just just not
feeling well a little bit of respiratory
problems we have our oximeter
uh and our blood um oxygenation has been
okay
barrages has constant fever uh one night
uh he had pain in his upper thighs they
were so bad that actually
kept him up at night and then the next
day
uh we belong to this concierge health
service where
we don't go to anywhere to get tested or
even our vaccines were brought home to
our to
us and the doctor recommended this
infusion with vitamins
and a shot of 50 000 units of vitamin d
we did that yesterday and he's already
shown an improvement uh
on his uh symptoms including the fever
being lower
right feeling much better and i have
no symptoms whatsoever of coving
actually he has no sense of smell
i'm like i couldn't deal with that i
love to cook
it's my passion and i'm like no
no i can't but um i'm writing this
because i feel compelled to tell your
viewers
that the vaccination is very important
and especially if you have uh
other underlying issues other chronic
illness
this we we can't tell what the symptoms
are going to be
and how are you going to react but i can
tell you for sure
a hundred percent because of my
experience and my whole lifetime
i mean since i'm three years old i've
been treated for asthma
and for bronchitis and i even had one
time i had
a swine flu so i'm it that was horrible
i was like i thought i was going to die
much worse than this now but i am going
to tell you
vaccine did help me roger didn't think
he's much younger than me uh i
assume much better shape and he has all
these symptoms not being vaccinated
so i'm doing this video to let you know
uh what oh and also i want to tell you
what the doctor has
prescribed us roger takes acetaminophen
every six to eight hours
we are also on the z pack myself
especially because of bronchitis
vitamin d 10 000 units continued plus we
have the 50 000
uh shot and uh now the doctor has
included a daily baby aspirin
and he is doing that because of the
risk of plotting uh from some studies
with some of the vaccine he's just
trying to be proactive
and you know prevent something from
happening
with me being vaccinated or even just
from coving
you know blood clots are our usual
so i am happy to share this video with
you
and i do have a question very important
one and another subject
uh roger just did this um
record of jimmy campbell he's from
england and we're wondering are you
related
to jimmy campbell the musician
he was around the 60s i guess right with
liverpool i don't know just hi from
miami
uh um
the question's easy no we're not related
um
my my brother who died a few years ago
uh three years ago um
with motor neurone disease he was a
brilliant musician but i i just can't
even clap in time but no no we're not
related to a jimmy campbell as far as we
know
although i think he was quite uh jimmy
was on the go in the 70s so it's kind of
like kind of time frame but
but no i'm not related um i'll i will
listen to him and see what i think
um anyway seriously carla um i'm
basically with your co-morbidities i'm
just so pleased you'd have two doses of
the vaccine because without it
um really you could have been really
quite
quite poorly so um i'm just so pleased
that you had that immunological
uh protection there and roger at 39
quite quite severe disease um quite
quite ill glad to see you you're
improving now
uh also glad to see that carla went to
her own doctor and he prescribed quite a
large dose of vitamin d it has to be
said
um but again you know that that may well
have
helped you in your acute episode so um
quite a few things to learn from that
and um very clearly and uh
very well explained so um so remember
don't take any medical advice from me or
carla for you
go to your own health care provider and
get that but some very interesting um
general prince principles there and
and of course just the human experience
of that so um
i really appreciate you both both
sharing that and i'm sure many people
do as well so um thank you very much
so that is us for today thank you for
watching