Thread: breaking covid rules

Originally Posted by GraemeCook

.....
ONE. Telehealth has been a boon of GPs for such things as routine script repeats, minor worries and "pre-screening" - "you do not really need to see me for that". But it is absolutely loathed by the practice receptionists; every hyperchondriac and every prescription druggy thinks that the telehealth system was designed specifically for them.

Telehealth has certainly been a boon for some doctors - our local surgery no longer sees any patients, every appointment is telehealth. That is great for the doctor, both in reality and (sarcastic) as a "kerching" for next to nothing. It should also be a boon for patients, for things like repeat prescriptions that don't need tests. However, this is where the problems start. Telehealth cannot measure your temperature, nor your heart rate, blood pressure etc. Also, when done on the phone (most old people around here have no idea about technology) the doctor cannot see how you look, and is solely basing his view on what the patient says. Old Bob (made up name) who has been bullied into talking to the doctor by his wife, tells the doctor "I'm fine" when he could be dying. At the end of the consultation, the doctor says "I'll email a script to the chemist". The following morning the patient turns up at the chemist, who has no idea what has been discussed and certainly no emailed script. The patient gets very upset..... When the doctor wants to know the temperature of the patient, or their blood pressure, they say "go to the chemist and call me with the results". The chemist does not get paid for measuring someone's BP, and why indeed should the customer have to pay for something that the doctor has already "kerchinged" for?

The result of this is that only yesterday, my wife - the nicest and most self sacrificing person you could meet (she puts up with me!) - phoned the doctors surgery (where only the receptionist is at work, the doctors "work from home") to say she has had enough of trying to chase non-existent but "promised" emailed scripts. She is now the only health practitioner in town who is seeing patients, the mini-hospital have stopped doing covid tests or vaccinations because they have "staff shortages" and the doctors are working from home (supposedly) doing telehealth. I get to hear about it every night when she comes home!!

So, much like the "working from home" issues also in this thread, telehealth is a great idea that is being ruined....

Originally Posted by Warb

Old Bob (made up name) who has been bullied into talking to the doctor by his wife, tells the doctor "I'm fine" when he could be dying.

Blokes are the very worst.

I saw this first hand while I was at the doctors surgery waiting for an appointment.

Old Boy harassed into going to doctor by wife as he's had "heart burn" for a couple of days.... Didn't want to bother anyone, apparently. He was in fact having a full blown cardiac arrest and the ambulance screamed him to hospital.

Old Bob here was in complete denial about diabetes and it nearly killed me twice over.

I had skipped 3 blood glucose tolerance tests, was needing to pee every 40 minutes, ruined sleep, and no matter how much water I drank it would not flake my thirst. The only thing that would briefly help was a fizzy high sugar drink! It was not until one night in bed I had a massive right lower leg cramp that pulled my calf muscle - I could not walk but desperately needed to pee. I staggered out of the bedroom into the hallway and fell through a plate glass door. Ended up in hospital with 27 stitches. I kept blurting I was probably diabetic but the emergency docs kept saying go to the GP. A week later when getting stitches out at the GP the blood sugar reading was off the chart. My right left continued to hurt but I flew to QLD for work and the trip home was one of the worst flights in my life nd stop don't know how I mangled to walk off the plane. Next day a scan showed a 1" long blood clot in my leg so I had 4 weeks of work while that got sorted.

I'm always fascinated by the metro-centric views and statements of politicians and the media. Today it has been announced that in all of NSW, including regional areas, it is now mandatory to wear a mask when "outside your home". I'm unable to find anything that improves on that definition..... I do accept that in Sydney you could be in your own garden and still touch your neighbours house, so perhaps such a rule is valid. But if I leave my "home", if we assume "home" means "house", it's a kilometre to the next inhabited building. It's also 700metres to the road, and even if I stood on my boundary (which is 15m away from the road) it seems unlikely that I would catch covid from the occupants of a vehicle travelling along at 100kph. More likely I would be hit by a truck!!

It's also going to be very hard to communicate with my son (who is part of my household) when we are doing farm work. Hearing what is being said over the noise of sheep when working in the yards, or from the other end of the fence we are currently building, is hard enough normally - but wearing a mask?

I've tried very hard to follow the rules, but I'm assuming that this one is for people who are likely to pass within a few metres of other people, not for us out here!

Warb, sounds like you are a Regular Law Breaker.

Better follow the rules of we'll dob you in!

Originally Posted by Warb

I'm always fascinated by the metro-centric views and statements of politicians and the media. Today it has been announced that in all of NSW, including regional areas, it is now mandatory to wear a mask when "outside your home". I'm unable to find anything that improves on that definition..... I do accept that in Sydney you could be in your own garden and still touch your neighbours house, so perhaps such a rule is valid. But if I leave my "home", if we assume "home" means "house", it's a kilometre to the next inhabited building. It's also 700metres to the road, and even if I stood on my boundary (which is 15m away from the road) it seems unlikely that I would catch covid from the occupants of a vehicle travelling along at 100kph. More likely I would be hit by a truck!!

It's also going to be very hard to communicate with my son (who is part of my household) when we are doing farm work. Hearing what is being said over the noise of sheep when working in the yards, or from the other end of the fence we are currently building, is hard enough normally - but wearing a mask?

I've tried very hard to follow the rules, but I'm assuming that this one is for people who are likely to pass within a few metres of other people, not for us out here!

but, what constitutes "your home"?
for me "your home" is not equivalent to "your house".

While I agree that in Sydney and some regional locations, "outside your home" will be equivalent to being outside the front door of your apartment, in a "normal" suburb (one with enough land for a front and/or back yard), "your home" will include the entire block "your house" sits on. Even if you can spit on your the wall of your neighbour's house.

In your situation, "your home" would include at least "your house's" curtilage and, unless there is something odd with the titles of the surrounding landholdings, would include the entirety of the property "your house" sits on.

I know if I needed to go to the long drop dunny, the only mask I would be wearing would be one that countered the smell.



On balance, I consider "your home" is a better choice of words than "your house". "Your home" includes the property "your house" sits on.

or are you taking the ??

Originally Posted by GraemeCook

In the debate between the interests of the medical profession, the pharmacies and the public there is another hidden player in the game - the "theoretical doctors" in Health HQ in Canberra who purportedly "represent" the interests of the GPs despite never or rarely actually having practiced as a GP.

But the "theoretical doctors" in Health HQ are supposedly there to look after the public interest. If they are actually looking out for the GPs, then that would suggest they have undergone regulatory capture.





BTW
One of the senior health bureaucrats was the best man at my wedding and although he is addressed as Dr, the "Dr" refers to his PhD, not his medical qualifications.

Originally Posted by woodPixel

Warb, sounds like you are a Regular Law Breaker......

I think I'll mail-order a bell for my tractor to "frighten policemen" like Toby did... That'll learn 'em!!

Originally Posted by ian

or are you taking the ??

Only partially!

It's another of those issues where people need to follow the "spirit of the law", I suppose - though I don't know if it will be policed that way! It would be laughable for us to wear masks out here, whether in our "garden" or on the rest of the farm, but a garden in a town or city where people chat with their neighbours over a fence is a different matter entirely! If, as is currently suggested, delta can be contracted simply by walking through the "wake" of an infected person, then I suppose it must be assumed that an errant breeze could easily blow the virus over a fence....... That in turn would mean that the powers that be are indeed suggesting "home" to mean the actual building.

But like I said, I've yet to see a definition more specific than "home"!

Originally Posted by ian

But the "theoretical doctors" in Health HQ are supposedly there to look after the public interest. If they are actually looking out for the GPs, then that would suggest they have undergone regulatory capture.
... .

Oops; poor choice of words by me - trying to be too succinct, and I failed.

I meant to say that the "theoretical doctors" purport to have expert knowledge on how a general practice works, but in reality do not have a clue as to the dynamics of any business enterprise.

As to regulatory capture, frequently also called client capture, is there any agency in Canberra (or Washington) that has not suffered some infiltration, if not outright capture?

Originally Posted by ian

But the "theoretical doctors" in Health HQ are supposedly there to look after the public interest. If they are actually looking out for the GPs, then that would suggest they have undergone regulatory capture.

Originally Posted by GraemeCook

As to regularity capture, is there any agency in Canberra (or Washington) that has not suffered some infiltration, if not outright capture?

If there is a single politician (activist, advisory panel, whatever) in Australia who is genuinely there to look after the "public interest", I would be stunned. Looking after the people you class as your supporters, by the way, doesn't count as "the public interest" - keeping your supporters happy is "self interest".

Originally Posted by Warb

It ["your home" vs "your house"] is another of those issues where people need to follow the "spirit of the law", I suppose - though I don't know if it will be policed that way! It would be laughable for us to wear masks out here, whether in our "garden" or on the rest of the farm, but a garden in a town or city where people chat with their neighbours over a fence is a different matter entirely! If, as is currently suggested, delta can be contracted simply by walking through the "wake" of an infected person, then I suppose it must be assumed that an errant breeze could easily blow the virus over a fence....... That in turn would mean that the powers that be are indeed suggesting "home" to mean the actual building.

But like I said, I've yet to see a definition more specific than "home"!

like you I heard Gladys's 11 AM statement this morning (it's amazing what you can follow on streaming radio these days) and immediately interpreted her use of "your home" as meaning outside your apartment or in the street beyond your front fence.

Gladys's (or was it Kerry Chant's) example of "catching Covid if you merely bumped into another person", clearly implied to me that the "Covid threat" was the other side of your boundary. Inside your property you only interact with people who are within your own "bubble" -- but you should put on a mask BEFORE opening the door to a person from outside your bubble. And wash your hands after.




To put a bit of context to my apparent casualness around catching Covid.

In Alberta the vaccination rate (two doses plus two weeks to develop initial immunity) is currently sitting at 58.1%. 65.6% have received at least one dose of the vaccine and have had the two weeks their immune system needs to respond. But remembering that around 15% of the Province's population is under 12 and therefore too young to vaccinate, the 65.6% (one jab cohort) becomes 77.1% of those eligible for the vaccine.
Today (August 19) Alberta's Covid numbers were 817 new cases (the 7 day moving average is 509), adjusting for the differences in population between Alberta and NSW that's equivalent to around 1600 new daily cases in NSW with a moving 7 day average of around 1000.
The Provincial Chief Medical officer also notes that 76.3% of people admitted to regular hospital beds are unvaccinated and 17.5% were partially vaccinated -- meaning that around 1 in 15 were fully vaccinated.
Of those in ICU, 90.7% were unvaccinated and 4.7% were partially vaccinated -- meaning that just under 1 in 20 ICU admissions were of fully vaccinated people.

In Alberta, the rest of Canada, and the US, Covid appears to have morphed into an epidemic among the unvaccinated.



BTW, I've been fully vaccinated since early July, but I still speak of "when I catch Covid", not "if I catch Covid"

Originally Posted by ian

Gladys's (or was it Kerry Chant's) example of "catching Covid if you merely bumped into another person", clearly implied to me that the "Covid threat" was the other side of your boundary. Inside your property you only interact with people who are within your own "bubble" -- but you should put on a mask BEFORE opening the door to a person from outside your bubble. And wash your hands after.

It's funny to contemplate the realities against the "announcements". If covid is spread via moisture in the breath, then the physical act of bumping in to someone is less important that the act of breathing what in Formula 1 parlance might be referred to as their "dirty air". On the other hand, my sister in the UK won't take anything (mail, deliveries, food, whatever) into her house without it first being sprayed with some form of kill-all, and then the item sitting in isolation in the shed for two days. Clearly it is her belief (which may or may not reflect the "official" view in the UK!) that physical contact is a big issue.

When the handwashing and masks were first suggested, the concept was that it was, ahem, "snot" being transferred that was the major issue. People wipe their noses with their hands, then touch things. The advice was therefore to avoid touching your face and to wash your hands frequently. There was lots of talk, at that time, of how long the virus could survive on various surfaces, but the concept was still snot-related. Obviously there is still a potential for people's clothes to be "contaminated" such that clothing to clothing contact could transfer the virus, so I'm not sure whether the "bumping in to people" was a metaphorical "bump" referring to physical closeness, or an actual bump.

I suppose, if physical bumps are a problem, they could address it by making it illegal to walk along whilst staring down at your phone and not paying attention to where you're going

Mind you, sometimes I wonder why the "experts" seem to miss things that appear obvious. I'm currently reading that the state of Victoria is very concerned because 26% of new cases are now in kids under 10, and another 20% in young people 11-19. Personally I don't find this surprising - people under 16 can't get vaccinated, and "kids" (which around here seems to be taken as anyone who can pass as under 18) are exempt from wearing masks. Every trip to the supermarket involves one or two adults not wearing masks (presumably for "medical reasons", though the tattoos and looks on their faces often suggest "looking for an argument" is a more likely reason!) and a mass of mask-less kids running around touching everything in the store. I'm not an "expert", but I'd guess there might be a connection?