Current Affairs Coronavirus Thread - Serious stuff !!!

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Barnfred 55 said:
Where to start?

It's the stem cells that the recipient needs, which I think bone marrow produces. Back in the day, this was done by way of a bone marrow transplant, which is a full blown operation that requires a general anaesthetic and an overnight stay in hospital. They take the marrow from the hip bone. However more recently they have developed a method of harvesting the stem cells from the blood which is a bit like giving yourself a blood transfusion I suppose. Simplistically, they take the blood out of one arm, which goes through a machine that separates and removes the stem cells, before putting it back in through the other arm.

Whilst some rare forms of leukemia require an actual bone marrow transplant, it is normally the personal choice of the donor which method is opted, and apparently 95% of the procedures are done via blood transfers. As was mine.

Does it hurt? Depends on your pain threshold and how you are with needles I suppose. You need to have daily injections of a drug that boosts the stem cell production for 5 days prior to the harvest. These are what I would call uncomfortable, and you will get a lot of achiness (similar to growing pains) as your body goes into overdrive producing extra stem cells. There are rarer more serious side effects which luckily I didn't suffer.

As regards the stem cell collection, you're on the machine for about 4 hours when basically you can't even feed yourself or take a piss, and you're probably more at risk from boredom than anything else. Because I had such a high count of stem cells, my bloods only had to be circulated twice through the machine, but others would probably need more, so there are the obvious risks of clotting etc that go with it. Luckily, my collection was pretty straightforward in that regard.

My biggest issue was the nurses decided to have a game of darts with my veins as they tried to find one in each arm big enough to take the extremely large needles required for the collection. So I was subjected to approximately an hour and a half of what I would call "legalised torture" as 3 different nurses tried and failed. My arms look like a chess board today lol. But if you have prominent veins in your arms you probably won't have this issue and the day would have been relatively pain free. And whilst there are always risks when the collection is in process, a nurse is permanently monitoring both you and the machine.

Hope that doesn't put you off. I went through it yesterday and I'm sitting at home now feeing no worse than a bit tired and achy. I know my brother is going to have things a lot harder than me.
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I wish I hadn’t asked now lol
 
tsubaki said:
That’s not it at all. Drakeford put the Welsh lockdown in when scientific advice in Wales *and* England said was the appropriate time to do it.

If Johnson had done it then, we wouldn’t be in lockdown now and the phenomenon described wouldn’t have happened because there wouldn’t have been the need to do it (to go to Wales because shops etc were open there unlike home).

Of course he didn’t do that, with the results we all see from our much longer lockdown that he was panicked into bringing in - and Drakeford didn’t do that much about it either (other than to warn that it might happen). It’s basically been an entirely preventable mess and it must not happen in any subsequent lockdown.
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No argument with the first bit. It's your insistence that the 2 week+ lockdown only failed because of invasion from people in England that is wrong. It failed because the advice was wrong. Two weeks was too short as was proven in Northern Ireland who went into a 4 week lockdown around the same time which also failed.

The fact is, Wales and Irelands circuit break failed, England's regional tiered system failed and Scotland's god knows what system failed. The virus has them all beat. We aren't the only countries in this position either.

Out of the 4, Wales is probably the one I would least rather be in.
 
Barnfred 55 said:
No argument with the first bit. It's your insistence that the 2 week+ lockdown only failed because of invasion from people in England that is wrong. It failed because the advice was wrong. Two weeks was too short as was proven in Northern Ireland who went into a 4 week lockdown around the same time which also failed.

The fact is, Wales and Irelands circuit break failed, England's regional tiered system failed and Scotland's god knows what system failed. The virus has them all beat. We aren't the only countries in this position either.

Out of the 4, Wales is probably the one I would least rather be in.
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There was no insistence though - I said (and still maintain) that it did work, something which the data supports in that there is was a clear decline as the result of it coming in. It was intended to bring back some control and prevent infections and it did this; it was never intended to completely eradicate it.

If England had done a similar lockdown at the same time we’d probably have seen a similar decline here (or at least not the rises that we did see) and probably we wouldn’t have seen some of the rises in the Welsh counties mentioned yesterday, because the behaviour that was criticised would have been much less likely to happen.
 
COYBL25 said:
I wish I hadn’t asked now lol
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Google it mate if you have any concerns about it. There's lots of info on the web.

If you have second thoughts it's better you have them now rather than when you've been identified as a potential match, if that makes sense.

Having been through it once I wouldn't think twice about doing it again if another sibling needed it. If it wasn't for the darts practice it wouldn't have been that bad really. Plus if you take away the family connection it wouldn't be as draining emotionally.
 
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COYBL25 said:
Debenhams are like John Lewis stores mate.

They don`t sell tat, well laid out, the staff are all professional, properly trained and seem to stay there for a long time - a sign of a well run place.

I detest shopping with a passion, but the Debenhams in Manchester and Southport are shops that I can venture into with my missus without it ending up in a massive row.
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To an extent, but you feel like you are back in 1995 when you are in one.

Mazes too, I only used to go in for the toilet. Always hidden on the top bloody floor. Nightmare.
 
tsubaki said:
There was no insistence though - I said (and still maintain) that it did work, something which the data supports in that there is was a clear decline as the result of it coming in. It was intended to bring back some control and prevent infections and it did this; it was never intended to completely eradicate it.

If England had done a similar lockdown at the same time we’d probably have seen a similar decline here (or at least not the rises that we did see) and probably we wouldn’t have seen some of the rises in the Welsh counties mentioned yesterday, because the behaviour that was criticised would have been much less likely to happen.
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But the problem is that two weeks was never going to be long enough. Had all of the UK done a 2 week circuit break at the same time as the Welsh we would all be in lockdown again now. Northern Ireland proves that. There haven't been droves of English crossing the border to Northern Ireland messing up their 4 week lockdown.

Basically by following the "science" Wales cocked up. Same as England did with not following the science.
 
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