El Andalous - More Boat Trips

 

Busy Sea During Eid

It’s the summer, so it’s getting very hot here and that means… boat trips. They are a relatively safe activity (touch wood) during pandemic times since it’s usually windy and it’s hard to breathe the same air twice.

One boat trip took place on Theresa’s return from Miami, which also marked the end of me having to cat sit. Quite a few people are back in Europe now, so it wasn’t so easy to drum up the numbers; also big Eid (which was this past week) was coming up, meaning that boats were getting booked up.

In the end, I think about eight of us went. As usual, it was a fab day, especially since Theresa had bought some KFC. I couldn’t have wanted for more. There was a slight hiccup at the beginning, because Theresa overslept and we also got a little lost getting there. But all’s well that ends well. I managed to do some swimming as well as snorkeling, although I’m always wary when I swim out in the open sea in case a boat doesn’t see me, so I never swim that far away. And there’s the fact that I’ve been left behind on at least two occasions!

We also had a rooftop buffet for Theresa when she returned – each of us made a separate dish. I cooked some chicken drumsticks, but I forgot that my oven isn’t particularly good (it’s just a small portable thing), so they took ages. And I had to shut Cleo in the bathroom in order to be able to get out of the flat without the drumsticks being attacked by her. At the end of the evening, they weren’t all eaten, so I put the rest in the freezer.

These, I took on another boat trip. This one was with a few friends, and a friend’s family members. We had a glass-bottomed boat to ourselves and stopped off at one deep (well, it really wasn’t that deep, but to the non-swimmers it was deep) place and one shallow place where you could stand.

On both boat trips, we have music with us, so we have a bit of a dance while sailing the waves (and downing the alcohol – although I tend not to drink much these days).

To be sociable, I went afterwards onto our rooftop where people gather most days at around sunset to have a drink and a chat among friends. It’s just a casual thing. Anyway, I hadn’t been for a while and thought it was time to show my face. I brought my drumsticks from the previous group meal we’d had, and that I’d just taken on the trip with me, and they all seemed completely horrified. I did explain that they’d been frozen, but I got the distinct feeling I’d made a faux pas. Oh well, I usually have a strong constitution….

El Andalous - Considerations

 

Sahl Hasheesh at Night

I’m writing a blog on my thoughts on the pandemic this week, because I’ve been spending a lot of time brooding about it and researching as I try to determine what it is that I believe (I’m not sure I’ve got there yet!). I don’t want to prescribe to people what they should do, but I would be more comfortable if I thought people chose their actions (by the way, Idette, this is not pointed at you - I've been brooding for ages, and I know you thought long and hard, so I'm happy that you made a choice).

I’m going to do my best to keep this as objective as I can and then add some personal thoughts at the end.

On the UK Yellow Card reporting site, it states what is pretty much repeated worldwide:

Vaccination is the single most effective way to reduce deaths and severe illness from COVID-19.

A lot of money has been thrown at the vaccination program.

However, the evidence in favour of the use of ivermectin is persuasive. There are, of course, many ways to cook the data, but just looking at the 30 randomized clinical trials of ivermectin use for covid-19 gives a combined 67% improvement when used as early treatment, 29% improvement in late treatment, and meta-analyses on mortality have shown 62-81% reduced risk of mortality. Ivermectin is generic, cheap, and comes in tablet form. Its long-term safety profile is well understood. Hurrah. Yet WHO will permit its use only in clinical trials. This decision causes loss of life. Incidentally, if WHO had approved ivermectin, they would not have been allowed to approve the vaccines for emergency use.

Why are there no early treatment guidelines / suggestions to reduce the number of hospitalisations and deaths? Early treatment options do exist. Again, vitamin D or ivermectin could be suggested here. Yet the overriding message is simply to isolate, which does not help the infected person to heal. WHO's clinical trial is focused on those who are already hospitalised rather than on treating early when it would be easier to prevent hospitalisation and death.

When assessing your personal risk profile for a vaccine, remember to compare like with like. It does not make sense, for example, to balance a 95% relative reduction for death (ie, relative to the risk for death without the intervention) with a 0.01% increased risk of blood clots by taking a vaccine (figures are fictional and for illustration only). If your risk of death from covid is 2%, a 95% relative risk reduction translates to an absolute risk reduction of 1.9% and a remaining risk of 0.1%, so that's what you need to balance again the risk of various vaccine side effects along with the unknown possibility of side effects that may only become apparent after several years (eg, cancer). Your answer will depend on your own risk profile (do you have underlying conditions making your initial risk of death from covid higher than average, for example), your faith in the information provided about the vaccine safety profile, and your personal stick-a-finger-in-the-air estimate of likelihood of future side effects (which can range from nil risk to certain death, according to who you are! At this stage, it’s entirely subjective).

If you want actual figures for absolute risk reduction of the various vaccines (and a less simplistic explanation of absolute risk reduction), read this article.

Bear in mind that authorisation of emergency use is not an experiment (in the sense of formal clinical trial). In a clinical trial, all adverse events would have to be reported regardless of presumed etiology (since adverse events can be surprising, such as suicide, which was originally not consistently monitored in clinical trials until it was revealed to be an actual possible adverse event). Adverse events are notoriously underreported in real life use. From the UK Yellow Card reporting site, page 10 of the report of July 7^th:

The overall reporting rate is in the order of 3 to 7 Yellow Cards per 1,000 doses administered for the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine, COVID-19 Vaccine AstraZeneca and COVID-19 Vaccine Moderna. It is known from the clinical trials that the more common side effects for both vaccines can occur at a rate of more than one in 10 doses (for example, local reactions or symptoms resembling transient flu-like symptoms).

That is, the reporting rate is 0.7 reports per 100 doses vs known common side effects occurring in more than 10 per 100 doses. My point is that without trial data, it’s difficult to assess a vaccine’s safety profile. Nevertheless, the Yellow Card figures are thought to vindicate the use of vaccines, despite numerous claims that the Yellow Card (or other database) data cannot be used for analysis (and thus conclusions, presumably).

It’s unclear to me at what point a reported event becomes a safety signal (ie, a danger signal). For instance, there were over 1000 deaths reported as suspected associated with the drug but were deemed, after analysis, to be not related as many were in aged patients or people with underlying illness. However, thromboembolic events were a safety signal with 405 cases (presumably due to the excess in the young, which may have just been more frequently reported) and they are investigating 22,981 menstrual disorders but are downplaying it by saying that these are common in general practice. Remember, these numbers are likely under reported. As above, it ends up being a personal assessment about whether the adverse events are likely or not.

My concern is the trend towards making vaccines mandatory and the rising number of people who are vaccinating because they want to be able to travel, or go to events. To me, this latter is close to coercion. This is not how health practice is meant to be. And my personal view is that the vaccines were pushed forward without any emphasis on implementing, trying out, or assessing early treatment options to resolve disease before hospitalisation and death enter the equation.

I am happy to live in Egypt where President Sisi stated outright he did not want to create fear in the population regarding the coronavirus. I switched off the news fairly early on in the pandemic, so I’m coming from a perspective where I haven’t been exposed to a lot of the messaging. I am not necessarily anti-corona vax, but I am pro-choice. I also don’t think using new vaccines whose long-term safety profile (or long-term efficacy) is not yet known with the aim of obtaining herd immunity is an achievable or ethical goal. The lack of interest in cheap options where there’s no profit to be made smells to me like a society that’s corrupt. Maybe I shouldn’t be so surprised. And maybe I’m wrong. But that’s where my view is tending.

If there’s no blog next week, you’ll know I’ve been banned!

El Andalous - Cleo Update

 

Cleo Chilling

I promise I won’t make this into a cat blog. I’ll just do this one and then give it a rest, at least for a while.

At first, I didn’t let Cleo into my bedroom. I was thinking of getting a second cat to keep Cleo company, so wanted to keep it Cleo-free for the second cat to have a safe haven. However, Joke thought that, as an only cat, Cleo may be jealous. After that, I gave up on the second cat idea and let Cleo into my bedroom in the mornings. It was still off-limits at night as I like to have the door closed (meaning she can’t access the litter tray and she always poops at night).

She loves to sleep in the storage area under my bed. It’s a bit of a squeeze, but she gets under the bed and then wriggles in through the slats to get into the storage compartment beneath my mattress. I don’t really like it when she goes there as she sleeps for hours and I can’t see her. But she likes it.

When I wake up in the morning, she’s very talkative. She winds herself round my legs and talks away. I interpreted this as her being pleased to see me. However, one day, she shot past me and straight into the bedroom. So maybe she was just glad I’d come out of the bedroom so she could have her turn. I felt used.

She knows my bedtime routine now, so as soon as I clean my teeth, she positions herself in front of my bedroom door so that it’s very difficult for me to get in without her also entering. More stress!

Last night, I tried letting her in the bedroom at night. I thought if she slept in the storage area under the mattress, it should be easy. Instead, she started off by trying to tear the mosquito net to get outside, so I had to shut my balcony door (I don’t want rats coming in). Then she bounded about, onto my bed, off my bed, onto my bed, off my bed. Silence. Then I’d worry where she was. She came onto my bed and slept for maybe an hour, then she wanted to play; her paw nudged my shoulder. She’s twelve years old; I’d never seen her so playful.

At four o’ clock on the morning, I ushered her out. The next hour she sat on the other side of the door making a load of noise, leaping up at the door and trying to reach the handle. I’m not letting her in again at night! Lesson learned.

The main stress has been over food. Every time I eat, but particularly when I eat chicken (which is often), she’ll climb on my chair. Over and over. Or she’ll pretend she’s not interested and then sneak up from the sofa where she can jump from there onto the table. I had to erect a whole load of stuff on the dining table so she couldn’t do that.

It's ruining my enjoyment of my meals.

And when she didn’t win, she went on hunger strike. She didn’t eat for two days. Then I panicked because I read if cats don’t eat for two days, they can die of kidney disease. I gave her some canned food, and she wolfed it down. Phew.

I tried to get her back to the dried food (which she’d been eating without complaint before), but she didn’t eat anything. I tried mixing it in with the canned food. She spat out all the dried food onto the floor.

I gave in, and now I feed her canned food. No big deal, really, but I do feel she’s calling the shots and not me. I hope at some point, she’ll accept that she’s not getting any of my chicken and will stop.

Funnily, at first, she’d always want cuddles after our supper arguments – almost as if making sure we were still on good terms despite our fights over the food. And, of course, I do still love her despite this.

She now sits on my lap, so that’s more progress. Today, she literally sprung from the other couch directly onto my lap (claws out for the landing – ouch!). No warning. She’s interrupted this blog three times by barging onto my lap and then getting too hot and going off elsewhere. I don’t like to say no, as I like having her on my lap and it’s a bonding experience. I’m pleased to have gained her trust and her love and don’t want to be turning that away.

El Andalous - Dolphin House

Close Encounter with Dolphin

This was also going to be another cat blog, but since I’m late this week, I thought I’d better write about why (nothing dramatic!).

Yesterday, I went on a trip to Dolphin House. It’s an area of sea, just north of Hurghada, which is known for its many dolphins. Boat trips go there, but they have to have a special license and pay a fee for each passenger they take so that the area can be sufficiently well protected (or at least better protected).

We tried to go once before and I can’t remember if I wrote about it. The trip failed because we didn’t see any dolphins and it turned out that actually we didn’t even go to Dolphin House. The failed trip was still fun, because boat trips always are, but it wasn’t what we’d paid to do.

Anyway, Tina found a company that was running a trip for German-speakers and asked me if I wanted to join (I did). The downside was that the trip started at 6.30am and we had to leave El Andalous at 5.30am to get to where the boat sailed from. Ugh. So, I went to bed early the night before (which is when I would normally write my blog) and was too tired when I got home to write it then. Hence why I am writing it today!

Anyway, I did manage to wake up on time. The trip started from the north of Hurghada which cut down some of the sailing time, but it still took around two hours before we reached the dolphin area.

It doesn’t matter how often I’m on the Red Sea, I’m stunned over and over again at how beautiful it is. The Dolphin House was no exception. So many different blues shading into each other, the blue sky, the corals underneath, it’s all amazing.

The day started off quite windy, so a few people on board got seasick (they offered seasickness tablets beforehand for those who wanted them). We were provided with a buffet breakfast (it was a large boat and only around 10-12 passengers) of sliced meats, bread, jams, pastries etc.

For quite a while, the men scanned the sea for dolphins but although some were visible, they were staying under water for quite long periods, which indicates (apparently) that they don’t really want visitors.

But finally, in a fairly calm area of sea, we found a group of five dolphins willing to play. Apparently one pair was a mother and child, but I didn’t really get a good look at that. It was quite good exercise swimming around as we followed them. Two men would swim and locate them and tell us where to go, then they’d shout “Unterwasser schauen!” (“Look underwater!”) and we’d all duck our heads down (we had snorkels and flippers).

It was quite strange because often I’d not see anything and the next second they’d be right under me. You could even hear them. Unfortunately, the water wasn’t so clear (not sure why), so sometimes they were only shadowy, and if they were close enough for me to see them in detail, my camera couldn’t fit them in!

We stopped for a snorkel while they prepared lunch (a great buffet of chicken, spag bog, salads, kofta in peas, rice, etc), then we looked for dolphins again (we found three, I think, but they were faster and more timid, so I didn’t get up close, although others did).

We got back at around 5pm, so it was 11 hours on the boat – quite a long day for them as well as for us. And then poor Tina had to drive us home, although she said it wasn’t a problem.

It was a great day out, but I was exhausted on my return and my face also got a little red from the sun (even though I’m already pretty brown). I can recommend going!