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Is this V-day - Victory against Mandatory Vaccinations day?

31/1/2022

WARNING: ranting blog ahead!

Thursday is supposedly the day when everyone who works in a healthcare setting MUST have had their first Covid-19 vaccination dose. If not, they can no longer work in a patient facing role and will either be redeployed or made redundant according to UK Government policy. Mandatory vaccination is not the usual policy for the UK; in my opinion, forcing anyone to have a medical procedure against their will is highly unethical.

You can be forgiven for missing this abuse of Government power over the NHS and social care workforce… something more important keeps hogging the headlines, apparently the resident of No.11 has complained about the noise from the parties at No.10… or maybe No.11 just wasn’t invited to the party(s)… who knows…?

Say no to mandatory vaccination covid 19

Referee!!! What the heck is an Intermediate?

28/1/2022

There is a change coming to how you will see laboratory culture results reported, but will you know what it means?

Within the UK, as well as most of the rest of Europe, laboratories follow a standard procedure for testing whether bacteria are likely to respond to treatment with different antibiotics. You see this on reports where the laboratory says a bacterium is susceptible (or sensitive) to an antibiotic which they mark with an “S” or resistant to an antibiotic which they mark with an “R”.

But did you notice that sometimes the laboratory puts an “I” for intermediate? And if you did, did you know what intermediate means?

But Ref, what the heck does intermediate mean?!

Where do mutants come from?

21/1/2022

Don’t panic, I’m not about to get all birds and bees and storks on you, this is a microbiology blog after all… the picture is from “Sweet-Tooth” a great Netflix series where mutants are thought to be spreading a virus… timely huh?! Instead, we’re going to talk about where variants of SARS CoV2 might be arising and why they seem to pop up out of nowhere?

Look at this diagram:

5 ways to grant my New Year’s wish

13/1/2022

So, I thought I would start 2022 with a list of what I want from the year to come… and yes, like a lot of people, I want the impossible… an end to the Covid-19 pandemic.

Another £2 million goes up with a bang and a whizz!

Is this V-day - Victory against Mandatory Vaccinations day?

Referee!!! What the heck is an Intermediate?

Where do mutants come from?

5 ways to grant my New Year’s wish

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