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          blue background, A younf woman holding a large black sign that says VOTE ! in white letters

          Scottish elections: young people more likely to vote if they started at 16 – new study

          Healthcare word seen in a scrabble

          “Leave no one behind” – the Health Foundation’s report into health inequalities in Scotland 2023.

          Sign saying NHS Greater Galsgow & Clyde in front of a hospital building

          Concern over patients waiting in corridors for free beds at Glasgow Superhospital

          A row of tall houses on the left, with parked cars in front on the side of the street

          Saving Scotland’s tenements

          Ben Nevis. Forground has green shrubbery, then background a mountain with two tops. Blue sky with a few streaky clouds

          Exploring the Highest Mountain in the British Isles: A Guide to Ben Nevis

          Image via Steller Systems, a potential candidate.

          Cancelling future frigates could be final nail in the coffin for the UK

          A hospital corridor with trolleys on the sides.

          Glasgow hospitals halt non-urgent operations due to pressure

          A scene of people demonstrating, holding Scotland flags. One man wears a tartan cap and holds a blue flag with both the Scottish cross and the EU stars on it.

          Is Alister Jack sane?

          Cartoon by Stan

          Film reviews award season

          Trending Tags

          • Democracy
          • Devolution
          • Brexit
          • Ukraine
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          • All
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          blue background, A younf woman holding a large black sign that says VOTE ! in white letters

          Scottish elections: young people more likely to vote if they started at 16 – new study

          A scene of people demonstrating, holding Scotland flags. One man wears a tartan cap and holds a blue flag with both the Scottish cross and the EU stars on it.

          Is Alister Jack sane?

          Image Malcom Laverty

          The Brown plan

          The climate change impacts of Russia’s war with Ukraine

          Britain wastes £1bn on drones to monitor English Channel

          The Autumn Statement – time to take a closer look

          Photo Mtaylor848, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

          Christmas cheer for Tesco if grim reading for the political classes

          Scottish independence isn’t going away

          Russia as a low-tech nation

          Trending Tags

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          • Equality
          • Johnson
          • Scottish National Party
        • Business
          • All
          • Agriculture
          • Aviation
          • Corporations
          • Energy
          • Fishing
          • Natural Resources
          • Shipbuilding
          • Trade
          • Transport
          • Workers
          A row of tall houses on the left, with parked cars in front on the side of the street

          Saving Scotland’s tenements

          A large red researcgh vessel in the sea with ice sheets all around it on the water.

          Rosyth shipyard attracts UK Government contract to maintain fleet of scientific research vessels

          large posts saying 'Glasgow Airport Business Park' on the left and right of a road leading away from the main road in the front. . On that road leading away building with walls almost entirely existing of windows.

          Why doing business in Scotland may be better for your corporate wellbeing

          A mountain of spools forming a tree on the left, a sandy area to the right and a row of houses at the back. mountains in the distance on the right

          The Ullapool Giving Tree

          Electric off-roader heralds return of vehicle mass-production in Scotland after 40 years

          Photo Mtaylor848, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

          Christmas cheer for Tesco if grim reading for the political classes

          Ferguson Marine will weather the storm

          Order placed for remaining five Type 26 Frigates on the Clyde

          Police Scotland not investigating Scottish government over ferry contract criminality

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            Healthcare word seen in a scrabble

            “Leave no one behind” – the Health Foundation’s report into health inequalities in Scotland 2023.

            Sign saying NHS Greater Galsgow & Clyde in front of a hospital building

            Concern over patients waiting in corridors for free beds at Glasgow Superhospital

            A hospital corridor with trolleys on the sides.

            Glasgow hospitals halt non-urgent operations due to pressure

            Two more unions reject Scottish Government NHS pay offer

            GMB union reject Scottish Government pay offer to NHS staff

            Lymphocites gathering

            How careful should we be when choosing a scientific term?

            Code Black – A mayday from the Queen Elizabeth University Hospital

            The challenges facing mental health care in Scotland

            Illustration by author

            What are the boundaries to push science to its safety limits for the benefit of discoveries?

            Trending Tags

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              • Wildfires
              Ardnish wildfire by Leslie Barrie, CC BY-SA 2.0 Creative Commons — Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic — CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons'

              Fire threats in the Scottish countryside

              Wood stove at the foot of the bed in the Danish Blue room at Pig Hill Inn, Cold Spring, New York. Printed with permission and confirmed to be licensed under the terms of the cc-by-2.0.

              When smoke gets in your eyes

              Opening of the United Nations Climate Change Conference COP27 in Egypt. Photo courtesy of the UNFCCC

              COP27 and the inconvenient truth

              Viscum album in trees

              Night of the strangling figs: a biological horror story

              Out & about with Charlie Mac: Cycling to the heart of Scotland – the National Cycle Network 7

              Scotland's mountain footpaths

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              Home Shape of Things to Come New Covid variants and the NHS

              The basic principles of public health have been ignored. Now we must face the consequences

              Part five of our 2023 Shape of Things to Come series Dr Patricia S Paton looks at a foggy year ahead with the lack of basic Public Health principles and inattention to our National Health Service

              Dr Patricia S PatonbyDr Patricia S Paton
              05-01-2023 07:00
              in New Covid variants and the NHS, Shape of Things to Come
              Image by Malcolm Laverty

              Image by Malcolm Laverty

              Share on FacebookShare on Twitter

              I bet a lot of us dream about not having to worry too much about Covid-19. I was starting to get slightly more hopeful until China became a petri dish for Sars-CoV-2 again, and also when I learned about the XBB.1.5 variant in New York.

              Sars-CoV-2 and its evolution

              We know very well how the UK underestimated what Sars-CoV-2 was capable of. The central government didn’t have any policy to safeguard its citizens, its public health service. Decisions were made at the last minute when it was already too late. Late lockdowns, then the so called ‘Eat out to Help out’ scheme, cronyism, corruption and parties. Science couldn’t play its important role. Basic principles of public health weren’t followed. All for the benefit of a strong economy to pretend Brexit was successful. Meanwhile, Scotland was trying its best but there were limitations.

              As a result, the UK harboured several strains (variants) of the virus. The virus evolved well and it continues to do so. With each mutation, the new variants diverged more and more from its origin.

              We did brilliantly with regard to vaccines. Science in the UK once more proved how efficient it can be. However, vaccines only wouldn’t protect us all. With the virus evolving rapidly, the lower efficacy of vaccines followed soon. The government imposed use of masks but didn’t persist with it. Air filters were mentioned in their policy but they weren’t widely applied even with the existence of cheap and robust ones.

              One year on or so, a good part of the UK decided we weren’t in danger anymore. No restrictions whatsoever, hospitals were still suffering from the pandemic, governments stopped acting. As Dame Kate Bingham, the former head of the vaccine task force said:

              “Our vaccines currently are not good enough. We need to improve the quality of the vaccines, the durability, the ability to stop transmission, the way in which we give vaccines. Lots of things need to be improved. Our approach seems to have been to go backwards rather than to continue the momentum.”

              A new wave cometh and it’s smarter

              Has the UK learned anything about preparedness? I don’t think so. At the moment we have what seems like a new pandemic in China and no one knows what variant it could be. Our government took a while to act on travellers arriving from China again; the famous lethargic response. And patients testing positive won’t be isolated. At the same time XBB.1.5 variant is causing havoc in the USA. Has there been any border control from New York to here, independently of connections from China or somewhere else?

              As China now is a petri dish and we are already packed with Covid, testing here should be PCR to track down variants and their dangers. The tests have to be designed to detect multiple genetic targets and I hope there have been follow ups for updates. If we don’t want to incorporate one more variant into our collection, positive cases should be isolated.

              We will see a big wave of XBB.1.5 here in the near future. Could we even come to the conclusion this will be defined as a Sars-CoV-3? It is more immune evasive and better at infecting than others. It can infect despite prior infection and vaccination, and its ability to attach to and enter our cells has increased.

              They might infect a wider range of tissues and therefore lead to another wave of long CoPublicvid-19. In New York it is 120% faster than the previous variants. As people continuously get infected with the virus, the cumulative risk of acquiring long Covid increases.

              It has started to appear in the UK. The Scottish Government can’t lockdown without money and at the same time it doesn’t have control of the borders. Our health service was left in a very precarious state after the pandemic due to its already chronic state of misgovernance.

              Image by Malcolm Laverty
              Enough is Enough

              What will 2023 bring? I feel this year is a turning point

              byJenny Wilson
              4 January 2023

              Not acting efficiently will bring more chaos

              Prediction of Covid-19 nowadays in the world is difficult, as we are flooded with variants and there isn’t a main variant anymore. Furthermore, surveillance nowadays is nonexistent, at least here in the UK, making it even harder to identify new variants. Nowadays there is significant differences between individual levels of protection in terms of which vaccines, and how many doses people around the world have received. At the moment people are making their own evaluations of risks of behaviour. The number of cases will substantially increase here in the UK.

              As Professor of evolutionary biology, T Ryan Gregory rightly says: “XBB.1.5 and other XBB descendants won’t be done evolving. If there is lots of viral replication (for example, due to unmitigated transmission), there will be more evolution.”

              New vaccines will appear—and this time I think it will be the virus attenuated and nasal ones in an attempt to cover more variants. There will be more discovery of new drugs to treat the worst cases. However, would this be developed or suffice in the first quarter of the year? Will our NHS cope?

              The NHS is already under huge pressure, therefore not acting efficiently will bring more chaos. Hospitals have already reached maximum capacity. Herd Immunity is not very high at the moment for this type of virus, as part of the population hasn’t received boosters or even any immunisation against the virus at all.

              Cartoon by Stan

              Public health on a path to collapse.

              Our beloved NHS has been left aside for a while and with the population growing older, it is not difficult to guess that a rocky path is in front of us. Health boards harbouring mismanagement along with bad government policies such as years with cuts, low salaries and privatisation of care homes and home care services is not helpful.

              If there is a cut back on community care, this will cause delayed discharges in under-bedded hospitals, ambulances parked at the entrances with patients inside and consequently lack of ambulances at community level. It turns into a chain reaction in the long term. It is a full plate for bad service and bad working conditions. More strikes and more chaos.

              There is comparison between Scotland and England’s health services and although health is said to be fully devolved here in Scotland, there are components that are UK-wide, such as: professional regulators, recruitment and retention, drug approval and supply that is international, drug pricing, common law, privacy and data protection, and migration policies.

              Adding these all together, propagation of new variants and NHS under red flags, will make the UK more susceptible to other infectious diseases and more chronic illnesses due to multi-organ effects of Covid-19. Worthwhile remembering that viral infections promote opportunistic bacterial infections and we are already under a huge threat of antibiotic resistance.

              We need serious, ethical and honest politicians who really care

              Masks might become mandatory at least in public and closed places, as an attempt to hold back new waves and to decrease stress on the NHS, at least in the first quarter of the year. This is my hope!

              With hospitals declaring emergency state and medical doctors not satisfied with their working conditions and how money has been spent across the health boards, I think there will be pressure from the medical community in the government to nationalise care homes and services. The medical community might also bring focus to prevention and early intervention instead of treatment and care. However, it is expensive and won’t fix the system in the short term. We might be very close to a collapse of our National Health Service.

              What we most need in 2023 is serious, ethical and honest politicians that really care about the most valuable asset the UK has, which is the health of their citizens. My hope is that our population gains interest and access to information related to issues we are suffering at the moment, so they can form a profound understanding that will reflect on how they vote in the next General Election. Let’s not have another Brexit-like result where citizens didn’t think of the macroeconomy beforehand.


              We need your help! The press in our country is dominated by billionaire-owned media, many offshore and avoiding paying tax. We are a citizen journalism publication but still have significant costs. If you believe in what we do, please consider subscribing to the Bylines Gazette 🙏

              Tags: consequences of inactionCovid-19healthNew wave of variantsNHSPublic HealthSars-CoV-2ScotlandXBB.1.5
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              Dr Patricia S Paton

              Dr Patricia S Paton

              Patricia S Paton was born in Brazil where she acquired her BSc in biochemistry & immunology, MSc in cellular and molecular biology and PhD in immunology. In 2000 she was awarded an international fellowship by the Wellcome Trust to develop her research, signalling transduction in a parasitic disease, at University of Glasgow. Afterwards, she was involved with projects on immune-stimulating complexes and drugs development. Nowadays, living in Glasgow, she is married, has a daughter and tutors privately.

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