Interesting Links for 23-12-2018

[andrewducker]

A tale of two constituencies (and their shifting opinions on Brexit)

(tags: UK europe viaDanielDWilliam )

Labour, happy to work with the DUP, while ruling out working with the SNP. They can carry on fucking off.

(tags: labour DUP snp OhForFucksSake UK politics )

What’s the real reason Britons aren't offered the chickenpox vaccine?

(tags: UK vaccination wtf )

Jeremy Corbyn pledges to push on with Brexit if Labour win election

(tags: labour UK europe OhForFucksSake )

Fog Waves look absolutely magical

(tags: water weather photography beautiful )

Number of babies born in Japan is the lowest since records began

(tags: Japan fertility population )

Comments

[cmcmck]

Corbyn appears to have finally upset his own left.

Watch this space, as they say..........

[dewline]

It looks as if he does not understand the situation. At all.

[mountainkiss]

I wrote again to my MP after reading the Corbyn article.

[andrewducker]

Thank you.

Mine is SNP, so I'm OK there.

[mountainkiss]

Mine is Emily Thornberry, who wrote a very good reply to my last letter. I am broadly positive about her. I think she sits in very small intersection of the Venn diagram of "moderates" and "people Corbyn trusts".

[gingicat]

Regarding the varicella-zoster vaccine, OMG. I got the chicken pox at 15 and have scarring. I happened to be the admin assistant for the ad agency team that worked on Famvir (now off the market), and I read the literature on the various herpes viruses, and let me tell you, I was absolutely delighted that there was a VZ vaccine by the time I had kids.

[andrewducker]

I will definitely be getting her vaccinated when she's a year old.

[calimac]

I am wondering to what degree the observations about Brexit voters in the UK may be applied to Trump voters in the US. True that the working classes are being shafted by Trump in the same way they're being shafted by Brexit, but articles I see about Trump's popularity claim that its drop is no more than normal for a mid-term presidency, and emphasize his hard-core of voters. Are they relatively well-off people like the North Shropshire voters? I get the impression not. They're non-urban, but in the US non-urban areas tend to be economically struggling, which is why they turned Trumpward in the first place.

I can testify from the experience of a person I was close to and whom I cared for in this extremity that yes, shingles is an agonizingly painful illness. Due to the vaccine mentioned in the article, what shingles sufferers in the US are told to avoid is pregnant women, since the fetus hasn't been vaccinated. I recall nothing being said about babies, so this must be one of those at-birth vaccines.

[andrewducker]

I almost got Shingles a few years ago, and it was caught just in time, before it broke the skin. I will definitely be vaccinating Sophia.

[skington]

Regarding Trump's popularity: it's pretty much normal for a President half-way through his first term, but it started much lower.

Also, neither Brexit nor Trump voters were particularly poor. There's been a lot of stories about working-class people voting for Brexit and Trump, but in general the Brexit and Trump electorate were as well-off as you'd expect people voting for right-wing positions to be.

[davidcook]

Coincidentally, I'm just about over my case of chicken pox ... at the age of 48 ! Somehow, I missed it when I was a child, and my childhood was before Australia started using the vaccine, so ... ugh.

One totally wiped out week (feverish and (obviously) covered in spots), one further week recovering, and a few more days later and I'd say I'm 90% better (fortunately, I didn't get any major complications, but I've got some areas of sensitive skin now, which I hope will ease soon).

I'm very glad Mr6 & Ms3 got the vaccination, although even with that they seem to be coming down with a mild version of chicken pox now (maybe 20-40 spots each, mild fever for a day or so). I hope the UK catches up on the vaccination thing sometime soon.

(my doctor mentioned that there is a shingles vaccination available as well (not sure how it differs from the regular varicella one for chicken pox, will ask him later), but apparently I should wait a year or so now before getting it. Whee ...)

Chicken Pox & Shingles

[lsanderson]

That article is from 2014 if'n I'm remembering rightly, and there's been a huge advance in Shingles vaccine. (See https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/vpd/shingles/public/shingrix/index.html) for more information.) The old vaccine was around 60% effective and they wanted you to be 55 or so before you got it. The new vaccine is around 90+% effective and you can get it at 50. Of course, even with our obscenely profitable drug companies, you cannot get the new vaccine over here because the supply is so tight. The new vaccine requires two shots.

[movingfinger]

Not only is there a chicken pox vaccine, there's a shingles vaccine. NHS is full of it on this one!