Not as easy a job as it looks.
The Queen is not a decision-making monarch, although she does sign legislation presented to her by Parliament. But the laws and things would be passed even if she didn’t sign. It’s essentially a formality and sign of respect.
She DOES meet with members of Parliament, and the Prime Minister, regularly because those people would be idiots NOT to get her input on the things that are happening. She’s been the reigning monarch for 66 years - and an active one, at that. She’s been through 12 Prime Ministers and an equal number of US Presidents. To paraphrase a current television commercial: She knows a thing or two because she’s seen a thing or two.
She receives the “red boxes” daily - loaded with updates on everything going on all over the world. That’s a LOT of stuff to read. And she reads it. Every last bit of it. Every day.
For a whole lot of people (including me), she has been the British monarch for their entire lifetime. She has been queen for a year longer than I have been alive.
It will be a sad day for the world when she steps down. She has always been a class act, other political figures should aspire to show so much grace and thoughtfulness.
The person who made the unkind remark about Her dogs was a Brit who had moved to AZ many years before. We were hanging out and he’d had a few drinks and was sputtering mad about something happening with British politics and was using all sort of very creative words and phrases to describe the various people involved before ending by thinking for a minute and then spitting out that everyone knew the Queen’s dogs were nasty tempered beasts. (It was too funny to forget.)
True. That was an older quote. I did just see that she had her weekly meeting [remote] with the PM during her COVID recovery.
Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II spoke with UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson on Wednesday, a Buckingham Palace spokesperson said, despite the monarch suffering mild symptoms after her positive Covid-19 diagnosis.
On Tuesday, I woke up with what I’d describe as cold-like symptoms, namely bit of a runny nose, sneezing, and a general “off” feeling I usually associate with colds. Of course, these days, it could mean something different, though I didn’t feel any worse than I have with past colds. I was about the same, maybe more sniffly, yesterday. Today I woke up a lot better; the general crummy feeling was mostly gone and my nose seems drier.
We’ll see if there’s anything significant to it, but hopefully this will last.
I considered posting this in the Covidiot thread, but I haven’t figured out of this is a gross insensitivity, rampant opportunism, or someone who is “facing the enemy and laughing in it’s face”.
There’s a book out with the title: Pam Covid - She’s much worse than the flu.
The cover has a picture of “Pam”, in the style of pulp fiction from the 1950’s.
(Sorry, for some reason I can’t seem to post any links.)
Wifey, RN got a call from one of her patients, whose caregiver has COVID. The patient has no symptoms, so he’s probably OK. Wifey, RN took a home COVID test and it it returned negative results. She said, ‘Well, that was 20 minutes of anxiety!’
I’m sure this question has been asked and answered somewhere here in the Quarantine Zone, but it’s too difficult to search for.
Does a COVID-19 vaccine (say Moderna) also give protection against the common cold? The viruses are related, so I thought there might be some spillover protection.
I ask because I’m getting a cold, but so far it’s a pretty wimpy cold. I’m hoping being fully-vaxxed and boosted might be helping me fight off a full-on bad head cold.
The common cold is a syndrome of symptoms that can be caused by many types of viruses. Several “legacy” coronaviruses (those that were known before 2002’s SARS-CoV) do cause the common cold, but rhinoviruses are a much more prevalent cause.
But the question was interesting: are cold-giving coronaviruses closely related enough that the vaccines affect them? I would think not, but I don’t know. Rhinos and adenoi would obviously be unaffected.
There has been plenty of research in the other direction - do existing antibodies for cold-causing beta-coronaviruses provide protection against Covid-19 infection. While the spike proteins for all these coronaviruses have a similar S2 subunit, and B-cell activity suggests that the S2 sub-unit is targeted, there isn’t a definitive answer. Similarly for the other direction - it seems likely that the specific spike protein antibodies generated by vaccination will not target cold-causing beta-coronaviruses particularly well.
Later generation vaccines may provide broader protection by targeting more common elements that are not as specific as the spike protein - it remains to be seen whether this is possible and practical. Also, it seems likely that antivirals developed for treating Covid-19 (particularly Paxlovid) would be effective for targeting other beta-coronaviruses, as it targets viral replication mechanisms that are common across many beta-coronaviruses.
Here’s something I’ve been wondering: are all increases of cases from here on out made equal? Like, obviously numbers can/should/will go up with the easing of restrictions worldwide. But is there a certain threshold that signals “it’s going to be just as bad as before, if not worse”? Or should the public be reacting to an increase the same no matter what the amount, on the logic that it would be holding steady or going down if things were getting better?
I believe you won’t see major alarm bells unless the hospital ICUs fill up again along with refrigerated temporary morgue containers. [hope those got a good cleaning afterwards]