Did I Have A Close Brush With Covid-19?
In January, this year, I wrote a post called Mule Trains Between Liverpool And Norwich, where I went between Liverpool and Sheffield on a train formed of of several Class 153 trains.
I didn’t think of it, at the time, I wrote the post, but at Manchester Piccadilly station, the train filled up with a large number of Chinese students returning to University.
The students were happy and laughing, but you wouldn’t have complained about them, but there must have been twenty taking most of the available seats in my carriage. I shared a table with three!
At the time, Covid-19 had hardly started to invade the UK, with most cases starting in March.
But, after hearing someone’s story on the radio yesterday, I wonder about the health of those students.
I certainly, didn’t catch the covids seriously after that train journey and haven’t had the virus since, to my knowledge. But thinking back I may have felt unwell the next day.
But after reading the scientific paper from the University of Padua, that I wrote about in Risk of COVID-19 In Celiac Disease Patients, perhaps I was protected by a natural immunity provided by being a coeliac on a long-term gluten-free diet.
As my father said, I was born lucky!
Risk Of COVID-19 In Celiac Disease Patients
The title of this post, is the same as that of this paper on the US National Library of Medicine, which is from the University of Padua in Italy.
This is an extract from the paper.
Among the 171 patients included in our registry and on gluten free diet from at least six months, we contacted 138 CeD subjects (80.7%), aged 41.3 years old (SD 14.9), 73.9% were females on a gluten-free diet from a mean of 6.6 years (SD 6.0). Two patients had a diagnosis of refractory celiac disease type one and one of refractory celiac disease type 2. Among them, none reported to have been diagnosed with COVID-19, whereas 19 CeD patients experienced flu-like symptoms with 1 of them having undergone a negative naso-pharyngeal swab.
This is another sentence, summing up the study.
In this analysis we report a real life “snapshot” of a cohort of CeD patients during the SARS-CoV-2 outbreak in Italy, all followed in one tertiary centre in a red area of Northern Italy. Our data show, in accordance with Emmi et al., the absolute absence of COVID-19 diagnosis in our population, although 18 subjects experienced flu-like symptoms with only one having undergone naso-pharyngeal swab.
That is very firm and the report finishes with this sentence.
We only evaluated patients on a gluten free diet, so far no data on the risk at the time of diagnosis can be extrapolated from this study. Long-term clinical and epidemiological studies in celiac disease will be of great utility in the field but these preliminary data seem to suggest that CeD patients are not at higher risk of COVID-19.
Note.
- SARS-CoV-2 causes Covid-19.
- All their patients were suffering from coeliac disease and were on a gluten-free diet for more than six months.
I’m no medic, but I’m a seventy-three-year-old man with coeliac disease on a gluten-free diet.
I shall be sticking to my diet, in addition to social distancing.
A London Mongrel Gets Ready For Christmas
I constantly, refer to myself as a London Mongrel, as my father did.
This extract from a previous post, explains why I do.
On the other hand, I’m a London Mongrel of German Jewish and French Huguenot roots, with quarters of stubborn Devonian and solid Northants yeoman stock thrown in. A large proportion of my ancestors are also real East Enders and of course my father was a genuine Cockney.
The older I get, the more I think, the Devonian genes of my Dalston-born maternal grandmother are asserting themselves.
I was going to my son’s house for Christmas Dinner, but we felt last night, that it was best to call it off, as although, what we had planned would have been within the rules, it would be better not to take any chances.
Yesterday, there was an article in The Times about how Michelin-starred chefs were doing Christmas meals in a box for home warming through!
So last night, I bought one for sixty-one pounds from Roasted by Jack and Scott.
I’ve already got the beer in, as this picture shows.
But then it’s all gluten-free, low-alcohol beer from Adnams, that tastes just like the halves from the same brewery, that my father used to buy for me sixty years ago.
My father didn’t want me to be the alcoholic his father was, so he introduced me to beer in social settings at an early age and now at seventy-three, I can honestly say, that, there are few times in my past, where I’ve got really drunk. So thank you, Dad!
But then my father was unconventional and didn’t follow the rules.
A year or so ago, I was reminded of a story about my father by someone I was at school with at Minchenden.
My father had ordered a new Vanden Plas Princess 1100 from a garage near the school. So one morning over breakfast, he asked the seventeen-year-old me, if I wouldn’t mind picking up the car after school and bring it home.
So after school, I picked up the car and took it home.
I can’t remember, if I gave any of my school-mates a lift. But I may have done!
Football
The one problem, I have is not being able to watch Premier League football on television, except on Match of the Day.
The Premier League have sold the Christmas rights to Amazon, which is a company, I don’t do business with!
Anyway, as the pictures come by broadband, I doubt I’d be able to watch it, as my broadband is crap.
BT told my MP, it’s because I’m too close to the exchange!
Conclusion
I’ll be OK. But then like my father, my sons and my granddaughter, we all seem happy in our own company.
I am also lucky in being coeliac on a gluten-free diet!
The more I research my health, the more I’m convinced that my genes have given me a strong immune system and that is protecting me from the covids.
But then, self-isolating by habit is not a bad trait in these terrible times.
Covid: Genes Hold Clues To Why Some People Get Severely Ill
The title of this post, is the same as that of this article on the BBC.
This is the opening paragraph.
Why some people with coronavirus have no symptoms and others get extremely ill is one of the pandemic’s biggest puzzles.
It is now less of a puzzle, thanks to research led by the University of Edinburgh.
These paragraphs explain the methodology.
Scientists looked at the DNA of patients in more than 200 intensive care units in UK hospitals.
They scanned each person’s genes, which contain the instructions for every biological process – including how to fight a virus.
Their genomes were then compared with the DNA of healthy people to pinpoint any genetic differences, and a number were found – the first in a gene called TYK2.
One of the other genes mentioned is IFNAR2, where this was said.
Variations in a gene called IFNAR2 were also identified in the intensive care patients.
IFNAR2 is linked to a potent anti-viral molecule called interferon, which helps to kick-start the immune system as soon as an infection is detected.
It’s thought that producing too little interferon can give the virus an early advantage, allowing it to quickly replicate, leading to more severe disease.
I know a bit about interferon and I must admit I’ve made a bit of profit on shares in Synairgen, which are linking interferon with an inhaler.
I then typed “coeliac disease and interferon” into Google and found this article on The Lancet, which is entitled Onset Of Coeliac Disease and Interferon Treatment.
My medical knowledge is very limited, but it does appear that if you are coeliac on a gluten-free diet, you don’t get any problems, with interferon.
The plot thickens!
Not for nothing, do some doctors call coeliac disease, the Many-Headed Hydra.
Why I’ll Delay Having The Coronavirus Vaccine
The vaccines are coming for the covids, but I won’t be having a jab, if one is offered to me, in the first round. I may not be offered one, as I am only 73 and in good health.
But there are many out there, who need the vaccine more than I do, who will be given lower priority than myself.
So I’ll wait!
I am also a diagnosed coeliac on a gluten-free diet and my statistical researches and news reports, show that communities and groups with high levels of undiagnosed coeliacs have suffered badly from the covids.
These communities and groups include.
- Anybody born before 1960, as there was no test for coeliac disease in children before then.
- Ashkenazi Jews. My coeliac genes come from an ancestor in this group.
- Irish
- Caribbean. West Africans have a tendency to coeliac disease and what better way to bring it out, than starve them on slave ships and feed them on only bread and water.
I have also found a research paper, that shows, that India could now experience a coeliac disease epidemic, caused by modern strains of wheat. See Coeliac Disease: Can We Avert The Impending Epidemic In India?
Coeliacs on a gluten-free diet, are an interesting group, in that according to peer-reviewed research by Joe West of Nottingham University, they are 25 % less likely to suffer from cancer.
How can one disease protect you from another?
My coeliac disease was indicated by low-levels of B12, as gluten was damaging my gut and stopping it absorbing vital vitamins. By removing the gluten from my diet, my B12 levels returned to normal.
So it’s the diet that protects my health.
If you think, you are coeliac, don’t be put off by horror stores of multiple endoscopies and the difficulty of sticking to a gluten-free diet. I may have been one of the first individuals tested, by the current genetic method, which is now used by most GPs. A blood sample is sent off for a test and that is generally all that is done in most cases. I heard in 48 hours.
So why is it beneficial in the case of cancer?
It can only be, that with all those vitamins, coeliacs on a gluten-free diet have a very healthy immune system.
So does, this immune system, help protect coeliacs from the covids?
Until proven otherwise, my statistical research, thinks it does!
So I believe, that I can afford to wait.
Has Good Project Management Helped The UK Get The Vaccine Early?
Professor Van-Tam, this morning on BBC Breakfast, praised the planning of the drug companies and the various health bodies in charge of certification of the vaccines.
As someone, who was at the heart of the Project Management Revolution in the 1970s and 1980s, this cheers me.
Looking back, my biggest contribution to project management, was to prove that you didn’t need to use a large mainframe computer and software would work on a small desk-sized machine and ultimately on a personal computer, thus bringing project management to everyone.
Second Time Around For A Lockdown
What is different this time around, is that I’ve had three months practice and I believed it would come, so I stocked up with essentials.
My Dalstonista grandmother regretted in the Great War, she didn’t stock up, so wasn’t caught out in the Second, with a hundredweight of both jam and sugar in the cellar.
My essentials are a bit different.
- Adnams Beer – 0.5 % alcohol.
- Tins of sardines in tomato.
- Gluten-free pasta
- Muesli
- Pots of porridge.
- Pots of M & S luxury honey & ginger yoghurt. For adding to fruit, muesli and as a pasta sauce.
- Ready meals in the freezer.
I would assume, I can get gluten-free bread, bananas, milk and eggs, when I need them.
Gloria Gaynor’s song is in my brain.
Le Pain Quotidien Has Reopened
This is good for coeliacs, as they do reasonable gluten-free food.
I can also get a 73 bus directly to Goodge Street station, where there is a particularly good Le Pain Quotidien, close to a Marks & Spencer food store and a Rymans.
What more could I want?
Note.
- I caught the bus close to my house and sat in the tail-gunner’s seat.
- The 73 bus has now been rerouted down Tottenham Court Road.
- The green-glazed building is University College Hospital. I now have a direct bus to the hospital, where I sometimes go for appointments.
- Tottenham Court Road is now two-way for buses, cyclists and taxis.
I shall use that Le Pain Quotidien more often.
Screening For Coeliac Disease
People ask me if they should be screened for coeliac disease.
This page on Coeliac UK is entitled Screening For Coeliac Disease.
They quote this advice from NICE.
NICE has advised that people with close relatives (for example father, mother, son, daughter, brother, sister) are at increased risk of coeliac disease and so should be considered for screening. This would involve having a blood test in the first instance.
That sounds fairly sensible to me.
Coronavirus: Can I Be Infected By Touching Surfaces?
The title of this post is the same as that of an article on The Sunday Times.
The article is worth reading.
These two paragraphs some up the latest thoughts on infection from surfaces.
Monica Gandhi, a professor of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, told the US science website Nautilus that there had been “a lot of fear” at the beginning of the pandemic about transmission of the virus if people touched their faces after contact with metal, plastic or other contaminated surfaces, collectively known to scientists as fomites.
Yet the evidence suggests that the virus on most surfaces is not strong enough to make people ill. “It’s not through surfaces,” she added. “It’s from being close to someone spewing virus from their nose and mouth, without in most cases knowing they are doing so.”
I travel around the Underground a lot and I’m always masked, when I enter stations and usually use the hand-sanitisers, at least once on a trip. Most in London, seem to be acting similarly.
There has been no scares about using the Underground because of high-rates of the covids in recent months, that I can find.
More importantly, under a sub-title of Why Are Young Women The Targets Now?, this is the first paragraph.
The disease that ravaged care homes and turned the elderly into hermits for much of the spring has taken aim at different targets this autumn. Public Health England’s most recent statistics show that the 20-29 age group has had the most new cases since the end of June, followed closely by the 30-39 age group. In both those groups, more women are being infected than men.
This is paragraph is from the NHS web site.
Reported cases of coeliac disease are around 3 times higher in women than men. It can develop at any age, although symptoms are most likely to develop: during early childhood – between 8 and 12 months old, although it may take several years before a correct diagnosis is made.
Could this paragraph partly explain, the fact that women in their twenties and thirties are suffering from the covids?
Coeliac disease affects one in fifty of the population.
As a coeliac, it’s no hard task to stick to a gluten-free diet.
And I get the bonus of being 25 % less likely to suffer from cancer, according to peer-reviewed research from Nottingham University.
The Small Sign That Means So Much To A Coeliac
I’ve bought Marks & Spencer’s mackerel pate for any years.
It’s the first time, I’ve noticed the packaging has the gluten-free symbol.
More please! My eyesight needs glasses to read the allergies!
The Anonymous Widower 