Brain fog - an enduring cause of frustration

My brain fog goes on.

It varies markedly from day to day.

Recently, for several weeks, it has been particularly frustrating.

Sometimes it feels like trying to reason in a sieve. Pieces of information seem to have "disappeared" so that they can't be retrieved.

At other times it feels as if I have "clear" ideas in my mind but something in my brain refuses to work to bring them together to produce anything worthwhile in writing whether a blog post on this blog, on the Surviving Boris blog or on the Corona Shock blog.

I also want to make progress on the Covid Inquiries blog but worthwhile content somehow refuses to flow.

I know that the issues I am trying to explore are enormously complex but the brain fog makes things many times harder than I feel that they should be.

Plodding on seems to be the only way.

Given the passage of time it seems likely that I can't expect the "brain fog" to get better.

The best option available to me is to take all available steps to avoid a further Covid-19 infection.

"Brain fog" goes on and gets no less frustrating

My post-Covid "brain fog" goes on.

It is hugely frustrating.

The fluctuating inability to connect up ideas and facts makes the analysis of Covid-19, and criminal liability for the Covid-19 epidemic in the United Kingdom, an excruciatingly slow process.

Things that I would have expected to take a few hours take days or weeks.

Some things just don't get done. They seem beyond my mental capacity at a particular moment in time.

The last few weeks have been particularly frustrating. I know I've been trying to analyse complex issues drawing on facts from diverse sources but I don't feel that that should have been beyond me in the way that has been playing out over the last few weeks.

I just keep plodding on, reading the material that seems to me to be relevant, drafting fragments of thought and, after a potentially interminable delay, putting a document or blog post together in some hopefully coherent form.

Is it safe for me to be given the Covid-19 vaccine?

On 2nd December 2020 Dr. June Raine, Chief Executive of the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) and Professor Munir Pirmohamed, chair of an expert working group (of the Commission on Human Medicines) advising the MHRA held a press conference to announce that the MHRA had recommended that the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine against Covid-19 should be given an emergency authorisation in the UK.

They were accompanied by Professor Wei Shen Lim chair of the subcommittee on Covid-19 vaccination of the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI ) whose contributions were not relevant to the remainder of this post.

A video of the press conference is online here:

Coronavirus data briefing (2 December 2020)

One comment from Professor Pirmohamed stood out for me.

Beginning at around 9:40 on the video Professor Pirmohamed stated the following:

"The committee also considered that no specific precautions were required on administration of this vaccine in people who already have had Covid-19 and no testing is required before receiving the vaccine.”

 Professor Pirmohamed's statement puzzled me and worried me.

The question in my mind was what data existed to show that the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine was safe and effective if given to people like me who might have had Covid-19 but didn't know for sure whether they had had Covid-19 or not.

Let me try to explain why I was both puzzled and worried.

The purpose of the Pfizer/BioNTech clinical trial was to show that the vaccine was both effective (in preventing Covid-19) and safe.

That led me to the assumption that people who had had Covid-19 were not recruited into the trial.

I found confirmation of that in a document online here:

REG 174 INFORMATION FOR UK HEALTHCARE PROFESSIONALS 

On page 7 of that document, in a section entitled "Efficacy in participants 16 years of age and older" it is stated,

"The study excluded participants ... who had previous clinical or microbiological diagnosis of COVID-19 disease."

If we assume that my Covid-like symptoms in March were indeed due to Covid-19 then people like me were excluded from recruitment to the trial.

In other words, there is no evidence that the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine confers any benefit on me.

Nor is there any evidence that it is safe for use in people like me who may have had Covid-19.

So I am puzzled. 

Why would the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency grant an authorisation for use of a product in people who had had (or might have had) Covid-19 when they had (so it seems to me) no evidence that it conferred any benefit nor any evidence that it was safe?

I am also worried. 

Hundreds of thousands of people who had had Covid-19 or might have had Covid-19 (but were never tested) are likely to be given a vaccine that confers no benefit on them and might (because there is no data on safety in that group) cause serious adverse effects in that group.

Tomorrow vaccination begins.

I have serious concerns that the vaccination process is beginning on an unsound basis that could put at risk the health of hundreds of thousands of recipients of the vaccine - those who have had or may have had Covid-19.

Why give a vaccine to people for whom there is no demonstrated benefit?

Why give a vaccine to people when it is unknown whether or not it is safe to be given in that group?

If the MHRA has data that the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine confers benefit on people who have had or may have had Covid-19 then that data should be published without delay.

If no such evidence exists then people who have had Covid-19 or may have had Covid-19 should be excluded from the vaccination program using the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine.

A condition should be applied to the authorisation for the Pfizer-BioNTech to the effect that the vaccine should only be given to people not previously infected with the SARS-CoV-2 virus. For example, people who have had a negative antibody test for the SARS-CoV-2 virus (using an antibody test of known high sensitivity and specificity) within the previous, say, 24 or 48 hours.

 

Post-Covid "brain fog" is intensely frustrating

As time has gone by since my last post on this blog several months ago I've swung towards the view that the fever I had in March 2020 was indeed Covid-19.

My main reason for that conclusion is a variety of symptoms of the "long Covid" type that have fluctuated from day to day over the last few months.

Particularly frustrating among them is "brain fog".

Sometimes it feels as if I simply can't get my brain into gear. It feels like walking in very sticky treacle - nothing moves.

For example, a couple of minutes ago when I had decided to compose this post I couldn't retrieve the term "brain fog" from my brain! I got as far as "brain something" and the rest of the term simply wouldn't come.

At other times it feels as if my brain is racing but the thoughts won't connect up.

It's frustrating.

Reading and retaining complex information of the kind I need to write posts for the Surviving Boris and Corona Shock blogs is a slow and frustrating process. On some days "brain fog" makes progress zero or negligible.

Finally, however, I think I have some clarity about the failures at the World Health Organisation that allowed the Covid-19 pandemic to happen. You can read about that at the Corona Shock blog.

I also feel I have increasing clarity about the failures by Boris Johnson, Chris Whitty and Patrick Vallance in January 2020 which allowed Covid-19 to enter and become established in the UK. You can read about that topic on the Surviving Boris blog.

[This post was edited on 7th December 2020 to add the final word "blog" above.]

Have I had coronavirus or merely a stinking cold?

Readers of this blog, assuming that there will be any, may wonder what the reasons for the silence since 18th March may have been.

I've had what may have been coronavirus or (more likely?) may have been a stinking cold.

Either way, I haven't been too well.

Symptoms included a (very) runny nose, cough, fever (not measured but paracetamol resulted in drenching sweats at times), some muscle aches but not the hammer blow aches that some accounts of coronavirus have led me to expect.

So, like thousands of others in the UK, I don't know whether I've had coronavirus or not.

Hopefully posts on this blog and the two other blogs that I set up on 18th March will now flow a little less sparsely than over the last few weeks.

Three new blogs on the Coronavirus epidemic

Today I'm starting three new blogs relating to the Coronavirus epidemic.

This blog aims to focus on practical questions about how to stay safe and stay alive in a situation of radical uncertainty.

The second blog focusses on bigger picture issues relating to how Boris Johnson and those advising him have handled (and are handling) the Coronavirus epidemic. That blog is called "Surviving Boris".

The third blog is called "Corona Shock" and attempts to scratch the surface of understanding the profound, indeed revolutionary, impact of the Coronavirus epidemic on life across the planet.