Judge For Yourself

The Daily Mail is carrying a story about Dr Clare Gerada and her experience with Coronavirus. What she says is that she was in New York for a conference and just as she left, New York had declared a state of emergency due to coronavirus. On the Monday she worked as normal with a slight cough. Tuesday she felt very unwell and, unable to get through to 111 went to a coronavirus testing pod. Initially, they refused to test, we are told, because she hadn't been somewhere seen at that time as a threat.

The ex Chairwoman of the Royal College of GP's knew she had coronavirus though, as she never gets ill. She then goes on to describe the horrendous experiences she had as the virus ran through her, including the very rare sore throat. As you can guess from the story being out there, this plucky 60 year old fought it off and is alive and well today.

There are no dates given in the article, so let me fill in some detail. New York declared a state of emergency on 7th March when they had 89 confirmed cases. This means the onset of symptoms occurred on Tuesday 10th March. As today is the 17th, I will assume the story was compiled yesterday, the 16th.

So, our good doctor, ex leader of the GP's union, caught coronavirus in a city of 8.5 million where 89 of them had been confirmed as infected. Let's ignore the going to work with a slight cough, physician first heal thyself, and concentrate on the experience. She caught, suffered immensely and completely recovered in six days.

She went to a pod for testing. The article is very careful here. It says she was initially refused, but she knew she had coronavirus because she is never unwell. I wonder what she would say to a patient running with that line. It doesn't say she was ever tested and I don't know why they would relent. Plus Public Health England guidelines are that if she had the virus the whole pod needs decontaminating.

Plus their first reaction would have been to give her a phone to speak to 111!

So, as you can see none of this story hangs together very well. It seems likely that she is not amongst the 'confirmed' and probably had something else, despite never being ill before.

As an interesting technical detail, which is pertinent when we are talking about the testimony of a doctor, there is also something very casual about her use of language. In a study of the Covid 19 outbreak in China, the analysis states that persons found to have coronavirus almost definitely didn't have Covid 19. Dr. Gerada repeatedly refers to having coronavirus and doesn't mention Covid 19.

Perhaps she is unaware of the research, or doesn't think it matters when addressing the general public. Personally, I like my doctors to be precise and correct in their pronouncements. I figure it kinda goes with the territory.

I leave it up to you as to what you think of this story of an ex union official.