Archive for the Covid-19 Category

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Third Covid Booster

Posted in Biographical, Covid-19 with tags , , on December 30, 2023 by telescoper

Back in October, not long after I arrived in Barcelona, I got an email from the HSE saying that sixty-somethings such as myself should get a seasonal Covid-19 booster shot (and possibly a flu jab too). It is over a year since I had my last booster. The procedural difference this time is that, unlike the mass vaccinations of previous years, the injections are being given at local pharmacies with limited capacity rather than large vaccination centres, so I had to book well ahead to find a time and a place. It wasn’t easy to find a slot, actually, even at two months’ notice, but with a bit of help from a nice lady at the HSE I managed.

And so it came to pass that yesterday I had my third booster shot (Pfizer), which means I’ve had five injections in all. Apart from the usual slight numbness in my left arm, I had no after side affects. I’m glad I managed to get the booster, as a large number of people I know have either got Covid-19 or have had it recently, many of them having picked it up at conferences and work events where face coverings are no longer worn by most people. Some people I know have had Covid-19 four or five times now but, as far as I’m aware I still haven’t had it. I may of course have had a mild infection, without significant symptoms, but I’ve certainly never tested positive for it.

There has been a rapid increase in Covid and ‘flu cases in Ireland recently, but the severity of the situation with respect to the coronavirus is hard to gauge, as there is no longer any routine testing. Take -up of booster vaccines in Ireland has been slow, but I don’t know whether that is increased reluctance or just that it’s difficult to get an appointment. In any case the seasonal booster is generally only available for people over the age of 50 (unless there are other medical reasons).

Finally, let me take this opportunity to wish everyone who has come down with Covid-19 recently a speedy recovery and a healthy New Year!

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R.I.P. Alexei Starobinsky (1948-2023)

Posted in Covid-19, R.I.P., The Universe and Stuff with tags , , , on December 22, 2023 by telescoper
Alexei Starobinsky, pictured in 2013.

I’m very sorry, especially just before Christmas, to pass on the news of the death of Russian physicist and cosmologist Alexei Starobinsky who died yesterday (21st December 2023) of complications resulting from Covid-19. I heard this morning, but have been travelling all day and only just found time to write something in appreciation.

Starobinsky was one of the many academic descendants of the great Zeldovich; he did particularly important work on the physics of the early Universe in which field his ideas prefigured the theory that came to be known as cosmic inflation. Although Starobinsky’s seminal (1979) work on this topic was not well known outside the Soviet Union at the time Alan Guth wrote his paper on inflation (1981), it did later gained wider appreciation, and led to numerous awards, including the Gruber Prize in 2013 and the Kavli Prize in 2014 (together with Guth and Andrei Linde). 

I do have one rather fond personal memory of Starobinsky, from when we were coincidentally both visiting IUCAA in Pune at the same time back in the Nineties. We ended up going on a shopping trip together during which he revealed himself to be hopeless at the kind of light-hearted haggling that was the norm in the places we visited. He ended up paying way over the odds for everything he bought. He didn’t seem to mind though, and apparently found it all quite amusing. I only met him a few times and didn’t get to know him well at all, but he struck me as a very nice man as well as a fine physicist of the old-school Russian type.

Rest in peace, Alexei Alexandrovich Starobinsky (1948-2023).

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Covid-19 at NAM

Posted in Biographical, Covid-19 with tags , , on July 9, 2023 by telescoper

Public Service Announcement!

Last week’s UK National Astronomy Meeting in Cardiff was the biggest ever, and it was noticeable that very few people (less than 5%) were wearing face coverings at any point. It’s not surprising therefore that there have been reports of people testing positive for Covid-19. I don’t know how many cases have developed overall, but two people with whom I was in reasonably close contact during the conference have tested positive so, although I have no symptoms, I decided to test myself as a precaution.

Doing a test was more difficult than I thought as antigen test kits are in short supply in Maynooth these days. I tried two supermarkets and a pharmacist to no avail, and then someone in the pharmacist said she’d seen them in Aldi so I bought some there.

The result was negative:

I’ll do another one tomorrow morning just in case.

If you happened to be at NAM I’d encourage you also to get a test. If you have done one already and tested positive I’d encourage you to contact the Local Organizing Committee, who are monitoring the situation, either by email (contact details here) or via the anonymous reporting form here.

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Covid-19 in Ireland – The Last Post

Posted in Biographical, Covid-19 with tags , , , on March 1, 2023 by telescoper

On February 29th 2020, Ireland identified its first case of the novel coronavirus, SARS CoV2, the virus that causes COVID-19. The World Health Organization declared the outbreak a pandemic on March 11th. On March 12th 2020 Schools and Colleges in Ireland were closed.

Since then, I have posted regular updates of the number of cases of COVID-19, initially daily and more recently weekly as the frequency of official announcements on the data hub decreased. The plotting the latest figures actually became a sort of ritual for me over this time and I even found mildly therapeutic.

Now, however, three full years have passed- can it really be three full years? – have since the (official) arrival of the pandemic in Ireland and, with the situation looking stable, I think it’s time to stop posting these updates. I made the decision to stop at the end of February 2023 unless something drastic happened to change my mind. Ironically, I just heard this morning that one of my colleagues has a new case of Covid-19 but that hasn’t changed my mind.  I hope this makes it clear that I don’t think the pandemic is over: there are many people still suffering from new infections and the effects of “Long Covid”. I just don’t see the need to continue my updates here.

I will leave the data online here in case anyone is interested in the numbers, but I won’t be posting any further updates.

So here are the final graphs from me.  The present 7-day moving average of new cases is just 89.6 per week, down from 103.0 last week and 36 deaths were recorded in the same period.

 

On a linear scale the cases look like this

The numbers for deaths on a linear scale look like this

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Post-Christmas Post

Posted in Biographical, Covid-19, Maynooth with tags , on December 29, 2022 by telescoper

Today is (apparently) 29th December and this morning I actually got some post. Most of it was sent in the first week of December but has taken about three weeks to get here. Among other things I got: the pension statement I was waiting for (dated 2nd December), a cheque for 40 quid for winning the Times Literary Supplement Crossword Prize (posted 8th December), and a royalty statement from OUP dated, somewhat surprisingly, December 23rd. I still haven’t received the Christmas edition of Private Eye though.

I took a walk this afternoon and was quite surprised on the way to see the Maynooth Airport Hopper bus. This has been suspended since the onset of the pandemic way back in 2020 but now I find it has recently resumed. That will make it much easier to get to and from Dublin Airport if I ever have to do that. I used this service very frequently when I had to commute between Cardiff and Maynooth and don’t know how I would have coped without it. It’s good to see things gradually returning.

The bug I picked up before Christmas is still present but more of an inconvenience than anything more serious. I’ve done no fewer than ten antigen tests and never got a positive result so I’m pretty confident it’s not Covid-19. I haven’t posted anything on this blog for a few days but interestingly I’ve still been getting over 500 reads a day over the Christmas period.

I usually update my Covid-19 figures every week but no data have been recently since 20th December. Testing numbers will be pretty much meaningless because of the Christmas holiday but I’d expect to see a rise in infection levels as we head into the New Year. There are signs that Covid-19 cases are rising steeply once more – there are currently over 700 people in hospital in Ireland with Covid-19 – but I doubt we’re going to see any further lockdown measures heading into the new term.

That reminds me that I foolishly offered to do a couple of revision lectures ahead of my 2nd year Vector Calculus examination (which takes place on January 7th). The first of these will be on 3rd January which doesn’t give me much time to think about what to do. In view of my continuing low-level lurgy I think to minimize the chances of infecting anyone I think I’ll just go in, do my lectures, and come home again.

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Pre-Christmas Lurgy

Posted in Biographical, Covid-19 on December 17, 2022 by telescoper

Well, this is just great. No sooner does term end than I come down with some sort of bug. It started yesterday, but today I’ve been in bed nearly all day with a nasty cough, fever, fatigue, and my joints aching (more than usual, I mean).

I’ve done an antigen test, which was negative, but I’ve heard it can take several days for Covid-19 to manifest itself that way. I’ll do another tomorrow.

I hope whatever it is subsides by Christmas as I have some serious culinary self-indulgence planned. At the moment, I’ve got no appetite for food at all.

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1000 Days of Pandemic

Posted in Covid-19 on November 30, 2022 by telescoper

I was updating my Covid-19 page just now when I realized that I have now accumulated 1000 days of data. Nowadays, figures aren’t announced daily but once a week so the ritual of updating the numbers is less frequent now than it was last year, and testing is done less intensively than earlier in the pandemic, but I’ve nevertheless continued plotting the graphs.

The latest summary graphs are here.

On a linear scale the cases look like this:

The numbers for deaths on a linear scale look like this:

The current 7-day average number of new cases per day is 246.1, which is reasonably high despite the relatively low levels of PCR testing being done, but the thing I feared most at the start of this Semester – a big surge in cases – just hasn’t happened. Cases have been roughly stable and even slightly declining since September. More importantly the number of Covid-19 related deaths has remained low.

I think I’ll keep updating my page until the end of the year but if nothing dramatic happens over Christmas I’ll stop. Covid-19 hasn’t gone anyway, but it seems to have entered a phase in which it is no longer a large-scale public health emergency.

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The Final Third

Posted in Biographical, Covid-19, Maynooth on November 20, 2022 by telescoper

There are now precisely four weeks to go until the end of teaching term at Maynooth University. Since the FIFA World Cup starts today it seems apt to borrow a sporting cliché and describe this as the final third. Miraculously, given that I’m having to fit 12 weeks of teaching into 11 week term for the first years, I’m almost on schedule with both my modules but I have this weekend come down with something which may affect the rest of term. I don’t think it’s Covid-19 – at least the antigen test I did yesterday was negative – but whatever it is I hope it doesn’t get worse. All the teaching staff in the Department of Theoretical Physics already have very heavy teaching loads already so we simply don’t have any spare staff to cover my lectures if I can’t deliver them. I don’t know what I’ll do in that case. I suppose I could recycle some of last year’s videos, or record some new ones from my sick bed. Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that. It may be just a cold.

Anyway, what was until last week an unusually mild autumn has turned into something much more wintry. The sudden cold snap has set off my arthritis, which is an additional complication on top of whatever bug I’ve got.

Evidence of the Berry Phase

Outside temperatures have plummeted so I have mobilized my bird feeders to take care of the feathered friends in the garden. Fortunately there is ready-made food at this time of the year in the form of berries on the Cotoneaster bushes. I watched a song thrush for about ten minutes tucking in yesterday. Pigeons like them too. The birds usually don’t strip all the berries so there’ll be food of that form for a while but some of the smaller birds can’t eat them so I’ve put out seed and peanuts too.

UPDATE: Monday 21st November. It appears it was just a cold, or something else very mild, as I felt much better this morning and went to work as normal.

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Study Break Time

Posted in Biographical, Covid-19, Education, Irish Language, Maynooth with tags , , , , on October 29, 2022 by telescoper

Yesterday my Vector Calculus students gave me the above Hallowe’en gift, which was nice of them, although I did chastise them for missing the apostrophe. Of course Hallowe’en itself is not until Monday, but that is a Bank Holiday in Ireland and the rest of next week is Study Week so there are no lectures or tutorials.

Hallowe’en is, in pagan terminology, Samhain. This, a cross-quarter day – roughly halfway between the Autumnal Equinox and the Winter Solstice, represents the start of winter (“the dark half of the year“) in the Celtic calendar. Samhain is actually November 1st but in Celtic tradition the day begins and ends at sunset, so the celebrations begin on the evening of 31st.

Incidentally, Samhain is pronounced something like “sawin”. The h after the m denotes lenition of the consonant (which in older forms of Irish would have been denoted by a dot on top of the m) so when followed by a broad vowel the m is pronounced like the English “w”; when followed by a slender vowel or none “mh” is pronounced “v” or in other words like the German “w” (which makes it easier to remember). I only mention this because I will be resuming my Irish language education after the break with classes every week for the rest of the academic year. Hopefully I’ll make some progress.

This term has been very tiring so far. I have to teach a very big first-year class this year which meant adding another tutorial group. Although I stepped down as Head of Department at the end of August the powers that be delayed appointing a replacement until well into term which caused a lot of unnecessary stress for everyone. Once we got under way, though, everything has settled down reasonably well.

One thing I was a bit worried about this term was that the resumption of in-person teaching would lead to a surge in Covid-19 cases, not only in Maynooth but across the country. However there isn’t any evidence of significant increases in the latest figures (updated weekly nowadays, on Wednesdays):

Some students have come down with Covid-19 of course but not in the numbers I had feared. Also despite accommodation shortages and other difficulties, attendance at lectures and tutorials has so far held up well.

I like having the study break. I’ve never previously worked at an institution that has such a thing, but I think 12 weeks of non-stop teaching would be extremely exhausting. Anyway, after the break we have a further six weeks of teaching until December 16th, which is the official end of term, but for now I have Monday off completely and the rest of the week without teaching duties. That’s not to say I’ll be on holiday though. I have a number of tasks to catch up on, including setting examination papers for January…

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Second Booster

Posted in Biographical, Covid-19 with tags , , , , on September 22, 2022 by telescoper

Today I took a trip out to Punchestown Racecourse for my second Covid-19 booster jab. The possibility of booking one of these opened up for my age group (55+) a few weeks ago and I booked one straightaway, but I was advised to postpone it because of a mystery ailment. That now having cleared up I decided to have it done today, ahead of the full start of teaching next week. In the meantime the booster process has been opened up to mere youngsters (50+) but it was easy to get an appointment.

As far as I know I have ever caught Covid-19, but I thought it wise not to take any chances with the new influx of students and the possibility of increased infection levels. My first booster was on 15th December 2021, so protection is likely to have waned considerably since then. As you can see, new cases have been falling recently in Ireland but the level of new infections (7-day average around 230 per day) is still quite high:

My previous jabs were at City West so I was a little surprised when I registered for my second booster that I was directed to Punchestown. It’s about the same distance from Maynooth to either venue, though, and when I got to the racecourse it was very quiet and I was in and out within half an hour (half of which was the 15 minute “recovery” period). The racecourse – used for steeplechases – is heaving at the time of the annual Punchestown Festival, but fortunately I didn’t have to dodge either crowds or horses, though it was raining heavily.

This time I had the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine (“Comirnaty”), same as my two original shots; my first booster was of the Moderna (“SpikeVax”) variety.

I’ll be working from home this afternoon in case of problems (though I didn’t experience any serious issues with previous jabs). My next lecture is at 11am tomorrow (Friday) so I should be fine by then even if I experience any side-effects this afternoon.

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