12 week shielding letter - when do I go back to work?

unforeseen

It's an arbitrary line between vulnerable and extremely vulnerable. 
I am shielding because I am on immunosuppresants for my psoriasis. On the actual scoring system used by BAD (British Association of Dermatologists) the drugs I take only put me as vulnerable. What actually tips me into the higher group is high blood pressure. 

hollydays

Fire_Fox said:

Grumpy_chap said:

i am surprised and have virtually the same question as my Mum received a shielding letter on Friday this week (1st May - dated 28th April), which sort of implied she needed to stay in for 12 weeks from then.  She has already done 6 weeks of near-virtual lock-down.  Is it reasonable that these shielding letters have taken so long to print and send?  Surely, if my Mum was that vulnerable, she would have suffered in the first 6 weeks before the letter arrived???

We have found that, even without the shielding letters, both Mum and Mother-in-Law have been absolutely terrified and not going out anyway, but they then get lonely and down-in-the-dumps, so it does not do their overall well-being that much good.  We have been suggesting it is good for them to just get a stroll round the block at a quiet time for some excercise and fresh-air and to preserve their sanity.

Identification has been the limiting step, not printing and sending of letters.

The powers-that-be were aware the initial list of those needing to 'shield' would be imperfect/ incomplete. So GPs (family doctors) were asked to manually trawl through their list of registered patients and add in anyone that did not get flagged up by the initial national search of NHS records.

In practice for many people there is not that much difference between 'shielding' and strictly adhering to the 'stay at home'/ hand hygiene/ 'social distancing' rules.

Your mother and mother-in-law are very fortunate to have people around them that are looking after their mental wellbeing. Continue to encourage them to be physically active on a daily basis, to get enough sunlight for vitamin D3, to practice stress management or relaxation techniques, to meet or exceed ALL our official healthy eating guidelines (very few know what these are). Meal planning and cooking can be time consuming ... in a good way! The two ladies might even work together on this.

These are proactive steps towards a strong immune system as well as mental health - once they get 'on board' many find this element of self-control enormously helpful in a world of uncertainty and turbulence. 

HTH!

On the subject of a strong immune system. Fire_fox . "Loss of smell, he said, might also indicate a robust immune response which has been localized to the nasal passages, limiting effects elsewhere in the body." https://health.ucsd.edu/news/releases/Pages/2020-04-27-loss-of-smell-associated-with-milder-clinical-course-in-covid-19.aspx