Even less, really. If VCO2 ~ 200 ml/min then that's 0.89 mmol/min or 0.39 g/min; so 24 g/hr. Roughly 2-3 cents/hr if your costs are accurate.

Thank-you for pointing this out. I work for NHS Scotland and it is a total bugbear of mine that most national news sources assume NHS = UK wide. All four devolved nations have different healthcare priorities and different means of achieving these. For all the bad things said about the SNP, they are the only true social democratic party at the moment and given they have a majority in a parliament specifically designed to make a majority nigh-on-impossible, must be doing something right. They have specifically stated that there will be no private outsourcing of the NHS in Scotland.

Anyone been to Shetland? Look at Runway 09/27 and the main A970 road on Streetview - straight onto the runway!

There's no such thing as "UK law"; there's different (but similar) systems in England and Wales and Northern Ireland (both common law jurisdictions). Scotland has a mixed civil/common law system and its own institutions and methods.

Correct. No punitive damages under England and Wales or Scots law.

Not really true as it depends on where you live. Sinusitis is caused by the same respiratory tract pathogens that cause other respiratory tract infections, such as pneumonia, although the majority are viral and self-limiting. Most microbiology labs know the relative rates of infection with specific organisms and the levels of resistance to various antibiotics. Hence, where I work, the common organisms are H. influenzae, S. pneumoniae and M. catarrhalis, for which over 80% are sensitive to amoxicillin or doxycycline. Adding in a bit of beta-lactamase inhibition with co-amoxiclav doesn't really help. My opinion, for simple acute sinusitis, is that there's no benefit in antibiotics. They may shorten the duration of illness, but at the risk of antibiotic side-effects, which are more common than people think. This is backed up by Cochrane. Don't you just love Evidence Based Medicine!

Polio still exists, try going to a hospital in Sub-Saharan Africa. Eminently vaccine preventable, just politics unfortunately. Smallpox was declared eradicated in the late 70s.

CF is caused by defects in the CFTR protein, an ion channel on the surface of many cells, including the cells that line the respiratory tract. Basically, it creates an osmotic potential by moving chloride and other ions from the cell to the outside, so water flows out of the cell into the mucous in the airways, making it less viscous. I'm an anaesthetist, not a respiratory physician, but as far as I understand, in the F508 mutation (most common ~70%), CFTR doesn't even make it onto the cell membrane. In the G551D mutation, CFTR reaches the cell membrane, but degrades more rapidly than normal. Ivacaftor acts to increase the length of time the faulty protein stays on the surface until it's degraded. Hence why it's of no benefit in the most common mutation.