Relaxation of Restrictions, Part III - **Read OP for Mod Warnings**

Beasty

I've just moved a number of posts to the General Covid thread

I am about to delete a number of other posts that do not belong in this forum, or indeed on the sits

Please stick to the topic of Restrictions and relaxation thereof

Princess Consuela Bananahammock

Goldengirl wrote: »

I made my point , not allowed?

Fair enough - I just thought you were disagreeing with me.

KrustyUCC

51 cases today

Good positive numbers again

Big thing to watch out for is clusters in nursing homes and meat factories

These numbers keep up government going to be under serious pressure to lift restrictions far earlier

yosemitesam1

marno21 wrote: »

Herd immunity is the only way out of this mess. Be it through vaccination or a sufficient amount of people contracting the virus and gaining immunity that way.

There have been at least 5 million infections worldwide and a large multiple of this would appear to have antibodies based on seroprevalence studies conducted to date. There has been no evidence yet to prove otherwise which is encouraging.

No country has achieved herd immunity to date, which requires (R0-1/R0) of the population to be infected. However, hard hit areas like NY have shown immunity levels of ~20%. This has a lag also due to the delay in the body producing antibodies and the lag that the study takes to complete. 20% does not provide sufficient population immunity to stop the virus but it does reduce the number of viable hosts that the virus can infect. The higher the percentage with antibodies, the more difficulty the virus has in finding hosts to infect, so the more with antibodies, the less likely the virus will spread as fast. At the start of this pandemic, it spread like wildfire due to 0% of the population having SARS-CoV-2 antibodies (the effect of other coronavirus antibodies being negated here).

Estimating herd immunity requirements by R0-1/R0 is a very very crude method and will overestimate the amount of infection to slow spread by an awful lot.
Everyone does not have the same potential for exposure, to get infected on exposure or to spread the virus post infection.

Herd suppression of covid will occur at much lower levels than 60-70% of the population having antibodies.

Ginger n Lemon

Dr Tony Holohan: 'We have effectively extinguished the virus from the community'

https://www.thejournal.ie/tony-holohan-community-transmission-5102798-May2020/

Must be reasonable to expect phase 4 & 5 to come in June.

Why dont they create the incentive for the public by saying "if cases keep reducing we will bring forward phase 3, 4, 5." Carrot on a stick works in most companies, why is it not trialled with the general public rather than asking to "cop on" and sit at home?

That is much more likely to work. Dont see anyone even considering sitting at home when its 21 degrees out there...

uli84

So we are pretty much at the pre-lockdown level of new cases and they wouldn’t let homeware shops open even with the social distancing. So what is it that we’re waiting for now as I lost the plot a little, pretty sure at some stage we were told That all we need to do is to have a bit of restrictions to “flatten the curve” but once it peaks around Easter time we’ll start getting back to “normal”. It’s now over a month after Easter and nothing much happened really.

In the meantime cancer screening services no longer reply to me that they will open as soon as safe but just yesterday I was informed that “ Unfortunately we have no date as to when screening will re-commence”

stephenjmcd

KrustyUCC wrote: »

51 cases today

Good positive numbers again

Big thing to watch out for is clusters in nursing homes and meat factories

These numbers keep up government going to be under serious pressure to lift restrictions far earlier

Yup, demand not there for testing either. They can't drag this out until August if we continue on the current trejectoty

lawrencesummers

When we get a handle on the clusters of cases that are still active, which has begun and should take 2 weeks we can expect sometime the week after the June bank holiday to be at single figure deaths and possibly zero cases.

Then the next problem is inward travel from the US and UK primarily, and keeping the country to the plans.

If we hit zero new Daily cases in mid July for successive days it will be a massive challenge to have anything expected to stay closed.

prunudo

At 51 cases it must be pretty non existent in the community. At the very least the 5km limit must be lifted before June 8th.

stephenjmcd

prunudo wrote: »

At 51 cases it must be pretty non existent in the community. At the very least the 5km limit must be lifted before June 8th.

I'd be surprised if this kept up if someone of the stages weren't merged, perhaps 3 and 4 into the same phase.

If they keep low for the next 2 weeks then theres going to be more pressure to open things up quicker

Blaze420

stephenjmcd wrote: »

I'd be surprised if this kept up if someone of the stages weren't merged, perhaps 3 and 4 into the same phase.

If they keep low for the next 2 weeks then theres going to be more pressure to open things up quicker

Absolutely, if we get to single figure infections the 3 weeks between phases goes out the window - the excuses for the length of our roadmap are running out fast

Birdie Num Num

prunudo wrote: »

At 51 cases it must be pretty non existent in the community. At the very least the 5km limit must be lifted before June 8th.

That’s 51 new cases. Going in the right direction yes but there are thousands of cases still in the community. We are about the same amount of active cases as we were at the end of March. That can’t be ignored.

vid36

Things are moving in a very positive direction, if this continues maybe skip the last few phases of the plan but definitely hold firm for the next month.

VonLuck

I can understand people's eagerness to lift restrictions, but you do realise we aren't even two days into the first phase, right? They are not going to be making any decisions on the relaxation of any restrictions until they see how the current phase pans out. Two weeks at the earliest.

Blaze420

VonLuck wrote: »

I can understand people's eagerness to lift restrictions, but you do realise we aren't even two days into the first phase, right? They are not going to be making any decisions on the relaxation of any restrictions until they see how the current phase pans out. Two weeks at the earliest.

The CMO came out today and basically stated that the virus is pretty much eliminated in community settings - in turn that means the risk of infection is extremely low ergo we accelerate a return to some sort of normal business.
Dragging the balls out of it until August helps nobody.

Wibbs

VonLuck wrote: »

I believe the construction is a big area to be monitored closely. I was out for a walk today and saw a big group of workers outside a Spar having their lunches huddled together.

If that doesn't result in a surge in cases over the next couple of weeks then I don't see why the future phases couldn't be implemented sooner.

Like you I would hope they will be monitored, as they're an obvious group for it, but I'm not so sure too many at the top are thinking like that. Hopefully someone is.

bush

I'm sick of this at this stage. According to the roadmap I can't work until the 20th of July and the virus is basically non existant. Depressing.

silverharp

We are better off than Italy now yet we are going to be months behind catching up to them in terms of getting things open.

road_high

bush wrote: »

I'm sick of this at this stage. According to the roadmap I can't work until the 20th of July and the virus is basically non existant. Depressing.

To be honest I think people like you need to start speaking up for yourselves- far as I can see government are only worried about hiding behind the CMO and gaining plaudits from dumb people for “saving” lives.
So your industry and people need to lobby the hell out of tds and also the media (well, if you could call them media). Too many more than happy to hide behind that rubbish they called a roadmap but the reality is it’s an idiotic plan that will cost us needless billions. Time it was scrapped

thelad95

You know I personally was very much for all the restrictions and have kept to them wholeheartedly since day 1. However, I and indeed many others, are beginning to grow weary.

A few weeks ago, when this was at it's peak, it was really only the bald headed, 5G conspiracy wielding uneducated nutcases (you know the type) who were really against this thing and feeling like 'der civel libertees were been violated by de caretaker guberment'.

However, this pedestrian lifting of restrictions and a certain air of condescension from the NPHET heads towards the general public who have followed the admittedly necessary draconian restrictions for over 2 months now, will very quickly lose the support of the public. We've been at this for long enough now, we know to wash our hands, to keep our distance, us office workers will continue working from home, hand-shakes are a thing of the past etc etc etc.

Community transmission is virtually extinct (the words of the CMO of our HSE, Dr. Tony Holohan). The risk of getting the disease now is a lot lot lower than it was back in early March when the disease was very much here but our very own government refused to take the necessary measures until being handheld by the WHO declaring it a pandemic. Even then, they stumbled their way into taking the necessary measures, remember that pubs would have opened on St. Patrick's day only for the Vintners to pull the plug voluntarily.

This same government now wants to drag this thing out over the entire summer, continuing the suffering of thousands of people who've been unemployed as a result of this and driving more and more small businesses into permanent extinction. This is now the time when we should all be emerging from a horrible horrible few weeks into a new dawn, seeing friends and family we haven't seen for months and feeling their embrace and enjoying the warmth of their company.

It will remain to be seen but I sincerely sincerely hope that the government can and will accelerate life getting back to normal. More than anything, our normal health service needs to resume as best it can as well. Just wait and see we'll have a massive spike in cancer cases and fatalities in the next few years, a clear secondary tragedy in all this.

CinemaGuy45

VonLuck wrote: »

I believe the construction is a big area to be monitored closely. I was out for a walk today and saw a big group of workers outside a Spar having their lunches huddled together.

If that doesn't result in a surge in cases over the next couple of weeks then I don't see why the future phases couldn't be implemented sooner.

Dirty buggers and I bet not even one of them was eating an apple.:eek:

I hope you did not stray outside the 5km zone during this walk.:P

Mic 1972

silverharp wrote: »

We are better off than Italy now yet we are going to be months behind catching up to them in terms of getting things open.

That's inaccurate, Ireland is the second most infected per Million country in Europe after Spain, and Italy was in lock down for much longer than us, they moved to phase 2 on Monday 18th like us

road_high

Mic 1972 wrote: »

That's inaccurate, Ireland is the second most infected per Million country in Europe after Spain, and Italy was in lock down for much longer than us, they moved to phase 2 on Monday 18th like us

Is there figures to back this up, also adjusted for testing rate?

road_high

VonLuck wrote: »

I believe the construction is a big area to be monitored closely. I was out for a walk today and saw a big group of workers outside a Spar having their lunches huddled together.

If that doesn't result in a surge in cases over the next couple of weeks then I don't see why the future phases couldn't be implemented sooner.

Or perhaps you could mind your own business and let other people who want to work get on with it and the measures they need to practice? I often see various groups outside shops and supermarkets. People like you are borderline paranoid tbh

snowcat

road_high wrote: »

Varadkar is clearly gunning for another election. Everything he does is aimed at that. He wants to be seen as the amazing Leader that saved Ireland from Covid 19.

Manwhile we have a death rate up there with the worst in the world. The lockdown was too late and as anyone who lives in Ireland can see was ineffective anyway. Traveller funerals were the obvious one but basically anything went in Ireland as long as you had the right answer for the Gardai.

KrustyUCC

VonLuck wrote: »

I can understand people's eagerness to lift restrictions, but you do realise we aren't even two days into the first phase, right? They are not going to be making any decisions on the relaxation of any restrictions until they see how the current phase pans out. Two weeks at the earliest.

They had a bonus two weeks where they weren't up to speed testing and all that changed was 2 - 5km and cocooners were able to exercise which they were already

Even now in phase one they couldn't even implement the plan with homeware as they were spooked with IKEA

We Should be far further along than we are at the moment

Couple that with our plan being very cautious and very drawn out it's no wonder people are getting impatient

Today in Northern Ireland you can travel how far want. In Donegal its 5km up to 8th June then. 20km up to 20th July

9 weeks before you could even travel within Donegal

Nermal

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.05.13.20101253v1

Ioannidis again. 12 seroprevalance studies analysed.

"Infection fatality rates ranged from 0.03% to 0.50% and corrected values ranged from 0.02% to 0.40%. Conclusions The infection fatality rate of COVID-19 can vary substantially across different locations and this may reflect differences in population age structure and case-mix of infected and deceased patients as well as multiple other factors. Estimates of infection fatality rates inferred from seroprevalence studies tend to be much lower than original speculations made in the early days of the pandemic."

ZX7R

Ginger n Lemon wrote: »

Speaking of construction

"Cost of building Children's Hospital could rise by 40%, special Covid-19 committee hears"

https://www.thejournal.ie/childrens-hospital-increase-5103236-May2020/

Well known social distancing measures could make worlds most expensive hospital to build even more expensive. This is absolutely crazy, I wanted to be positive and chat about 500bn euro recovery fund and how you can kick start economy, but whatever we get allocated from there will likely go towards these costly "adjustments".

However if no clusters or people falling sick at constructions site over the next 2 months - can 40% increase even be justified?

There has been no recorded outbreaks in any European countries from construction since there return in there countries

VonLuck

road_high wrote: »

Or perhaps you could mind your own business and let other people who want to work get on with it and the measures they need to practice? I often see various groups outside shops and supermarkets. People like you are borderline paranoid tbh

Yeah sure why implement any measures. Just let everyone do their own thing. Epidemiologists don't know what they're talking about.

Blaze420

snowcat wrote: »

Manwhile we have a death rate up there with the worst in the world. The lockdown was too late and as anyone who lives in Ireland can see was ineffective anyway. Traveller funerals were the obvious one but basically anything went in Ireland as long as you had the right answer for the Gardai.

This worst in the world thing is nothing but ****ing nonsense - the majority of our deaths were concentrated in places that were already on the mortality slope without CV19 dropping in as well. Add to that we count figures differently to the rest of the world so taking that in to account we didn’t do too bad at all