What if we had continued as normal?

The_Brood

100% we could have introduced strict measures, including masks, social distancing etc but without locking down, stopping travel etc. 100%. Anyone who doesn't see this is well off and hasn't suffered nearly as bad as those who have lost their livelihoods and whose mental health has deteriorated.

World leaders have ruined us and need to be held accountable for this.

Beasty

The_Brood wrote: »

100% we could have introduced strict measures, including masks, social distancing etc but without locking down, stopping travel etc. 100%. Anyone who doesn't see this is well off and hasn't suffered nearly as bad as those who have lost their livelihoods and whose mental health has deteriorated.

World leaders have ruined us and need to be held accountable for this.

I acknowledge I am well off but that does not diminish my views on the issue

6 months ago no-one had much of an idea about this virus. All countries were pretty much in the dark about it and its potential outcome. Even now we are not that much further down the line in understanding it, although dealing with it's consequences has improved as we've gone along

I would though challenge your comments about masks. PPE and masks were in very short supply for a long time. Front line staff were the priority but even they had to make do with re-using stuff. It would have been completely inappropriate to divert any of those masks to the general public. Indeed even Amazon were stopping people purchasing this sort of stuff as they were prioritising health workers (mainly UK ones on the .co.uk site)

I personally think Ireland is somewhere near the top of the class in the way it has handled this. Has it got every decision right? Absolutely not, but no-one has. It has done very well with limited resources. It may have seemed that some of the measures were OTT, but we will probably never know how much worse things could have been based on different decisions being made. And yes they could have improved things, but that is only with hindsight. There are few decisions taken that could be considered as inappropriate with the intelligence they had at the time

Harry Palmr

The estimated death toll of uncontrolled spread in Ireland was put at 25,000 as far as I recall.

foozzybear61

Why do China not get more anger than they appear to ..in public at least

If practices in the Wet markets were the source of the Virus ..do they still operate in China and other places . is it just a matter of time before another disease is created..or was this the one in a Billion freak outcome that "Just Happened "

c.p.w.g.w

If we continued without restrictions, Paddy's Day alone could have potentially added another 5,000 deaths...

pauldavis123

But what have we achieved by having a lockdown?

If it's lower deaths by fewer people contracting the virus, that just means they are still susceptible when things reopen.

Basically we are still at stage one and have achieved nothing.

Sweden, on the other hand, have exposed most people to it.

We will be dealing with it for substantially longer with our approach with probably a similar outcome.

The hope of it "going away" is zero in a global world.

New Zealand found that out this week :rolleyes:

NoviGlitzko

joseywhales wrote: »

We are still waiting on that big first piece to be resolved , rapid and broad testing of the population. If we had 24 hour results and enough capacity, it could be as effective as a vaccine(assuming correctly not everyone would be willing to take). We would break the chains as soon as or before they form, in such a scenario zero cases is achievable.

Good point. I wonder how far away are we from reaching this? There has been talk of 3 day and 3 hour results. Mandatory testing for the nation and for airport passenger arrivals should be the upmost importance.

Irish Steve

pauldavis123 wrote: »

But what have we achieved by having a lockdown?

If it's lower deaths by fewer people contracting the virus, that just means they are still susceptible when things reopen.

Basically we are still at stage one and have achieved nothing.

Sweden, on the other hand, have exposed most people to it.

We will be dealing with it for substantially longer with our approach with probably a similar outcome.

The hope of it "going away" is zero in a global world.

New Zealand found that out this week :rolleyes:

They're not saying it out loud, but for me, it looks like they achieved a number of successes, albeit with some failures at the same time.

They managed to prevent the massive spikes that were seen with Italy and Spain, which with the way the health service was would have been a nightmare, they were not ready, and didn't have anything like the number of beds available to cope with the possible surge, and didn't have the specialist equipment or PPE that would have made it possible to better manage things, the lockdown meant that the curve was flattened, and that was a major factor.

Yes, partly because there wasn't enough PPE to go round, and partly because there were too many agency staff moving around the nursing homes, they didn't keep it out of the nursing homes.

Since then, the specialist equipment situation has improved, the PPE supply situation has been massively improved, they've managed to get the nursing homes back under control, and although they're not shouting this out loud, I suspect that the front line people have learnt what treatment options work, and what options don't work when dealing with people who are more seriously affected, so the numbers in ICU or needing ventilation are now lower than they were or could have been if things had been worse at the outset.

Going forward, we desperately need to get on top of testing and reporting, ideally with a simpler and quicker test process, so that the people that are positive can be identified more quickly.

We need to get on top of the high risk situations like meat factories, and direct provision accomodation, each is a high risk scenario, and together, they are a massive problem.

We need to be sure that we're not importing new clusters as a result of people coming in to the country with Covid, or bringing Covid with them when the return from other countries, and have a way to ensure isolation for people that present as a real risk.

We need to find a way to break the "entitlement" attitude, particularly towards overseas travel and alcohol. and get it into people's heads that a "wet" pub is probably one of the highest risk locations in the country, due to the way that alcohol reduces or subdues peoples awareness of their actions, and "forgetting" things like hand washing and sanitising on a regular basis will be a significant factor in spreading this evil virus in an environment where people are also at risk of becoming less aware of the importance of social separation and social responsibility.

There are a number of countries and localities where Covid is starting to rise again, and that should be telling us that we can't afford to relax our guard, or listen to the people that are trying to tell us that this virus is not significant or dangerous.

MadYaker

pauldavis123 wrote: »

But what have we achieved by having a lockdown?

If it's lower deaths by fewer people contracting the virus, that just means they are still susceptible when things reopen.

Basically we are still at stage one and have achieved nothing.

Sweden, on the other hand, have exposed most people to it.

We will be dealing with it for substantially longer with our approach with probably a similar outcome.

The hope of it "going away" is zero in a global world.

New Zealand found that out this week :rolleyes:

How do you know most of Sweden's population has been exposed to it? Id wager thats not true at all. In New York City which had a huge outbreak subsequent antibody testing found that about 20% had been infected and Sweden never really had an outbreak like that. It was around 20% or 25% in Madrid as well and since the Swedes never had an outbreak like that I would think its a much lower % there. Also, we have no idea what level off immunity recovered people have or hgow long it lasts. So at this point all I can see they have acheived is more deaths and maybe a smaller % increase of their national debt. They may not have called it a lockdown but they followed almost the same rules we did.

i_surge

Bit cynical wrote: »

We would have always had to have some sort of shutdown initially just to get things organised and make some sort of a plan. During this time the questions would have been concerning the extent to which hospital and ICU capacity could be expanded and what what level of infections could be coped with.

I think we went from "flattening the curve" to a sort of eradication strategy where getting cases down to close to zero as quickly as possible became the priority. This would make a lot of sense if we were New Zealand where the whole country can be isolated once cases are eliminated but may prove to be a mistake in our case. We did quite well with this. Having had quite high deaths, we managed to bring it down to the extent that we had no reported deaths for a period of about 10 days. However, with all eradication strategies, once you have the numbers down, then what? Unless you can isolate the country, you have to keep most of the restrictions in place until the vaccine.

You have to isolate the country from external cases and go hard on suppression to the highest degree practicable or choose to live a half life for the many years it will take for a vaccine to be safe and widely available, if it ever gets discovered.

No other options

i_surge

Miccoli wrote: »

https://www.lboro.ac.uk/news-events/news/2020/july/new-approach-to-recording-covid-deaths/

I read it and found it weak, some basic errors in their writing, premise of the paper seemed to be of the "seeking to find" aka biased variety, lots of guesstimation in the numerical methods. There is no actual evidence of what they stated outside of their own doctored models.

I don't get the whole point as baseline deaths drop in a recession...less driving, less stress...see USA great depression, spain GFC thus the excess deaths method will underestimate rather than over estimate (allowing some room for the few misdiagnoses or bandwagon cause of death assignments that will occur).

Most importantly, not yet peer reviewed, at least the PDF version I could access.

i_surge

Beasty wrote: »

I acknowledge I am well off but that does not diminish my views on the issue

6 months ago no-one had much of an idea about this virus. All countries were pretty much in the dark about it and its potential outcome. Even now we are not that much further down the line in understanding it, although dealing with it's consequences has improved as we've gone along

I would though challenge your comments about masks. PPE and masks were in very short supply for a long time. Front line staff were the priority but even they had to make do with re-using stuff. It would have been completely inappropriate to divert any of those masks to the general public. Indeed even Amazon were stopping people purchasing this sort of stuff as they were prioritising health workers (mainly UK ones on the .co.uk site)

I personally think Ireland is somewhere near the top of the class in the way it has handled this. Has it got every decision right? Absolutely not, but no-one has. It has done very well with limited resources. It may have seemed that some of the measures were OTT, but we will probably never know how much worse things could have been based on different decisions being made. And yes they could have improved things, but that is only with hindsight. There are few decisions taken that could be considered as inappropriate with the intelligence they had at the time

Good points but the way masks was handled was negligent, lying to the public because of supply concerns, ridiculous!

Other countries didn't do that and promoted the use of homemade alternatives as better than nothing. Most of the fashion masks I see people with are just flimsy pieces of cloth you could make yourself anyway.

SAXA

The fatality rate has fallen compared to diagnosed in most countries. This is because doctors did not know how to treat it at the start..However long term we do not not how it will effect people..

Ave Sodalis

The_Brood wrote:

100% we could have introduced strict measures, including masks, social distancing etc but without locking down, stopping travel etc. 100%. Anyone who doesn't see this is well off and hasn't suffered nearly as bad as those who have lost their livelihoods and whose mental health has deteriorated.

I am not well off. Not at all. The resulting recession from this may end the career I've been working to all my life, before it ever really began. I've have multiple physical health problems that have been put on the long finger because of Covid and that has had an effect on me. I suffer from mental health issues too.

However, I'm looking at the bigger picture and not just selfishly looking at myself. Covid is a much more novel, unstable and deadly problem. It's a contagious disease that spreads very fast and kills a lot of people, with seemingly no cure in sight (despite what the Russians are claiming). Lockdown was completely the right measure. The only thing I would have done differently regarding easement, was open up more facilities for regular hospital activities to resume.

Squiggle

Ave Sodalis wrote: »

However, I'm looking at the bigger picture and not just selfishly looking at myself. Covid is a much more novel, unstable and deadly problem. It's a contagious disease that spreads very fast and kills a lot of people, with seemingly no cure in sight (despite what the Russians are claiming). Lockdown was completely the right measure. The only thing I would have done differently regarding easement, was open up more facilities for regular hospital activities to resume.

The risk of dying from Covid in Ireland is about 0.035%, and even less if you are healthy. You are about 1000 times more likely to die of cancer. We cancelled cancer screening so just taking breast and cervical cancer over a three month period form March 15th there are about 740 women walking around with undiagnosed cancer ! Some of those will undoubtedly die as will others from other forms of cancer . You will also have deaths because of the economic fallout of the lockdown.

I don't think continuing as normal would have been the right approach but I can't help wondering how many "net deaths" we would have if just the vulnerable were protected and the rest of us had gotten on with it.

3DataModem

Sesshoumaru wrote: »

II expect overflowing ICU wards and hospital panels deciding who gets treatment and who doesn't.

This would have been the biggest impact.

Literally feild hospitals in the car parks of regular hospitals. A&E cases turned away. Heart attack victims left to die. COVID cases lying on corridors.

This, but a lot worse:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QGmPAsp7-ek&feature=youtu.be

Then health service staff would get sick, and it would amplify the problem.

HeidiHeidi

Squiggle wrote: »

The risk of dying from Covid in Ireland is about 0.035%, and even less if you are healthy. You are about 1000 times more likely to die of cancer. We cancelled cancer screening so just taking breast and cervical cancer over a three month period form March 15th there are about 740 women walking around with undiagnosed cancer ! Some of those will undoubtedly die as will others from other forms of cancer . You will also have deaths because of the economic fallout of the lockdown.

I don't think continuing as normal would have been the right approach but I can't help wondering how many "net deaths" we would have if just the vulnerable were protected and the rest of us had gotten on with it.

Because most of the people who look after, and interact with, and are related to the "vulnerable" are "the rest of us". You can't just lock a whole section of society up somewhere and send food parcels.

SeaBreezes

NoviGlitzko wrote: »

Good point. I wonder how far away are we from reaching this? There has been talk of 3 day and 3 hour results. Mandatory testing for the nation and for airport passenger arrivals should be the upmost importance.

The trained sniffer dogs at airports have a 96% accuracy in virus dectection.

Eradicate the virus internally sniffer dogs for all entry/exit passengers.

I bet NZ will be first to take this route too.

rob316

The health service would of collapsed fairly quickly that much I know. No way could we cope with something like the UK, Italy and Spain had.

pauldavis123

SeaBreezes wrote: »

The trained sniffer dogs at airports have a 96% accuracy in virus dectection.

Eradicate the virus internally sniffer dogs for all entry/exit passengers.

I bet NZ will be first to take this route too.

No offence but 96% accuracy on this is terrible. We had 30 million thru Dublin airport last year, that's 1.2 million cases being missed.

lee_baby_simms

pauldavis123 wrote: »

We will be dealing with it for substantially longer with our approach with probably a similar outcome.

The fact that 6 weeks after creches, pub/restaurants, shops have opened with no corresponding increase in ICU admissions/deaths leads me to believe that the virus is running out of people to infect and the worst has passed...similar to almost every other country that experienced a significant wave in March/April.

yosemitesam1

rob316 wrote: »

The health service would of collapsed fairly quickly that much I know. No way could we cope with something like the UK, Italy and Spain had.

The health service didn't collapse in the UK and in Italy/Spain, the reaction likely put more pressure on the health service than covid itself.
When localised lockdowns started in Italy, migrant workers started returning home abandoning their jobs in the health service. On top of that, forcing asymptomatic workers to isolate put more strain on the system.
Loss of workers due to the need to stay home and mind children also happened.
If those staff shortages were induced in a flu season there would be carnage.

Similar pressures were put on nursing homes in other countries. Even here nursing homes were under pressure and there was little help from the HSE to deploy available staff to help

shootermacg

One other thing to maybe consider. The more bodies you throw at a virus, the more chance you are giving that virus to mutate into possibly a deadlier virus.

3DataModem

pauldavis123 wrote: »

No offence but 96% accuracy on this is terrible. We had 30 million thru Dublin airport last year, that's 1.2 million cases being missed.

It's even more terrible than that.

Assuming 1% of travellers actually have it.

300,000 infected people will travel
- 12,000 infected cases will be missed
- 288,000 infected people will be identified

29,700,000 non-infected people will travel
- 1,188,000 non-infected people will test positive
- 28,512,000 non-infected people will text negative

So that means 80% of the people testing positive would be incorrectly identified!

"96% accurate" can actually mean a lot less than that, depending on the actual incidence.

rob316

yosemitesam1 wrote: »

The health service didn't collapse in the UK and in Italy/Spain, the reaction likely put more pressure on the health service than covid itself.
When localised lockdowns started in Italy, migrant workers started returning home abandoning their jobs in the health service. On top of that, forcing asymptomatic workers to isolate put more strain on the system.
Loss of workers due to the need to stay home and mind children also happened.
If those staff shortages were induced in a flu season there would be carnage.

Similar pressures were put on nursing homes in other countries. Even here nursing homes were under pressure and there was little help from the HSE to deploy available staff to help

Exactly the likes of the NHS were never under pressure, they had temporary hospitals built that they never even used. We had to go into a lockdown or ours would of collapsed, we only had 250 ICU beds with ventilators at the start.
Germany had 25,000 for a population of 80 million. 100 x times as many as us, we didn't stand a chance with a controlled spread.

Tenzor07

lee_baby_simms wrote: »

The fact that 6 weeks after creches, pub/restaurants, shops have opened with no corresponding increase in ICU admissions/deaths leads me to believe that the virus is running out of people to infect and the worst has passed...similar to almost every other country that experienced a significant wave in March/April.

Well of course, it's a Virus, like a Fire it spreads through a forest rapidly at first however as the amount of fuel runs out so do the flames, you may get isolated fires popping up here and there, but the forest has been through it's initial wave, maybe you've managed to protect parts of the forest from burning like New Zealand, but if a spark gets back in it will burn down those trees and spread to that part of the forest you protected..

A Virus like a fire runs it's course, as it always has done, it's not going to destroy the same forest of trees again as it did the first time..

lee_baby_simms

Tenzor07 wrote: »

Well of course, it's a Virus, like a Fire it spreads through a forest rapidly at first however as the amount of fuel runs out so do the flames, you may get isolated fires popping up here and there, but the forest has been through it's initial wave, maybe you've managed to protect parts of the forest from burning like New Zealand, but if a spark gets back in it will burn down those trees and spread to that part of the forest you prtected..

A Virus like a fire runs it's course, as it always has done, it's not going to destroy the same forest of trees again as it did the first time..

Which makes eradication/zero covid strategy this late in the day via punitive lockdowns totally pointless.

Tenzor07

lee_baby_simms wrote: »

Which makes eradication/zero covid strategy this late in the day via punitive lockdowns totally pointless.

It's done for politics and appearance, the new Govt. have been a sh*tshow since Day 1 and what they are doing now has more to do with peoples perceptions and opinions than actual real science..

Oranage2

Except viruses and fires are two completely separate things

Tenzor07

Oranage2 wrote: »

Except viruses and fires are two completely separate things

And I wouldn't like to die due to either of them.