Covid 19 Part XXXII-215,743 ROI (4,137 deaths)111,166 NI (2,036 deaths)(22/02)Read OP

Polar101

Wolf359f wrote: »

I'd love to know the reason why the sudden decline.

Is it not just because US cases have come down by about 100k, and India is down to about 10k cases a day? Lots of restrictions in Europe, too.

Ficheall

Looking at the US, the biggest contributor to growth and decline rates, it seems about 10% of the population has been infected by now, and will therefore be enjoying some temporary immunity, and are therefore not available to be infected and contribute to the case numbers.
On top of this, the 10% who have been infected are, on the whole, the 10% most likely to be infected, so everyone else is (on average) less likely to be infected than they are.

I suspect this is a contributing factor, and the case numbers were always necessarily going to peak when the number of people available to infect declined, but it's surprising it's happened so soon, and at the same time internationally, so there are definitely factors like restrictions etc at play. Good news for now anyway, whatever the reasons are.

iamwhoiam

Nurse on Call agency are recruiting 100's of nurses to be vaccinators in large hubs around the country .

Hmob

iamwhoiam wrote: »

Nurse on Call agency are recruiting 100's of nurses to be vaccinators in large hubs around the country .

Would there be 100s available?

iamwhoiam

Hmob wrote: »

Would there be 100s available?

They are looking for retired nurses so possibly Yes plus some nurse who work part time will do additional hours .There will be some who work 9-5 who could do weekends for example . They have already recruited 100's they said

Sweet.Science

Ficheall wrote: »

Looking at the US, the biggest contributor to growth and decline rates, it seems about 10% of the population has been infected by now, and will therefore be enjoying some temporary immunity, and are therefore not available to be infected and contribute to the case numbers.
On top of this, the 10% who have been infected are, on the whole, the 10% most likely to be infected, so everyone else is (on average) less likely to be infected than they are.

I suspect this is a contributing factor, and the case numbers were always necessarily going to peak when the number of people available to infect declined, but it's surprising it's happened so soon, and at the same time internationally, so there are definitely factors like restrictions etc at play. Good news for now anyway, whatever the reasons are.

I've counted over 10 different reasons provided by experts . They are allowed say i really dont know if they want

ednwireland

iamwhoiam wrote: »

They are looking for retired nurses so possibly Yes plus some nurse who work part time will do additional hours .There will be some who work 9-5 who could do weekends for example . They have already recruited 100's they said

i wonder if they will have to pay their registration fees ?

iamwhoiam

ednwireland wrote: »

i wonder if they will have to pay their registration fees ?

Well anyone still working has paid it anyway .The retired will have paid if still registered , if not registered they cant work anyway .

Ficheall

Sweet.Science wrote: »

I've counted over 10 different reasons provided by experts . They are allowed say i really dont know if they want

Eh? I never said anyone wasn't allowed say they didn't know something. I just mentioned one possible contributing factor.
In general, if more people admitted when they didn't know something, the thread etc. would be a lot shorter and easier to read.

Sweet.Science

Ficheall wrote: »

Eh? I never said anyone wasn't allowed say they didn't know something. I just mentioned one possible contributing factor.
In general, if more people admitted when they didn't know something, the thread etc. would be a lot shorter and easier to read.

I wasn't talking about you

Beasty

Widdensushi wrote: »

Have you not read the rules, no positive information allowed!!!

No trolling allowed either

Ficheall

Sweet.Science wrote: »

I wasn't talking about you

Ah, I see. You can see how your quoting me may have given the wrong impression. No worries.

seamus

Decent hospital numbers this morning. A small increase over the weekend is to be expected, but this weekend it was particularly small;

Up 13 this weekend (1%)

Up 35 last weekend (2.3%)

Up 55 the previous weekend (2.9%)

In terms of full-week declines;

25th - 30th: Down 454 (23%)
2nd - 6th: Down 330 (21.6%)

We'll almost certainly be under 1,000 by the end of this week. Under 900 would be amazing, but a bit out there.

Roger_007

Wolf359f wrote: »

Worldwide cases have halved in a month, that's a massive drop.
Maybe it's the majority of countries going with a lockdown and also vaccinations all at the same time. I don't care. it's all good news!

I have yet to hear any of the experts explain why there is such a dramatic fall in cases worldwide. When you look at individual countries there are are ups and downs throughout the pandemic but when you look at the overall figures the pattern is clear. Cases worldwide rose steadily until late December and then started to fall more rapidly than they had risen in the first place.
Vaccinations cannot account for these figures. There must be another explanation but I haven’t heard a convincing one yet.

AdamD

Roger_007 wrote: »

I have yet to hear any of the experts explain why there is such a dramatic fall in cases worldwide. When you look at individual countries there are are ups and downs throughout the pandemic but when you look at the overall figures the pattern is clear. Cases worldwide rose steadily until late December and then started to fall more rapidly than they had risen in the first place.
Vaccinations cannot account for these figures. There must be another explanation but I haven’t heard a convincing one yet.

I think you're overthinking this. We'd all love for it to be the virus dying out or something but the explanation is pretty simple - Christmas

Roger_007

AdamD wrote: »

I think you're overthinking this. We'd all love for it to be the virus dying out or something but the explanation is pretty simple - Christmas

How did Christmas cause the case numbers to fall?

What Username Guidelines

Roger_007 wrote: »

How did Christmas cause the case numbers to fall?

Caused a massive spike, after which, the only way is down

Loafing Oaf

Roger_007 wrote: »

How did Christmas cause the case numbers to fall?

Yeah, had the opposite effect in Ireland anyway

wadacrack

[QUOTE=Roger_007;116205182]I have yet to hear any of the experts explain why there is such a dramatic fall in cases worldwide. When you look at individual countries there are are ups and downs throughout the pandemic but when you look at the overall figures the pattern is clear. Cases worldwide rose steadily until late December and then started to fall more rapidly than they had risen in the first place.
Vaccinations cannot account for these figures. There must be another explanation but I haven’t heard a convincing one yet.[/QUOTE]

Yea they don't seem to know why. Any expert needs to be very cautious using terms of immunity playing a role etc . Quite a risky thing to say

Bit cynical

wadacrack wrote: »

Yea they don't seem to know why. Any expert needs to be very cautious using terms of immunity playing a role etc . Quite a risky thing to say

Politically, yes, but I don't think there's much doubt that there's much doubt of fairly long lasting immunity from contracting the virus. Experts are, of course, reluctant to say so lest they send the wrong message to the public re social distancing etc. There's a lot more uncertainty about the efficacy of vaccines in regards to immunity.

is_that_so

wadacrack wrote: »

Yea they don't seem to know why. Any expert needs to be very cautious using terms of immunity playing a role etc . Quite a risky thing to say

There are plenty of things they don't know about influenza but we have tools to deal with it. It may well end up the same with COVID.

BTownB

AdamD wrote: »

I think you're overthinking this. We'd all love for it to be the virus dying out or something but the explanation is pretty simple - Christmas

Christmas does not explain a GLOBAL decline.

Look at countries like India, a massive population and numbers infected dramatically falling because so many people likely to catch it have done so.

PmMeUrDogs

Just for the ladies here - my own doctor isn't doing smear tests or face to face anything the past year because of covid, but Well Woman Centres are back doing smears. If you're overdue, try them out if you've got one nearby. I rang this morning and have an appointment in a week

BTownB

froog wrote: »

on the global front, the dramatic decline in global cases continues unabated. certainly some vaccine impact there in addition to various winter lockdowns.

again - this is the first actual decline in cases since the start of the pandemic, excluding the christmas holiday testing dip.

Brilliant - this is really positive!

seamus

BTownB wrote: »

Christmas does not explain a GLOBAL decline.

Look at countries like India, a massive population and numbers infected dramatically falling because so many people likely to catch it have done so.

Well it does explain a global decline when the countries with the most cases are ones with Christian traditions.

The fact that India is declining doesn't mean it's declining for the same reason as everyone else. India's infection rates have been falling since September. There hasn't been any recent dramatic decline.

If you look at non-Christian countries, they're generally not on the same decline. Indonesia, Iran, UAE, etc are seeing slow increases.

It just so happens that the spike from christian countries was so huge and that christian countries are so badly affected, that the drop in their cases absolutely dwarfs any gains elsewhere.

Edit:

In fact, if you look at Turkey and Iran, for example, you can see they both saw a huge spike in cases in late November/early December.
It just so happens that two huge Muslim festivals took place at the end of October/start of November. And thus, being majority muslim countries they saw a huge spike in cases 3-4 weeks after their religious festivals.

Turtwig

Bit cynical wrote: »

Politically, yes, but I don't think there's much doubt that there's much doubt of fairly long lasting immunity from contracting the virus. Experts are, of course, reluctant to say so lest they send the wrong message to the public re social distancing etc. There's a lot more uncertainty about the efficacy of vaccines in regards to immunity.

This is a very misinformed post.

So far even the vaccines that have reduced efficacy to the variants have a much better response than previous natural infection. The new variants are very adept at reinfection of the previously infected. It's believed natural herd immunity is impossible.

We have much better grasp of vaccine efficacy than we do natural infection and immunity. Preliminary Indications from South Africa and Manaus are previous exposure is not protection against mild or severe illness.

Derek Zoolander

Turtwig wrote: »

This is a very misinformed post.

So far even the vaccines that have reduced efficacy to the variants have a much better response than previous natural infection. The new variants are very adept at reinfection of the previously infected. It's believed natural herd immunity is impossible.

We have much better grasp of vaccine efficacy than we do natural infection and immunity. Preliminary Indications from South Africa and Manaus are previous exposure is not protection against mild or severe illness.

I'd question that on an individual level - the number of individual reinfections don't seem to indicate a high number of reinfections..

I believe the Brazil/SA data show that held immunity through natural infection does not happen (or at least it doesn't happen without significant loss of life)

JTMan

Very interesting WSJ article here (paywall) entitled "Cold Reality Dawns that Illness is Likely Here to Stay" but it is not all negative ...

- Covid-19 will circulate for years, possibly decades.
- Society will need to lean to live with this much as it does with flu, measles and HIV.
- The ease of spread, the emergence of new strains and lack of access to vaccines for all mean it will continue to spread.
- But it will change from a "pandemic" to an "endemic". Endemic means persistent but manageable.
- Endemic Covid-19 will not mean ongoing restrictions to life and travel because vaccines are so effective and severe disease is expected to plummet.
- But Endemic Covid-19 will mean some changes to behavior.
- Masking in some areas, good air ventilation systems and testing will be required in some form for some time to come.
- "Elimination or eradication is not the bar of success" said the WHO. Only one human virus has been entirely eradicated in human history: smallpox. Eradication is not realistic.
- Monitoring for new variants and periodic updated shots will be key.

Controlling the virus is the mark of success, not eradication, and sooner we get there, via vaccinations, and start calling this an endemic the better.

OwenM

Turtwig wrote: »

This is a very misinformed post.

So far even the vaccines that have reduced efficacy to the variants have a much better response than previous natural infection. The new variants are very adept at reinfection of the previously infected. It's believed natural herd immunity is impossible.

We have much better grasp of vaccine efficacy than we do natural infection and immunity. Preliminary Indications from South Africa and Manaus are previous exposure is not protection against mild or severe illness.

First I've heard of this? Any links?

Hmob

JTMan wrote: »

Very interesting WSJ article here (paywall) entitled "Cold Reality Dawns that Illness is Likely Here to Stay" but it is not all negative ...

- Covid-19 will circulate for years, possibly decades.
- Society will need to lean to live with this much as it does with flu, measles and HIV.
- The ease of spread, the emergence of new strains and lack of access to vaccines mean in certain countries mean it will continue to spread.
- But it will change from a "pandemic" to an "endemic". Endemic means persistent but manageable.
- Endemic Covid-19 will not mean ongoing restrictions to life and travel because vaccines are so effective and severe disease is expected to plummet.
- But Endemic Covid-19 will mean some changes to behavior.
- Masking in some areas, good air ventilation systems and testing will be required in some form for some time to come.
- "Elimination or eradication is not the bar of success" said the WHO. Only one human virus has been entirely eradicated in human history: smallpox. Eradication is not realistic.
- Monitoring for new variants and periodic updated shots will be key.

Controlling the virus is the mark of success, not eradication, and sooner we get there, via vaccinations, and start calling this an endemic the better.

A bit of sense in a sea of nonsense