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

Plumbthedepths

fits wrote: »

Just because they have a different view to you it doesn’t make them nutters

McConkey and Ryan are part of the ISAG I agree they are not nutter's but the figures they use are not credible.

SusieBlue

gozunda wrote: »

I think the point relevant to the original conservation on holding up places like New York having less restrictions than us - as a model to follow - makes no sense whatsoever..

Except that didn’t happen. PP simply said her brother was planning to come home to visit from New York but when he found out how restrictive it is here, in particular the 5k rule, he decided not to.
She was then called a liar twice for saying that New York was open.
Nobody held New York up as a beacon of covid perfection whatsoever, and nobody suggested we follow their model either.
Unless you’re referring to the fact that I said that we are far more heavy handed here, and that life is far more normal over there? But neither of those equate to having the opinion that we should be copying New York and following their lead.

[Deleted User] wrote: »

My brother from New York thinks he can fly home for Easter to see my Mum who is sick with Covid (hope she makes it). They are more or less opened up there. He couldnt believe about quarantines, isolation and 5km restrictions here !! (so he's not coming).

is_that_so

Paul Reid said 68% of last week's Covid-19 cases were close contacts of confirmed cases, which he said is a "cause of concern".

Loafing Oaf

OwenM wrote: »

ISAG are the Zero-Covid nutters, just so you know what you are dealing with.

Virtually our entire political establishment is now on board with zero covid/aggressive suppression/maximum suppression. Are they all 'nutters' too?

TonyMaloney

seamus wrote: »

While I do see what you're doing and applaud the effort, I think you might be trying too hard to build a good dataset out of very limited data.

What jumps out at me most from this limited data is the rate of increase in the variant's share. From the 20/12 to 03/01 (when we had the fewest restrictions), B117's share of the infection effectively tripled in two weeks.

From 03/01 to 04/02 the share tripled again. But this took 32 days to achieve. This is the period of the tightest and best-observed restrictions.

And then to 17/02 (13 days), the share increased by just 20%.

Now, obviously one would expect that there is a limit to how quickly the share can grow, and that it tapers off at some point.

But if it held true that tighter restrictions were more effective against older variants, one would expect B117's share to significantly accelerate during restrictions.

There's a big gap in the data; so maybe it did. Maybe there's data we haven't see that shows B117 jumped from 24.9% to 50% in 7 days. But that's data we don't have.

However, if you plot these four data points on a timeline, you get a near-perfect linear progession. Which tells us that the impact of restrictions on the growth of this variant is minimal. All IMO, of course.

I see what you're getting at. It does look like I'm trying to depict something very accurately given the medium I've chosen. Not my intention, more a failing of my imagination in how I would illustrate it in a rougher fashion.
I'm open to suggestion.

I'm using very limited data. There's a lot of gaps to fill in, so the rate of growth could be wildly different to what I'm showing.
Also the four dates and percentages I'm using - well the dates could have been the date NPHET mentioned it rather than the date actually recorded, and the latter percentages are a little too round for my liking.

Nonetheless, assuming NPHET aren't talking out their holes, something akin to what I'm charting here today is likely going on in the background.

is_that_so

Loafing Oaf wrote: »

Virtually our entire political establishment is now on board with zero covid/aggressive suppression/maximum suppression. Are they all 'nutters' too?

The government aren't nor are NPHET. Suppression is not the same as Zero COVID.

landofthetree

https://twitter.com/COVID19DataIE/status/1362417091865960449

mcburns07

Positivity has really plateaued in the 5-6% range. Hopefully this will start to fall again.

seamus

816 positive swabs, 5.26% of 15,499

5 days in a row under 1,000 positives.

Despite it looking like a plateau, some of the shorter-term numbers are looking positive. The positivity rate has been less spikey than previous weeks. The longer-term trend should be more obvious come next week.

OwenM

Loafing Oaf wrote: »

Virtually our entire political establishment is now on board with zero covid/aggressive suppression/maximum suppression. Are they all 'nutters' too?

It's easy for opposition parties to argue to 'Save the Children' whether it's rational or not, simply because it's populist and they won't have to do a u-turn because the issue won't exist in 6 months.

The government are simply playing for time, spreading gloom because the pressure top open up in May/June will be immense. And nobody in government has even suggested a true NZ/AUS lockdown where you are not allowed to leave your house, construction, all retail except food, and manufacturing are actually shutdown.

Despite all that, yes quite a few of them are nutters for various stances, but that's not for this thread.

MerlinSouthDub

mcburns07 wrote: »

Positivity has really plateaued in the 5-6% range. Hopefully this will start to fall again.

It really doesn't matter if the positivity rate plateaus. what matters is that the number of cases keeps falling. You could get a much lower positivity rate if, for example, you did a load of mass testing of people with no covid symptoms. I don't think there is any mass testing happening at the moment, so you get a higher positivity rate.

KrustyUCC

seamus wrote: »

816 positive swabs, 5.26% of 15,499

Not too bad

Slight decrease of 47 from this day last week

mcburns07

mcburns07 wrote: »

Positivity has really plateaued in the 5-6% range. Hopefully this will start to fall again.

Variants something something.

Ficheall

MerlinSouthDub wrote: »

It really doesn't matter if the positivity rate plateaus. what matters is that the number of cases keeps falling. You could get a much lower positivity rate if, for example, you did a load of mass testing of people with no covid symptoms. I don't think there is any mass testing happening at the moment, so you get a higher positivity rate.

Of course it matters if the positivity rate plateaus. You could equally use your argument to suggest that you can lower the case numbers if you test fewer people, a la Donald.

is_that_so

Deleted User wrote: »

Variants something something.

25% positivity rates in close contacts and 30% in households and yes it's B117!

MerlinSouthDub

MerlinSouthDub wrote: »

It really doesn't matter if the positivity rate plateaus. what matters is that the number of cases keeps falling. You could get a much lower positivity rate if, for example, you did a load of mass testing of people with no covid symptoms. I don't think there is any mass testing happening at the moment, so you get a higher positivity rate.

It absolutely does matter. All around the world what has been seen if you ease restrictions when the positivity rate is over 4-5% you quickly end up with sharp increases in case numbers in short period of time, with high levels of cases in the community.

Unless our tracing improves massively, we are in difficulty navigating a reopening until the positivity rate drops a good bit more.

prunudo

is_that_so wrote: »

Paul Reid said 68% of last week's Covid-19 cases were close contacts of confirmed cases, which he said is a "cause of concern".

Is he concerned because he doesn't know where the other 32% come from or is he concerned that because 2/3 of cases are from close contacts. Surely given we are confined to our homes, close bubbles through work and the weather has been poor surely its not a surprise that positive cases are spreading it too their close contacts.

Ficheall

Popped up in my news feed. Too late to learn many lessons from now, but a nice article on a less well-off country dealing with the pandemic:

https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2021/02/coronavirus-pandemic-bhutan/617976/?utm_source=pocket-newtab-global-en-GB

Derek Zoolander

Ficheall wrote: »

Of course it matters if the positivity rate plateaus. You could equally use your argument to suggest that you can lower the case numbers if you test fewer people, a la Donald.

It only matters if the testing number is consistent - otherwise there isn't a consistent relationship between positive test and number of tests.

Its the inverse of what trump says. Testing 100k random people and have a 1% positivity... that is no better than testing 5000 people and having a 20% positivity.

the problem with the positivity rate is that we've seem massive variation in the daily tests

is_that_so

prunudo wrote: »

Is he concerned because he doesn't know where the other 32% come from or is he concerned that because 2/3 of cases are from close contacts. Surely given we are confined to our homes, close bubbles through work and the weather has been poor surely its not a surprise that positive cases are spreading it too their close contacts.

I'd say it's the 2/3 - that is a lot.

Ficheall

Derek Zoolander wrote: »

Testing 100k random people and have a 1% positivity... that is no better than testing 5000 people and having a 20% positivity.

This is simply not true.


It's the same number of cases, yes, but the latter is much worse, obviously.

Besides which, the testing isn't random.

seamus

prunudo wrote: »

Is he concerned because he doesn't know where the other 32% come from or is he concerned that because 2/3 of cases are from close contacts. Surely given we are confined to our homes, close bubbles through work and the weather has been poor surely its not a surprise that positive cases are spreading it too their close contacts.

Paul Reid is a classic clueless manager. His competent underlings talk to him about matters, explain the numbers and give him graphs.

Then when he stands up in public to present that data, he just rattles off the numbers with a completely incorrect interpretation. I'd say the data analysts who gave him the data are just sitting there rolling their eyes when he talks.

He was talking about "causes for concern", saw "68% are close contacts" on his screen and decided to say "this is a cause for concern", without explaining why. Because he doesn't know. Reid doesn't really understand any of this, he's a bluffer. He should be leaving HSE updates to one of his team.

68% transmission from close contacts is a good figure. It's where we were the last time we had this thing well under control and it tells us that our trace & test system is back in control.

Turtwig

MerlinSouthDub wrote: »

It really doesn't matter if the positivity rate plateaus. what matters is that the number of cases keeps falling. You could get a much lower positivity rate if, for example, you did a load of mass testing of people with no covid symptoms. I don't think there is any mass testing happening at the moment, so you get a higher positivity rate.

Kind of. Case numbers going down is very important but you really want the positivity rate to drop below 5%. Anything higher and odds are very good there is uncontrolled community spread that isn't being detected. Nolan will have the positivity rate when serialised testing is excluded. That should give us a better picture.

Derek Zoolander

Ficheall wrote: »

This is simply not true.


It's the same number of cases, yes, but the latter is much worse, obviously.

Besides which, the testing isn't random.

it's not truly random but its not consistent either - there are days with mass testing of nursing homes, meat factories, there was a time where no close contacts were tested - the pure variability in the testing numbers will have a knock on impact in volatility of the positivity rate

TonyMaloney

Positivity-rate is a key metric the likes of NPHET use to determine policy. I've read more on it than I probably should have.

Essentially there's two approaches to it:

1. If your rate is high but the numbers being tested are low and some people are going without, then you need to increase testing.
2. If your rate is high but everyone who wants/needs a test can get tested, then the infection in the community is too high and you need to take or continue action.

We're definitely in the second camp. It's very simplistic, but Holohan and co will be looking at this and it won't be encouraging them to let their hair down.

igCorcaigh

https://twitter.com/CorkSafetyAlert/status/1362427693355130883?s=19

Loafing Oaf

is_that_so wrote: »

I'd say it's the 2/3 - that is a lot.

But isn't it preferable we know where people are contacting it rather than mysterious 'community transmission'?

Klonker

TonyMaloney wrote: »

Positivity-rate is a key metric the likes of NPHET use to determine policy. I've read more on it than I probably should have.

Essentially there's two approaches to it:

1. If your rate is high but the numbers being tested are low and some people are going without, then you need to increase testing.
2. If your rate is high but everyone who wants/needs a test can get tested, then the infection in the community is too high and you need to take or continue action.

We're definitely in the second camp. It's very simplistic, but Holohan and co will be looking at this and it won't be encouraging them to let their hair down.

But the fact total confirmed cases is going down and positivity is not increasing is a good, you can admit that at least can't you? Obviously both decreasing would be better but it's going in the right direction.

Ficheall

Derek Zoolander wrote: »

it's not truly random but its not consistent either - there are days with mass testing of nursing homes, meat factories, there was a time where no close contacts were tested - the pure variability in the testing numbers will have a knock on impact in volatility of the positivity rate

Obviously, yes, but that doesn't give any weight to either "the positivity rate plateauing doesn't matter" or "20% from 5000 tests is no worse than 1% from 100000". Those are both still bunkum.

Turtwig

Klonker wrote: »

But the fact total confirmed cases is going down and positivity is not increasing is a good, you can admit that at least can't you? Obviously both decreasing would be better but it's going in the right direction.

Nobody is denying the cases going down is good thing. What people are disputing is the claim that the positivity rate plateauing is fine (If it's plateauing). The positivity rate plateauing for community tests would be a concern.