Covid 19 Part XXXIV-249,437 ROI(4,906 deaths) 120,195 NI (2,145 deaths)(01/05)Read OP

Boggerman12

marno21 wrote: »

Matt Cooper having a “debate” with an ISAG zero Covid merchant on TV3 atm. How long more do we have to listen to this rubbish.

Talking about a massive wave in 6-10 weeks. Such nonsense

Someone needs to have a quiet word with him and stop inviting these guests on. He has McConkey on radio today who was surprisingly upbeat but still on about variants and transmission in toilets.

People think that the likes of Gemma o Doherty are out there or cult like in their ranting and ravings.Isag are just as cult like in their rantings.best off ignored

TheDoctor

MerlinSouthDub wrote: »

136 in hospital (down from 151 last night)
44 in ICU (up from 43 with 1 death)

Great drop in hospital numbers.

Lowest number of people in hospital with Covid since 3rd October.

podgeandrodge

Eod100 wrote: »

Is it still 6 per table for outdoor pubs? Hadn't seen it so not sure if it was posted already!

You'd have to feel sorry for the pubs that don't have a few outside tables.

Economics101

ShineOn7 wrote: »

Ah yes, I forgot there's no discharges at the weekend

Do hospitals still operate discharges only 5 days a week? Unbelievable in a "crisis".

johnnyskeleton

AlmightyCushion wrote: »

You don't need the gym to maintain a healthy weight though.

You don't need a haircut or a new pair of jeans either.

But some people find that gyms help them a lot to achieve and maintain a healthy weight, strong cardio vascular performance, good body composition etc, and these things are shown to be of benefit if you were unfortunate enough to pick up covid. By contrast, a new haircut has no demonstrable impact on your ability to deal with covid if you get it.

Yet hairdressers open a month before gyms

ShineOn7

Economics101 wrote: »

Do hospitals still operate discharges only 5 days a week? Unbelievable in a "crisis".

I believe (open to correction) that the administration on them is Mon-Fri only

Economics101

Economics101 wrote: »

Do hospitals still operate discharges only 5 days a week? Unbelievable in a "crisis".

Crazy thing that discharges are 5 days but admissions are 7 days. Years ago my late mother discharged herself on a Sunday as she has had told she would be discharged next day, there being no not whatsoever to detain her further, but that NK consultant was available. A competent senior registrar soon appeared to sign the discharge and she said "now... there's a much needed bed for someone in A&E".

gozunda

Azatadine wrote: »

She was atrocious.....completely ignored his question about the older and vulnerable being vaccinated and doubled down that we will have another even more ferocious wave.......

Don't know about that interview but to be fair Germany also have the older and vulnerable being vaccinated (currently 26% of the population with one dose of vaccine) and they are now seeing a new wave of infections and with that renewed restrictions nationwide which they hope will rapidly reduce infection numbers

https://www.dw.com/en/coronavirus-germanys-emergency-brake-rules-take-effect/a-57321750

Unfortunately this virus comes with no guarantees...

marno21

marno21 wrote: »

Matt Cooper having a “debate” with an ISAG zero Covid merchant on TV3 atm. How long more do we have to listen to this rubbish.

Talking about a massive wave in 6-10 weeks. Such nonsense

Someone needs to have a quiet word with him and stop inviting these guests on. He has McConkey on radio today who was surprisingly upbeat but still on about variants and transmission in toilets.

Ryan was on with Dunphy a couple of days ago going on and on about the inevitable 4th wave. I find them just entertainment at this stage

gozunda

johnnyskeleton wrote: »

You don't need a haircut or a new pair of jeans either.

But some people find that gyms help them a lot to achieve and maintain a healthy weight, strong cardio vascular performance, good body composition etc, and these things are shown to be of benefit if you were unfortunate enough to pick up covid. By contrast, a new haircut has no demonstrable impact on your ability to deal with covid if you get it.

Yet hairdressers open a month before gyms

Maybe not buts Its just as easy for many to exercise outside, go for a walk or a run or a cycle.

Afaik just 10% of Irelands population use a gym with the majority of users being in the 18 to 40 age group.

Not an age group who generally deemed to be at high risk from covid infection themselves but who may spread the infection to others as gyms are deemed high as indoor venues with high foot traffic and risk of airborne infection from increased respiration etc

I somehow think more than 10% of the population might need a haircut once every 4 weeks or so.

Which to prioritise? Hair dressers I reckon but It won't matter once both are open in the short-term

Arghus

gozunda wrote: »

Don't know about that interview but to be fair Germany also have the older and vulnerable being vaccinated (currently 26% of the population with one dose of vaccine) and they are now seeing a new wave of infections and with that renewed restrictions nationwide which they hope will rapidly reduce infection numbers

https://www.dw.com/en/coronavirus-germanys-emergency-brake-rules-take-effect/a-57321750

Unfortunately this virus comes with no guarantees...

I didn't see the interview in question and I don't take everything the ISAG has to say entirely seriously, but there is a tendency from a lot of people here to outright dismiss them completely, which I find is a bit unfair tbh, as while not every dire prediction they've made has come to pass, not all of it hasn't either.

For all of his faults - and there definitely are a few - Thomas Ryan was one of the few in the media during the sunshine days of last summer warning about a second wave in the autumn and that our tracing infrastructure - which was being busily wound down at the time - wasn't adequately equipped or enough for what was required. He was right. People didn't want to hear it, but he was.

Now, that doesn't mean that that him and his gang are right this time too. Let's hope they are laying the doom on thick, I certainly hope they are, but lets acknowledge that we can't predict the future and have a bit of humility about it.

The spirit of the country is good today. People are happy and there's a lift in everybody's mood. And I hope that the government's 180° turn in messaging and overall demeanour is justified.

We have a good whack of people vaccinated, will soon have more and the Summer is ahead, so, on paper, causes for optmisim. And it is clear, one way or another, that things had to be loosened at this stage.

Do I think further caution and restrictions could be justified still - yes. Do I think people would accept it - no. So, here we are.

Believe it or not, I'm hoping for the best. But I guess I am a bit mentally traumatised and jaded too. The whole Covid experience has played out in entirely unpredictable ways, so I'm still pretty reticent to feel like we have it licked, even if I desperately want to be. Let's hope for a good Summer for everybody and that the worst of this shyte is behind us.

Turtwig

marno21 wrote: »

Matt Cooper having a “debate” with an ISAG zero Covid merchant on TV3 atm. How long more do we have to listen to this rubbish.

Talking about a massive wave in 6-10 weeks. Such nonsense

This is not as far fetched as it sounds. I suspect when NPHETS modelling is published it will have potential for a large wave in July or August. These are uncharted waters. We're doing things different to Israel. We're largely going to be guided by the UK experience who themselves have only begun to open up. One misstep by us and there will be a large spike. The key is the timing of the spike: will enough people be vaccinated so that it doesn't matter? We have taken the very reasonable calculated gamble that there will be sufficient people vaccinated to keep hospitalisations low. It's not a guarantee though. A lot has to go right. Our vaccination program needs to keep accelerating, we've got to get comfortable with a certain level of infection, we got to accept that between now and August unvaccinated people may end up hospital. There will be collateral. This may actually be in younger low risk demographics. So we can expect deaths to be lower and hospital stays to be shorter. There will be both of these albeit at manageable levels that shouldn't impact routine health care. However, if too many people become infected at once there's still potential to overwhelm the system. It's a risk. A low risk but it's not nonsense. This all could go very very wrong. I don't think it will. I do very much hope that if it does go wrong we actually have the courage to reverse course proactively. I actually don't think we would. That's what my biggest fear about all of this. Thankfully I'm very optimistic that we won't have to visit that scenario.

We can't afford to be overly anxious. We can't afford to be complacent either. I'm confident we can get the balance right. We shouldn't dismiss outcomes we don't like as nonsense many of them are still within the realms of possibilities.

Ficheall

Another wave is not terribly unlikely - the hope is just that it will be less damaging because many, if not all, of the most vulnerable will have been vaccinated.

Zebra3

What will this “wave” bring?

FintanMcluskey

Ficheall wrote: »

Another wave is not terribly unlikely - the hope is just that it will be less damaging because many, if not all, of the most vulnerable will have been vaccinated.

Considering 92% of deaths occurring the over 65’s and the median age of death is 83, and the under 70s with no underlying conditions are now getting dose 1

And all HCW’s are vaccinated

It’s not “hope”

It can’t actually be as damaging in any way whatsoever

Why ignore the effectiveness of vaccines? Or suggest vaccines don’t work and we can only “hope”

FintanMcluskey

Turtwig wrote: »

This is not as far fetched as it sounds. I suspect when NPHETS modelling is published it will have potential for a large wave in July or August. These are uncharted waters. We're doing things different to Israel. We're largely going to be guided by the UK experience who themselves have only begun to open up. One misstep by us and there will be a large spike. The key is the timing of the spike: will enough people be vaccinated so that it doesn't matter? We have taken the very reasonable calculated gamble that there will be sufficient people vaccinated to keep hospitalisations low. It's not a guarantee though. A lot has to go right. Our vaccination program needs to keep accelerating, we've got to get comfortable with a certain level of infection, we got to accept that between now and August unvaccinated people may end up hospital. There will be collateral. This may actually be in younger low risk demographics. So we can expect deaths to be lower and hospital stays to be shorter. There will be both of these albeit at manageable levels that shouldn't impact routine health care. However, if too many people become infected at once there's still potential to overwhelm the system. It's a risk. A low risk but it's not nonsense. This all could go very very wrong. I don't think it will. I do very much hope that if it does go wrong we actually have the courage to reverse course proactively. I actually don't think we would. That's what my biggest fear about all of this. Thankfully I'm very optimistic that we won't have to visit that scenario.

We can't afford to be overly anxious. We can't afford to be complacent either. I'm confident we can get the balance right. We shouldn't dismiss outcomes we don't like as nonsense many of them are still within the realms of possibilities.

This sounds like Ireland is going back to normal this morning.

It’s not uncharted territory, it’s removing travel restrictions like many place never had and reopening some retail next month which many EU countries never closed

And fully reopening construction thank god, we are on our own there

Probes

I can’t help but feel they are making a mistake and this is going to backfire on them quickly. We’ve only got 20% of the population covered and we don’t have a huge number of people with natural antibodies out there. In the UK they have something like a 70% coverage with vaccinated and natural antibodies, we are no where near that. Chile had a huge wave after they vaccinated 50% of their population. It’s stupid, we are talking about June for 80% of adults to be covered so why are we risking things before then?

Vicxas

Zebra3 wrote: »

What will this “wave” bring?

A load of mexicans?

Happydays2020

Probes wrote: »

I can’t help but feel they are making a mistake and this is going to backfire on them quickly. We’ve only got 20% of the population covered and we don’t have a huge number of people with natural antibodies out there. In the UK they have something like a 70% coverage with vaccinated and natural antibodies, we are no where near that. Chile had a huge wave after they vaccinated 50% of their population. It’s stupid, we are talking about June for 80% of adults to be covered so why are we risking things before then?

But we are not opening up the riskiest activities until July or August when we will have most vaccinated. This is a very cautious reopening despite all the positive noises around it. Outdoor dining in 6 weeks when we should have 50% vaccinated. Indoor in 10 - 12 weeks or so when we should have 80% vaccinated... office working probably will not be back until September.

The key thing over the next 2 months is messaging around the remaining risks.

Wanderer78

Probes wrote:

I can’t help but feel they are making a mistake and this is going to backfire on them quickly. We’ve only got 20% of the population covered and we don’t have a huge number of people with natural antibodies out there. In the UK they have something like a 70% coverage with vaccinated and natural antibodies, we are no where near that. Chile had a huge wave after they vaccinated 50% of their population. It’s stupid, we are talking about June for 80% of adults to be covered so why are we risking things before then?

We truly only have 8% covered fully, so....

This was chosen for more economics reasons than anything, because the economy's need sometimes outweigh our needs.

Let's hope the Indian's don't holiday here this year!

Lumen

Happydays2020 wrote: »

But we are not opening up the riskiest activities until July or August when we will have most vaccinated. This is a very cautious reopening despite all the positive noises around it. Outdoor dining in 6 weeks when we should have 50% vaccinated. Indoor in 10 - 12 weeks or so when we should have 80% vaccinated... office working probably will not be back until September.

The key thing over the next 2 months is messaging around the remaining risks.

Indoor dining in hotels from 2 June is a pure political decision.

Let's hope the ventilation is good.

lawred2

Lumen wrote: »

Indoor dining in hotels from 2 June is a pure political decision.

Let's hope the ventilation is good.

It's also a pragmatic decision.

How can you encourage people to spend money on staycations yet not provide them with somewhere to eat.

Nobody is booking a hotel stay for a family to end up with a few days or a week of just eat every night.

What about breakfast?

Wanderer78

lawred2 wrote:

It's also a pragmatic decision.

... Or a highly risky strategy, in the hope it doesn't backfire

Lumen

lawred2 wrote: »

It's also a pragmatic decision.

How can you encourage people to spend money on staycations yet not provide them with somewhere to eat.

Nobody is booking a hotel stay for a family to end up with a few days or a week of just eat every night.

What about breakfast?

If only there was a way of eating hotel food where everyone had their own room.

We could call it "room service".

Anyway, my point was purely that the easing is not based strictly on safest activities first.

Lumen

Incidentally, I had one hotel weekend away last summer and it was crap. Even relatively minor Covid restrictions sucked the fun out of it.

But then I've never really enjoyed Irish hotels. The whole experience seems priced and packaged for foreigners.

Prefer to rent a house or go abroad.

robbiezero

Probes wrote: »

I can’t help but feel they are making a mistake and this is going to backfire on them quickly. We’ve only got 20% of the population covered and we don’t have a huge number of people with natural antibodies out there. In the UK they have something like a 70% coverage with vaccinated and natural antibodies, we are no where near that. Chile had a huge wave after they vaccinated 50% of their population. It’s stupid, we are talking about June for 80% of adults to be covered so why are we risking things before then?

It is still an incredibly cautious reopening. For me and most that i know the next two months basically are allowing me to do what I have been doing for the last 2 months anyway. It will be nice to be able to do proper GAA training rather than pods of us training, but other than that very little change for me.

Simon Coveney said yesterday that they need to keep the public with them and they were losing them in droves.

prunudo

Probes wrote: »

I can’t help but feel they are making a mistake and this is going to backfire on them quickly. We’ve only got 20% of the population covered and we don’t have a huge number of people with natural antibodies out there. In the UK they have something like a 70% coverage with vaccinated and natural antibodies, we are no where near that. Chile had a huge wave after they vaccinated 50% of their population. It’s stupid, we are talking about June for 80% of adults to be covered so why are we risking things before then?

But more importantly it is 20% of the population who are most at risk from hospitalisation or death.
The fact that a huge % of recent cases are under 45 yet the hospital numbers are still declining says a lot about the current state of play.
Also as others have said, while the news is positive, we still have quite a lot of restrictions and a lot of what was announced won't be eased for at least another month or more. The risky environments, further away still, so I wouldn't be too concerned at present about things getting out of control.

The global story with vaccination is interesting (to me). Skip now if you don't like contrarian observations.

Firstly, 4 to 5 months into a vigorous global campaign all but mandating vaccines only about 3.3% of the worlds population is fully vaccinated, and that small % are already turning their attentions to updating the mRNA codes to avoid variant escape. Vaccines biannually now is the accepted wisdom.

Meanwhile the vast majority of the world will be a very long time waiting for even a first dose of what will be by then an out dated shot - perhaps a shot from vaccine 'generously' gifted with much public announcements from the rich part of the world from stocks that have lost the trust of the rich populations due to perceived risks.

So most of the world will never catch up on the game. They will never qualify for vaccination proof cards. They will incubate variants in ongoing waves and especially troublesome variants where there are leaky vaccination campaigns, which lets face it will be the norm in most of the world. And because of the complete inter connectedness of the world variants toughened by escaping leaky vaccine protocols will fly everywhere.

Vaccinated people will also incubate variants as the injections are not sterilising. They may do so at a lower rate than their disadvantaged global companions, but they will do so, and asymptomatically. And they will also train virus escape because transmission, however lowered, will continue.

The stats re countries with high vaccination rates are also interesting and one could say anomalous. Everyone trumpets Israel and the UK. Sure, cases are down there. Although Israel is only a matter of weeks past numbers similar to our own now, with double the population. It is quite possible that like us they were coming off the peak of a very high wave regardless of interventions and that slope downwards is always going to be impressive. Just a thought.

But anyway, back to anomalous country stats, Gibraltar and the Seychelles are the top most vaccinated places in the world. Gibraltar is right down in cases, Seychelles at 68% vaccinated is up in cases. 100 cases yesterday in a population less than 100,000 people. That would be like 5000 cases here. Odd.

The UAE has come down from a peak but leveled out at high numbers. 2000 cases yesterday in a population of 9 million, so would be 1000 cases here, for comparison. The UAE has 40% of their population fully vaccinated.

37% of Bahrain is fully vaccinated and they are still mostly going up in cases. 1000 cases yesterday in a population one third the size of ours.

Chile has 45% of population vaccinated. 6700 cases yesterday in a population about 3 and a half times our population.

Isle of Man had their biggest peak of covid in mid March 2021. There the quick vaccine roll out started in January.

Bhutan has had very little covid generally. 1 death. 62% are fully vaccinated. The population is less than 800,000. They had what could be called their highest wave in December, with cases for a week or so in the high 20s. They are having another little wave and cases hit the 20s in the last few days. Numbers are small but occur nonetheless in spite of very high vaccination rate.


All to say that things may not be what they seem. Time will tell.

plodder

It will be interesting to see what, if anything, happens Covid wise after the tragedy last night in Israel with up to 100,000 people at a religious festival.

wadacrack

Probes wrote: »

I can’t help but feel they are making a mistake and this is going to backfire on them quickly. We’ve only got 20% of the population covered and we don’t have a huge number of people with natural antibodies out there. In the UK they have something like a 70% coverage with vaccinated and natural antibodies, we are no where near that. Chile had a huge wave after they vaccinated 50% of their population. It’s stupid, we are talking about June for 80% of adults to be covered so why are we risking things before then?

We will be ok, I think its the right decision to open up and seems a reasonable plan albeit still abit cautious.

The virus spreads mainly in superspreading events predominantly indoors with lots of people. Their is still lots of constraints on these events before July it seems.

Schools was a big enough test and I thought the cases would surge but thankfully it seems atm I was wrong.

People have in general not been that compliant in the last few weeks but I think most have common sense and use their intuition to assess the risk themselves.