Covid 19 Part XXXV-956,720 ROI (5,952 deaths) 452,946 NI (3,002 deaths) (08/01) Read OP

snowcat

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118591921#Comment_118591921

They also always seemed to find the worst anti vaxxers. The one who will say on camera that they got information on Facebook that the vaccines were bad. Never heard much from the reasoned sceptics. With coherent arguments who are intelligent articulate and could put forward their opinions with impartial sources. If the narrative did not fit there was not much airtime. Quellle surprise.

Markus Antonius

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118592046#Comment_118592046

Exactly! I remember one guy they asked who looked like he was wearing one of those glasses/moustache disguises and he saying about how he won't get the vaccine because Covid doesn't exist and is a story created by the government to keep people in their houses 😐️ Anyone with such fringe viewpoints would know better to talk someone from RTE...

Referring back to the discussion above around whether hospitalisations/ICU figures are any worse than other years. This guy from youtube (AvE) put a FOI request to the Canadian government to provide him with these figures. Quite interesting to say the least:

astrofool

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118590741#Comment_118590741

Yes, where lockdowns and restrictions weren't put in place cases remained higher, the peaks are unsustainable (people eventually stop mingling with lots of other people), but the base level it dropped back to was dependent on the level of restrictions in place, full lockdowns had a dramatic effect, restrictions less so, you also have to account for variant changes, e.g. restrictions while Delta became dominant may have left a similar case count due to higher R, Omicron would likely see a rise even when adding restrictions.

Post vaccination rollout, lockdowns became pretty much unnecessary, restrictions were enough to keep the hospital cases down.

Derkaiser93

Anyone know why our ICU numbers arent going down to the same extent as they are in other countries? If you look at the UK for example , per capita its lower than us and tumbling down fast. Same in other European countries. Ours have been oscillating between 60 - 75 for a while now.

ShadowTech

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118592574#Comment_118592574

Regarding your last sentence there, I’m not sure that restrictions have much to do with keeping the hospitalisations down with Omicron. It seems like the most important indicator has been level of vaccination among the population. The restrictions seem to have done very little to reduce spread and the remaining restrictions seem pointless now. Mask mandate, reduced capacity, whole industries shutdown and we still had 10’s of thousands of cases a day and the hospitals didn’t come anywhere near collapse.

Case numbers and hospital numbers are all dropping with no restrictions.

Ireland's decision to remain under severe restrictions for the 1st 6 months of 2021 was absolute insanity.

Now we get to hear governments talk about the "cost of living" crisis after the fools borrowed billions to force business to close and pay people to watch Netflix.

Acting more responsible would have been wiser.

In the years to come they'll just shrug their shoulders and mumble some nonsense about public health advise at the time...

User1998

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118590913#Comment_118590913

Why? Covid is nothing now so theres no need for any more health measures

astrofool

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118592729#Comment_118592729

I'd agree, we had the panic after omicron emerged and then dropping of all restrictions when it turned out not to be as dangerous as delta was, it's why any analysis needs to take into account the variant that's dominant at the time, without Delta we'd probably have opened up as planned last year.

astrofool

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118592742#Comment_118592742

Did Ireland being in lockdown cause energy prices to rise? Or was it increased demand post pandemic after historic low demand during the pandemic exacerbated by Russia agitation with Ukraine?

Mecanudo

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118592726#Comment_118592726

Something weird with the UK statistics - going by the current situation there numbers are simply not being reported

Mecanudo

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118593357#Comment_118593357

Nah fek all to do with lockdown. We can thank the greens et al for current energy prices. The price of electricity generation is now linked to the price of the dominant energy supply and with renewables such as wind being an absolute flop this winter, natural gas is effectively keeping the lights on. However with gas supplies being squeezed because EU greens have demanded that all EU natural gas be left in the ground - EU block countries are now increasingly dependent on scarce/expensive natural gas from non EU countries. In short, as the last down the line we're screwed. Invest in a generator if you can.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118593357#Comment_118593357

Lockdown destroyed supply chains and business for many sectors. Lots of those businesses now need to make money.

It's very convenient for the government and world leaders to blame energy and deflect from their failed lockdowns and insane borrowing causing the problem.

But many of us said that people wouldn't be happy when the bill arrived. The government just fooled them into believing inflation would be a short term thing

is_that_so

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118593536#Comment_118593536

Short term is 6-12 months not a few weeks. Supply chains are now being disrupted by people being sick, part of the original rationale for lockdowns. Our borrowings and spending have now fully calmed down and there's a lot of warehoused tax to come through. That will take care of that outlay.

seamus

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118593536#Comment_118593536

Pretty naive to think that it was lockdown which caused the supply chain problems. From most metrics lockdowns had very little effect on supply chains. Very few, if any countries restricted imports and exports.

It's far more complex, but is basically down to how markets reacted. Many industries - globally - dramatically reduced output in expectation of a major economic crash that never came. Instead demand in many areas (such as building materials) increased. Skyrocketing in some cases, like shipping.

We were globally caught on the back foot because we had developed a pretty efficient supply chain, but one with very little tolerance for changes in supply & demand. This is logistics' weak point.

astrofool

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118593400#Comment_118593400

Go look up energy prices, oil is an easy one, take a look at what happened in March 2020, this also lead to reduced production from OPEC which has pushed prices higher as demand returns, as supply starts coming online again, this will start to drop again (oil being priced too high isn't that desirable for OPEC as countries move to alternatives and sources like oil sands becomes viable providing competition).

Economics101

As of 10am this morning the Govt Covid data hub has not been updated since Friday 4th. I know we shouldn't be obsessed by day-to-day case numbers, but there should be timely release of all regular data series until there is officially an end to all of this. Absence of data only allows misinformation to take hold. Its also symptomatic of the very bad data handling generally by the HSE.

is_that_so

Are you talking about the Geohive site? It has numbers for today - 643 in hospital.

Economics101

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118594110#Comment_118594110

The hospital numbers are up to date but not the PCR and antigen positive test numbers. The trend in these numbers and the % positivity rate for PCR tests is not without significance, even now.

B.A._Baracus

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118585953#Comment_118585953

That's entering conspiracy theory territory as you said probably close to 0.

Jimmy Carr has a pretty good joke in his Netflix special. He says "Do you think we overreacted to covid 19?" (Audience cheers) then says "yeah alot of the survivors think that...."

Follows with "if you could survey the dead they would say: we could have done more" (Survivorship bias)

Fair enough if you want to argue the true figure of the 5 thousand plus as mistakes always happen. But close to zero? Are you not guilty of survivorship bias yourself?

Economics101

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118594183#Comment_118594183

I don't have the reference to hand, but in late 2020 or early 2021 the CSO did an estimate of excess deaths. they were much lower than the headline Covid death figures. There are good reasons for this. First there have been almost no seasonal flu deaths. Second these is the matter of dying "with" as opposed to "from" Covid. Third there is the related question of co-morbidities.

seamus

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118594091#Comment_118594091

They flagged just over a week ago that they would stop publishing case data outside of normal working hours. As we have moved beyond the emergency phase of the pandemic, there is no need for this data to be published as soon as it's available.

The data is still being published.

ultrapercy

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118594183#Comment_118594183

No I stand over the 'closer to zero' comment. That's not to say that any death is not significant but mismanagement contributed to a fair proportion of those deaths. The extent of the lies we have been told will emerge in due course but like the Clifton Hotel saga it will be whitewashed and normalised as "nothing to see here".

corkie

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118594091#Comment_118594091

28 January: -

From today, the Department of Health will report COVID-19 case numbers from Monday to Friday only. The next report of COVID-19 cases will be on Monday 31 January. Reporting of cases on Monday will take account of weekend figures. Daily hospital and ICU information will continue to be updated on the COVID-19 data hub as usual on Saturdays and Sundays.

https://www.gov.ie/en/press-release/4f2c0-statement-from-the-national-public-health-emergency-team-friday-28-january/

ultrapercy

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118594225#Comment_118594225

2019: 31,100 approx deaths 2020: 31,700 deaths, first half of 2021: roughly 16k deaths. 2nd half of 2021 not available yet. Thats an increase of 70 per month total deaths which works out at about 1700 over the course of the pandemic to date. There is a natural increase due to population and increasing age profile that accounts for about 700 of that figure. An increase in sudden deaths and suicides account for another smaller portion. There are probably many other factors that shrink the number ever closer to zero.

seamus

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118594225#Comment_118594225

In general, we have one of the more accurate set of figures for Covid deaths because of the way we count them. Some other countries have a more simplistic counting method - the UK for example, counting all deaths within 28 days of a positive test.

The more simplistic method was "good enough" with lower case rates, but when Omicron came along, it became ridiculous. This is one of the reasons why, in spite of our higher proportional case load, our death rate has remained lower through Omicron then many other countries.

Like you say, excess deaths alone is a poor metric because it assumes that the death rate outside of Covid remains static.

Instead it turns out when you tell everyone to stay at home and immediately contact your GP if you feel unwell, deaths from all causes drop in the short-term. And, as we know, a large chunk of Covid deaths were always people at high risk of dying within the next 12 months.

It would be very incorrect to say that 6k didn't die from the virus. They did. However, it would also be incorrect to say that those 6k people would be alive today had Covid not come about. A large proportion, probably a majority, would not be. But that's a complex calculation that will take a while for the statisticians to work out.

Economics101

I stand corrected over the daily data moving to 5 days out of 7: hadn't picked that up.

A rather more pessimistic note about mortality; given the large number of cancer-related tests etc missed during the pandemic, there will probably a significant rise in deaths from later-diagnosed cancer for several years to come.

CalamariFritti

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118594183#Comment_118594183

In England FOI lead to the publication of the number of covid deaths where covid was the sole reason on the death cert. It was about 10% of the official 'with covid' number.

I get it with or from is not a black & white matter and also different countries define with-covid differently and also count differently. So not sure we'll ever know.

Plus - this may be viewed as another conspiracy theory - but I don't think governments would have any real interest to get to the bottom of it if that bottom may be a much smaller number. The side-effects and cost of lockdowns and other measures were too severe to allow any other message than the one that says 'there was no alternative and we saved many lives'.

The truth of it all - if there is such a thing - is probably somewhere in between.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118594704#Comment_118594704

That statistic doesn't mean what you think it means.

CalamariFritti

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118594730#Comment_118594730

So what do I think it means? And what does it mean?

I just put that number there that's not me saying the other 90% were bogus. I think I said that too in a way (not a black & white matter & somewhere in-between).

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118594352#Comment_118594352

When you factor in the huge amount of borrowing, the tiny number of excess deaths, the current state of our economy and the record levels of inflation, it doesn't look good at all.

Huge mistakes were made that will impact the country for years to come.

And all to "save" a few lives while we gladly cancelled all kinds of treatments and screenings that will likely lead to more deaths than lives saved anyways.

Leaders that got lost in the hysteria and used emotion to make decisions instead of data.