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

ceadaoin.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119414682#Comment_119414682

There likely never will be a 'proper' vaccine. There never has been for a coronavirus, despite all efforts. What will you do then?

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119415198#Comment_119415198

Your reply has nothing to do with the point of my post, which is all the politicians in the video are shown lying about the vaccines. I have yet to hear any of these politicians apologise for what they said. How could Daniel Andrews the Victorian Premier in Australia say that with 3 doses you will be prevented from getting infected and from transmitting the omicron variant? We have known for months before the omicron variant that the vaccines do not prevent infection and transmission. I have also not seen any of the media hold these politicians accountable for what they said.

Here it is again for your viewing pleasure. If it was not a serious health issue, it would be comical.

https://youtu.be/PV63fjgAzwc

Of my friends and family who are fully vaccinated 80% have been infected by covid. Two ended up in hospital. The politicians in the video are a disgrace to say what they said. Pandemic of the unvaccinated my arse!

Ceepo

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119415198#Comment_119415198

"His unvaccinated predecessor went to hospital as an emergency case. The older vaccinated incumbent had to isolate in the white house for a few days."

No sure what point you're trying to make here, as It would have been hard for Trump to be vaccinated at time when there was no vaccine available. He also got what was considered a more severe strain of covid.

odyssey06

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119416570#Comment_119416570

When did Biden make the comment? It appears the video itself is the lie if you are using Omicron to judge comments made 12 months ago based on the best available data at the time for the variants in circulation.

You haven't provided any evidence to show Biden or Andrews lied. You haven't even provided the source & timings for these statement \ exact phrasings, or any recent citation for when they used the phrase "pandemic of the unvaccinated" in relation to Omicron.

The Qatar study referenced below found that - for Omicron:

The effectiveness of three doses of BNT162b2 and no previous infection was 52.2% (95% CI, 48.1 to 55.9).

So if 100 Australians are vaccinated, that's 52% of cases prevented.

It also found:

The study, the most comprehensive of its kind in investigating different combinations of immunity for omicron-variant SARS-CoV-2 infections, also found evidence that both vaccination and prior infection provided strong and durable protection from severe, critical, or fatal COVID-19 during the omicron wave.

So your statement of fact: "We have known for months before the omicron variant that the vaccines do not prevent infection and transmission" is false and unsupported by any evidence you have provided.

https://news.weill.cornell.edu/news/2022/06/qatar-omicron-wave-study-shows-slow-decline-of-natural-immunity-rapid-decline-of

Your post appears to be nothing more than anti vax propaganda.

is_that_so

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119415932#Comment_119415932

It was a global pandemic of some great concern for quite a long while, until we cracked vaccines. It's still a pandemic using a strict definition of the word but for very many countries it's now just a background disease like other respiratory illnesses. In that regard the continuing media obsession with it is tiresome and fairly unnecessary.

astrofool

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119416570#Comment_119416570

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119416935#Comment_119416935

The point was that the vaccines have effectively eliminated hospitalisations to the level where lockdowns and restrictions are unnecessary (remembering that the CFR for Omicron is about the same as the original variant if you're unvaccinated). 2 presidents, 1 ended up being hospitalised and treated as an emergency case, the older one wasn't, one was unvaccinated (because they weren't available yet) the older one was vaccinated.

amandstu

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119418110#Comment_119418110

Are there opinions/research as to the CFR(case fatality rate?) -or equivalent for anyone with just one vaccination?

Ceepo

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119418110#Comment_119418110

No doubt vaccine played a huge part to reduce in severe disease and deaths rates, but it also must be said we had lockdowns and restrictions when we had over 90% vaccine uptake.

Sorry but I'm still not getting the point why you brought Trump into this. While he was hospitalised, and unvaccinated because there wasn't a vaccine in place at the time (which you left out) there are a lot more confounding factors to take into account. (Obesity being one )

Is the CFR the same as previous strains in unvaccinated ?? Do you have a link to this information

astrofool

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119419240#Comment_119419240

You can get the CFR data from the CDC, WHO and a variety of studies, there's a twitter thread here that covers a lot of the data (and you can go back through the sources and investigate further, hopefully you're not one of the people who gives out about tweets not realising the data behind them is from various studies):

(1) Paul Glasziou on Twitter: "6/ So it’s not “just a cold” but better than delta, and with vaccination better than ‘flu. Very interested to see any improvements on these." / Twitter

Delta was quite vicious, good at spreading with a high CFR vs. the original strain, Omicron spreading helped a lot but would have us back to pandemic beginning CFR wise without vaccines.

The point with Trump was the vaccines doing their job of keeping people out of hospital (remembering that hospital capacity was one of the main reasons for lockdowns), in a sample set of 1, 1 president unvaccinated put pressure on the system, 1 vaccinated president didn't, the fact that Biden got infected doesn't really matter, he wasn't taking up the hospital space of his predecessor and this effect is seen across vaccinated countries (i.e. large sample sets), saying "Biden got infected thus vaccines useless" completely misses the point, the better outcomes are down to vaccines. (remembering this was in response to the "pandemic of the unvaccinated" comment, it still is, just the % is too low to have any great impact on society anymore, at the height, you were 10-24x more likely to be in ICU if unvaccinated).

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119418575#Comment_119418575

The data is quite messy now with a high vaccinated % (and those most vulnerable are nearly 100% vaccinated so 1 or 2 cases either side can skew data considerably) and previous infections. The sum up, from that tweet, is that if vaccinated, it's about as bad as flu, 20x worse otherwise.

#injections and boosters will also come into it, but again, have the most effect in the most vulnerable groups (which are also most vaccinated), which is why when booster 2 is recommended for everyone in Sept/Oct, the vulnerable will likely be on booster 3.

Ceepo

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119419316#Comment_119419316

I'm not on twitter at all tbh so I'm not one that gives out about tweets,

I'll look into the cfr rate at some point in time. Not something I'm overly concerned about tbh

astrofool

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119419430#Comment_119419430

I don't use it either, it can be a great source for collected data, there was a few sites that used to maintain their own sources of sources page, but they go out of date very quickly, whereas with Twitter there's always one scientist or another researching something, pulling together their data and making posts about it. You'll also see the difference between the misinformation tweets (usually 1 source of dubious quality written by an unknown) and informative tweets which use a variety of sources, or if single source, will constantly call this out rather than try and make concrete conclusions from it.

I do wonder if it's part of their tenureship now to be active on some sort of social media as I'd rarely bother myself.

Spudman_20000

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119418110#Comment_119418110

I'd be flabbergasted if the CFR for Omicron was anything like earlier variants. To attribute the reduction in hospitalisations purely to vaccinations seems a teeny weeny optimistic to put it mildly.

astrofool

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119419536#Comment_119419536

Without vaccinations, we'd likely still have lots of restrictions, or a broken down health service (or have lots of nightingale style wards setup).

Spudman_20000

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119419592#Comment_119419592

South Africa seems to fare just fine with Omicron and a low vaccination rate. I thought it was generally accepted Omicron was less lethal than previous variants.

https://www.bmj.com/content/378/bmj.o1806

Even esteemed epidemiologist Bill Gates has said Omicron done a better job than the vaccines:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=essI63xOvPI

Stormyteacup

Quite a few studies indicating Omicron has a lower fatality rate even taking vaccination status into account. Two below;

https://www.ijidonline.com/article/S1201-9712%2822%2900228-4/fulltext

“On the basis of data from South Africa and mathematical modeling, we found that the Omicron variant is highly transmissible but with significantly lower infection fatality rates than those of previous variants of SARS-CoV-2.”

https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/healthandsocialcare/causesofdeath/articles/comparingtheriskofdeathinvolvingcoronaviruscovid19byvariantengland/december2021

“The risk of death involving COVID-19 was estimated to be 67% lower (hazard ratio: 0.33, 95% confidence interval: 0.24 to 0.45) following Omicron infection relative to Delta. This was after adjusting for sex, age, vaccination status, previous COVID-19 infection, calendar time, ethnicity, Index of Multiple Deprivation rank, household deprivation, university degree, keyworker status, country of birth, main language, region, disability, and the number of pre-existing conditions.”

Seems to be generally accepted that Omicron is less lethal. Granted it spreads easier so is more likely to reach vulnerable and elderly, which would explain why deaths are higher than expected with boosters uptake. We’ve had about 1,000 covid deaths since beginning of March.

odyssey06

This is what happened when Omicron hit Hong Kong - older demographic without immunity from either vaccines or previous infection.

Even if Omicron is less severe, it is more infectious. IN the numbers game of hospital capacity, without vaccines, it is major threat to capacity.

https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspective/2022/04/study-sheds-light-death-spike-hong-kong-covid-19-surge

glitterIsland

I got a message earlier from a number. It said:

HSE: You have been in touch with someone who has the covid 19 variant. Please follow the link.... And it starts with test.ie....

The number is an 083

I had many pcr tests and texts from the hse and it didn't come into the usual message chats from the hse. It was separate message.

I didn't click on the link and I went straight to delete because I presume it's a scam.

walus

if vaccinations are so crucial from keeping people out of hospitals and protecting from death, why highly vaccinated countries i.e. Israel (almost entire population with 4 doses), New Zealand and others are being absolutely wiped out when it comes to excess deaths this year? A 20-40% of excess deaths does not seem insignificant to me. What is causing those deaths if it is presumably not covid?

https://stats.oecd.org/index.aspx?queryid=104676

bennyineire

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119434691#Comment_119434691

Why is there so few deaths from Covid here since the vaccination program compared to before the vaccination program?

I really have no idea why 🤔

walus

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119434734#Comment_119434734

It is not about deaths from covid only. It’s about all deaths that are in excess of the average.

bennyineire

"if vaccinations are so crucial from keeping people out of hospitals and protecting from death, why highly vaccinated countries i.e. Israel" I'm quoting you here, tell me again how "It is not about deaths from covid only"

odyssey06

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119434691#Comment_119434691

"If vaccinations..."

Well NZ vaccination rollouts including boosters all happened in 2021.

In 2020 and 2021, the rate of deaths among people over-90-years-old, the population among the most at risk from COVID-19, remained the same or even lower than expected compared with most other countries.

“Deaths in 2021 were in line with the expected trend of increasing deaths, while deaths in 2020 were lower as there were far fewer winter deaths than other years.”

For the countries you have named with 20% or higher you can find one lower than that such as Germany or France. The % difference does not seem explicable by differences in vaccination rates.

There were deaths from Omicron which need to be factored into the above percentages.

The first thing to be aware of with excess mortality is the above graph (copied from below article). Excess mortality just looks at previous years, it doesn't take into account how the age profile of the country has shifted in that period. A small increase in the number of older people has a greater than expected impact on deaths.

Then, if you look at who died from covid. 10% - 20% of deaths were in under 65s. In Ireland it was closer to 10%, in the US closer to 20%.

So you had people dying unexpectedly who could have been expected to survive a typical winter season.

Then you had vulnerable people taking extreme precautions to avoid infectious diseases. In trying to suppress covid flu etc was crushed. So people who may likely have died in a typical winter season - did not. Are they in the numbers passing away now? That's my guess.

Could there also be some aspect of people passing away with complaints left untreated who either didn't attend scans or had them cancelled during the pandemic. Possibly, although more data would be needed to see if the causes of death recorded have shifted in pattern.

In countries hard hit by covid, could older people have been weakened even if they survived the first wave. Possibly.

https://www.stats.govt.nz/news/deaths-increase-as-population-ages/

Stormyteacup

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119434734#Comment_119434734

Just as a point of information we have had about 2,200 deaths with covid since >90% vaccination uptake as of September 2021, so approx. 10 months. Total for 32 months of records here is 7,700. Deaths are spread out currently so not causing obvious problems in healthcare, but it’s inaccurate to say there has been so few deaths from Covid since the vaccination program.

Vaccinations may have prevented serious illness, but we can’t disregard omicron variant being less lethal either. Many people are still dying and classed as a covid death - just not in alarming enough numbers to threaten the healthcare system.

TomSweeney

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119419592#Comment_119419592

Without Omicron you mean ...

TomSweeney

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119435351#Comment_119435351

No we haven't, my mum died of cancer and dementia in January and happened to test + for Covid a few weeks before her death - completely asymptomatic but the sociopaths are counting it as a "covid death".

You think she was the only 1 that's miscounted ???

100s perhaps 1000s more ...

walus

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119435282#Comment_119435282

For the age profile of a population to change in any meaningful way a long time has to pass i.e. a decade. For example a median age of NZ changed from 35.9 in 2006 to 37.4 in 2018. The article you mentioned discuses period to the end of 2021. It is only this year that NZ are struggling. Also, their ‘covid’ deaths are in double figures, which while surprising considering a fully vaccinated country and much less severe omicron variant, contributes more substantially to the overall number of excess deaths and possibly makes it look less unusual. In case of Israel, their ‘covid’ deaths are on par with average across other countries, which makes high numbers of excess deaths even more difficult to understand.

In my opinion there is a significant surge, an uptake in certain medical conditions such as heart attacks, blood cloths to the lungs, cancer etc. and possibly other much more uncommon diseases. Since of 2021 these would have increased by 300-500% vs an average for the previous 5 years and affect even younger part of population i.e. 18-49 years of age.

I don’t know what has caused this but we better pay attention to it, as sure as hell these deaths will not get as good traction with the media as ‘covid’ deaths did.

odyssey06

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119435981#Comment_119435981

Why would cancer or heart attacks increase in NZ or Israel but not Germany or France is the key question.

What percentage of the increase is natural growth? Excess deaths are comppared with previous 5 year average so yes there can be percentage point increases and shifts in that time.

What percentage is covid?

What percentage is accounted for by the shift in patterns of deaths during covid and lockdowns and now circumstances are correcting themselves - which was the point I would stress for NZ. This is known as the harvest effect.

In Spain there was a surge recently which didnt seem to be accounted for in the official heatwave figures.

Some theorising about it here.

Peiró's second hypothesis is one that is also pointed out by the sources consulted in the ISCIII: there are people who die due to the long lack of control in the management of chronic pathologies and the low detection of cancer in the last two years. “Again I find it difficult to fit in. On the one hand, I would expect to see more hospital admissions for decompensated diabetes, heart failure, and other classic chronic diseases. And the colleagues I ask tell me that they are not seeing this. They do say that there are more advanced cancers, but here the latency to death should be longer. It might explain some, but not all, of the excess mortality. And it should be accompanied by an uptick in emergency room hospitalizations due to chronic ailments,” he notes.

this is a google translate from

https://elpais.com/sociedad/2022-08-01/el-exceso-de-muertes-este-julio-quintuplica-la-media-de-ese-mes-y-no-solo-por-el-calor-y-la-covid.html

walus

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119436111#Comment_119436111

France and Germany are no different. They also have experienced ‘unexplained’ excess deaths (to a lesser degree perhaps) as the ‘covid’ deaths as percentage of all-cause deaths were in single low digits at the time. What is different is the level of ‘unexplained’ deaths and their timing. Another example is Netherlands - virtually no ‘covid’ deaths, yet excess deaths between 12-23% for 10 subsequent weeks this year.

odyssey06

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119436170#Comment_119436170

You introduced this aspect by saying that countries were being "absolutely wiped out" with excess deaths. Well that's a large exaggeration but to suggest that France and Germany are 'no different' to the figures you cited for New Zealand and Israel or are being "absolutely wiped out" is nonsense.

I pointed out that the figures in France and Germany are much lower and should be assessed in light of covid deaths and expected increase in older population versus the previous baseline. And that any explanation of excess mortality would need to explain why there is such variation across Western countries.

walus

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119436733#Comment_119436733

It is a matter of an expression. Let’s not get bogged down on how the message is deliver and concentrate on its content. To put this into a context when Sweden were registering similar levels of excess deaths due to covid back in 2020 the media did not hold back on how irresponsible their strategy was and that they could have done much more to protect their citizens. Sweden’s neighbouring countries were given as an example of how it should be done. Now Israel is recording excess deaths of a similar magnitude relative to the mean, and those are vastly not due to covid.