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

snotboogie

Professor Moriarty wrote: »

Having dipped in and out of this thread, I am struck by the level of permanent outrage. No matter what the government, HSE and NPHET have done, it prompts predictable rants about 'useless' government, HSE 'incompetence' and NPHET 'selfishness'. Never ever is there any balance.

I get that some posters very obviously have political agendas but it makes meaningful engagement pointless. I just think to myself that the froth would be flowing freely from their mouths if they were living in one of our neighbouring countries such as the UK, Portugal, Spain, France, Holland and Belgium given the much higher mortality rates.

While I agree with the comments on the relentless hyperbole, we have a much younger population than all of the countries you mentioned, which directly correlates to our lower mortality. There has been decades of public service failings which have lead to a calamatous health system that needs more protection than any other in Europe, despite us having the youngest population in the continent, during a pandemic where outcomes are directly related to age. There is no point in being mad at the current government who had little option but to work with what they have but at the same time there has been a deliberate obfuscation of the death numbers to hide the past failings of the state institions

ArthurDayne

seamus wrote: »

And this is the nub of the issue. The fact that some other countries are apparently opening up faster is mostly irrelevant.

Herd immunity requires a certain amount of the population to be fully vaccinated. Covid is still statistically a serious illness for adults; several times more likely to result in serious injury or fatality than the 'flu.

And the fun thing about herd immunity is that it requires the entire population to be covered in order to defend against outbreaks. So if we have ourselves 70% covered, but only 10% of people in Donegal are vaccinated, then we will continue to see outbreaks in Donegal. If only 20% of under-30s are vaccinated and we reopen nightclubs, then we will see large outbreaks among the under-30 groups.

And so on. We need full vaccination in 70%+ of every age group 18+ for outbreaks to be contained.

This is why letting rip and opening up everything with gusto once the vulnerable are done, is not an appropriate response. People will die. Young people. And while it's a relatively small risk for younger people compared to older people, it's a relatively large risk compared to all of the other things which might kill a young person this year.

This is why opening up with restrictions is OK, but opening without requires caution.

The more risk of “outbreaks” is a different risk to what the severity of the more stringent restrictions is/was predicated on. We did not pursue unprecedented societal and economic lockdown simply because Covid was infectious — but for the additional factor that it’s spread bore a risk of causing a great many deaths among the vulnerable. That was the risk, and it follows therefore that the more successful you are in shielding the vulnerable (whether through encouraging certain shielding behaviour or, as we have now, through vaccination), the less serious the risk posed by outbreaks among the young. If we want a “proportionate” reopening, this must be acknowledged, but we remain in an “abundance of caution” reopening.

Even on this thread, where it seems a fair majority of people are sceptical about the policy, it seems the bulk of people believe there is some need for precautions and certain restrictions, but simply not to the severity and duration of what has been pursued. One is not saying “let it rip” if they are advocating the reopening of pubs with continued restrictions on capacity, social distancing etc.

Yes, a small number of young people might catch Covid and die — I could be one of them, or my siblings or friends — but there is no policy that abolishes the risk of premature death. When Covid is overcome, the world will start to reopen and young people will die doing all manner of things in the exercise of their freedom — they will die on backpacking trips, they will die on roads, they will die of infections, they will die at the hands of bad people. They will put others at risk, and be put at risk by others. While the individual risk of each of these things is low, the collective of the risks entails that the mere exercise of basic liberty hugely increases your risk of encountering one of these fates and the many other types of fate that may befall you. The dark but inescapable irony is that the end of lockdown will effectively kickstart chains of circumstances that will lead many young people around the world to their deaths — I could be one of them — when they otherwise could have been kept safely at home under restriction.

seamus

Lumen wrote: »

I don't know the risks of hospitalisation and death by age for confirmed cases or infected people. I've tried to find out, and failed.

To evaluate the "let it rip" proposition, you need to start with some assumption about how many people in a given age group (excluding the vaccinated high and very high people) will get infected or become a confirmed case (don't know, maybe 70%?), and then apply the hospitalisation and death probabilities to those.

Ignoring hospitalisation, we can at least see how many people in each age cohort have tested positive and how many have died.

This means that we can say that the IFR for the 25-34 age group is 0.029% (13 deaths out of 44,737 cases).

If, in a "let it rip" scenario, we saw 50% of this group infected, (330k cases), that would probably result in about 90 deaths. Even 25% infected would lead to 45 deaths.

Sounds relatively small in the context of nearly 5,000 overall. Not sure I'd be happy to tell those 45 families though that they lost a family member in the prime of life so that people could go clubbing again a few months quicker.

Deleted User

Deleted User wrote: »

We opened indoor dining last year on June 29th with nobody vaccinated and everything was grand.

It’s bizarre that we won’t do the same this year when we have half the population vaccinated

We’re haemorrhaging billions, no hurry like…

Doubling time from opening until mid october was a reasonably consistent 20 days. If 1/3 of the country is vaccinated, maybe the doubling time is 30 days

Sweet.Science

[Deleted User] wrote: »

We opened indoor dining last year on June 29th with nobody vaccinated and everything was grand.

It’s bizarre that we won’t do the same this year when we have half the population vaccinated

We’re haemorrhaging billions, no hurry like…

Negative interest rates its all good

snotboogie

kleiner feigling wrote: »

Important to remember also that vaccinated can, and do, still spread the virus.
The beauty of the vaccine is the reduction in severity of disease.

Based on the 2011 CSO data, and the 11th May HPSC report...
the under 35s are about 42% of the population, but death rate in that group is ~0.00104%
Pushing to vaccinate that group is largely a waste of time and money, as the vaccine will still circulate regardless.

The at risk groups will be protected by their own vaccines rather than other people's.

Under 19s make up ~8% of population.
I can't see many parents from chats with colleagues/friends who'd be willing to vaccinate their kids who are not at risk until the trials are complete, which is another year or 2 away.

HPSC report: https://www.hpsc.ie/a-z/respiratory/coronavirus/novelcoronavirus/surveillance/weeklyreportoncovid-19deathsreportedinireland/COVID-19_Weekly_Death_Report_Website_v1.1.pdf

Census 2011: https://www.cso.ie/en/media/csoie/census/documents/census2011profile2/Profile_2_Tables_and_Appendices.pdf

Great example of the perfect being the enemy of good fallacy. Vaccination reduces your chance of catching and spreading the virus. Each person we vaccinate will reduce the risk of spread. It's obvious that every extra vaccination will help the population to reduce the spread of the virus. Just because the vaccine doesn't 100% reduce the chance of spread doesn't mean we throw it out of the window for under 35's

timsey tiger

Deleted User wrote: »

Doubling time from opening until mid october was a reasonably consistent 20 days. If 1/3 of the country is vaccinated, maybe the doubling time is 30 days

Even then could be ok, since that 30% will keep increasing, pushing that doubling time out and out, with less and less severe cases as the vaccines work down the age groups.

timsey tiger

kleiner feigling wrote: »

Important to remember also that vaccinated can, and do, still spread the virus.
The beauty of the vaccine is the reduction in severity of disease.

Based on the 2011 CSO data, and the 11th May HPSC report...
the under 35s are about 42% of the population, but death rate in that group is ~0.00104%
Pushing to vaccinate that group is largely a waste of time and money, as the vaccine will still circulate regardless.

The at risk groups will be protected by their own vaccines rather than other people's.

Under 19s make up ~8% of population.
I can't see many parents from chats with colleagues/friends who'd be willing to vaccinate their kids who are not at risk until the trials are complete, which is another year or 2 away.

HPSC report: https://www.hpsc.ie/a-z/respiratory/coronavirus/novelcoronavirus/surveillance/weeklyreportoncovid-19deathsreportedinireland/COVID-19_Weekly_Death_Report_Website_v1.1.pdf

Census 2011: https://www.cso.ie/en/media/csoie/census/documents/census2011profile2/Profile_2_Tables_and_Appendices.pdf

Two ways of stopping spread.
1. don't catch it the vaccines help with that, over 50% I think.
2. Stopping passing it on which the vaccines also do to some extent, not sure of the numbers, but it is there too.

kleiner feigling

Lumen wrote: »

You need to be clear about what that death rate means. It means in the general population, and depends entirely on what the rate of infection is.

It absolutely DOES NOT mean "if you get infected you have a 0.00104% chance of dying."

Therefore it does not support your later point...



I don't know the risks of hospitalisation and death by age for confirmed cases or infected people. I've tried to find out, and failed.

To evaluate the "let it rip" proposition, you need to start with some assumption about how many people in a given age group (excluding the vaccinated high and very high people) will get infected or become a confirmed case (don't know, maybe 70%?), and then apply the hospitalisation and death probabilities to those.

Off you go.

Hi, yes that's correct re. the 0.00104% figure.
It's difficult to extrapolate to what that would be without restrictions etc., but given the schools have been open quite a bit, the younger cohort is still at an extremely low risk. Even if the non-lockdown risk was 10 times worse the risk would still be extremely low.
Without further info on the people who did die in the under 35s it is very hard to say why they did die (i.e. underlying conditions), or when they died (the deaths may have been early on when treatments were not well established).
I don't have that data available to me, but if anyone does do feel free to share.

You're implying that I propose a let it rip approach, which I don't.
I think it is important to do a full risk-benefit analysis of any measure, and to take a pragmatic approach based on data.

The reported data often bins ages into the under and over 65s which is an extremely blunt way of looking at things.
I did somewhat summarise things in the previous post by looking at under 35s, so attaching an image for reference.

AdamD

seamus wrote: »

The 15% difference would be made up of frontline workers and others who were vaccinated before the age-based cohorts kicked off.

The under-35s are a large group. Lumping them all together under a single statistic doesn't make sense.

If you look at the HSPC link you've posted, you can see that someone in the 25-34 age group is nearly five times more likely to die of Covid than someone under 25.

So if we open up wide without this group done, we could realistically end up with a few hundred thousand new infections again in a matter of weeks. Which, statistically would lead to about 50 deaths of people under 35. That's if we take those HSPC figures and add a few assumptions.

But it would have a knock-on effect of exposing those who are higher risk and/or the vaccine didn't work; which could be hundreds of deaths.

Herd immunity requires the entire population to covered, not just those at risk. Without herd immunity, those who can't get the vaccine or for whom it's not effective, are always exposed.

Ireland have had 255,000 covid cases since the beginning. Its seems beyond the realms of possibility that we would have a few hundred thousand infections in a matter of weeks with 70% of adults vaccinated.

The R rate drops without herd immunity, its not all or nothing here.

kleiner feigling

Lumen wrote: »

Also



Do you mean that

(a) you don't know anyone who will be willing to enroll their child in a clinical trial or
(b) you don't know anyone who will consent to have their child vaccinated with a vaccine which has been approved for general use, i.e. outside clinical trials?

The clinical trials will not take a year or two. The FDA has already authorized Pfizer-BioNTech for use in adolescents, and I doubt the EMA will be far behind.

Smells a bit like "experimental vaccine!!!!" hysteria.

I don't know anyone who would take a vaccine that doesn't have long term safety data, which they don't as they're scarcely a year old.
If there's no long term safety data, there's no long term safety data.
When there is, I will consider taking it and friends who have kids have said similar things.

Before you go there, I'm not anti-vax.
Yawn!
I probably have more vaxxes than most as I lived/traveled in tropical regions etc, and I had no issue taking those vaccines as they come with a wealth of safety data and completed trials.
The current products have emergency use authorisations, which is entirely different.
Certainly worth taking if you are in an at-risk group though

timsey tiger

timsey tiger wrote: »

Even then could be ok, since that 30% will keep increasing, pushing that doubling time out and out, with less and less severe cases as the vaccines work down the age groups.

Which is why as the 30% increases the restrictions are also decreasing

brick tamland

seamus wrote: »

Ignoring hospitalisation, we can at least see how many people in each age cohort have tested positive and how many have died.

This means that we can say that the IFR for the 25-34 age group is 0.029% (13 deaths out of 44,737 cases).

If, in a "let it rip" scenario, we saw 50% of this group infected, (330k cases), that would probably result in about 90 deaths. Even 25% infected would lead to 45 deaths.

Sounds relatively small in the context of nearly 5,000 overall. Not sure I'd be happy to tell those 45 families though that they lost a family member in the prime of life so that people could go clubbing again a few months quicker.

I know what you are trying to point out, but it wouldnt be that bad, nowhere near in my opinion

* The likleyhood is that the actual infection number in that age group is probably at least double the above, at least halving the death rate
* The deaths in this age group will have been a nearly all (possibly even 100%) in the high risk area, who will have been vacinated by the time these restriction ease, so much higher protection.
* Even in a let it rip scenario, with 50% of the population vacinated, i dont think anywhere near 50% of this grouping get infected

MerlinSouthDub

Deleted User wrote: »

Doubling time from opening until mid october was a reasonably consistent 20 days. If 1/3 of the country is vaccinated, maybe the doubling time is 30 days

The base doubling time is probably faster (maybe 30% or so faster, so 14 days doubling instead of 20) due to the UK variant (which wasn't around in October). On the other hand, I think by end of June we will have 70% of adults (so 50% of population) with at least one dose. So that brings us back close to your estimate of 30 days.

If we are at the end of June, and we are still at 400 cases a day or below (seems likely), then we would increase to 800 cases a day by end of July with indoor dining open. That seems perfectly manageable, given it will largely be people under 40. And we will be continuing to vaccinate throughout, so the doubling time will be getting extended every day.

podgeandrodge

Is this 105 minute rule based in any way on good science? It seems that a lot of experts don't think so.

PTH2009

https://www.thenationalnews.com/arts-culture/music/london-s-o2-arena-to-return-with-full-capacity-concerts-in-august-1.1225197

Sadly our trial could only be getting started by then with the amount of hemming and hawing that COULD go on about them

Be great if the 3Arena opened the same time

Vicxas

podgeandrodge wrote: »

Is this 105 minute rule based in any way on good science? It seems that a lot of experts don't think so.

Theres no science behind it, its to encourage people to leave so they can get more in.

celt262

PTH2009 wrote: »

https://www.thenationalnews.com/arts-culture/music/london-s-o2-arena-to-return-with-full-capacity-concerts-in-august-1.1225197

Sadly our trial could only be getting started by then with the amount of hemming and hawing that COULD go on about them

Be great if the 3Arena opened the same time

What is even the point in having these trials if they have proved successful over the water it's not as if the results are going to be any different?

podgeandrodge

Vicxas wrote: »

Theres no science behind it, its to encourage people to leave so they can get more in.

Ha, don't disagree with you there! But Govt. signed off on this, so on what basis are they approving the time limit, and if it's just about maximising profit, why not simply allow different pubs to implement whatever works for them.

podgeandrodge

celt262 wrote: »

What is even the point in having these trials if they have proved successful over the water it's not as if the results are going to be any different?

Their biological systems are different elsewhere, that's why we needed €9 meals, it's an Irish medical imperative.

PTH2009

celt262 wrote: »

What is even the point in having these trials if they have proved successful over the water it's not as if the results are going to be any different?

This is Ireland were talking about

hynesie08

PTH2009 wrote: »

This is Ireland were talking about

So we should blindly follow England's Data, except when it comes to pubs, when we should ignore their data and open up outside and inside together........

OwenM

seamus wrote: »

The 15% difference would be made up of frontline workers and others who were vaccinated before the age-based cohorts kicked off.

The under-35s are a large group. Lumping them all together under a single statistic doesn't make sense.

If you look at the HSPC link you've posted, you can see that someone in the 25-34 age group is nearly five times more likely to die of Covid than someone under 25.

So if we open up wide without this group done, we could realistically end up with a few hundred thousand new infections again in a matter of weeks. Which, statistically would lead to about 50 deaths of people under 35. That's if we take those HSPC figures and add a few assumptions.

But it would have a knock-on effect of exposing those who are higher risk and/or the vaccine didn't work; which could be hundreds of deaths.

Herd immunity requires the entire population to covered, not just those at risk. Without herd immunity, those who can't get the vaccine or for whom it's not effective, are always exposed.

You've been one of the more reasoned posters on here, but that is total nonsense. It's taken 14 months to record approx 255k infections so far, there is no way we could end up with " a few hundred thousand new infections again in a matter of weeks"

Wolf359f

podgeandrodge wrote: »

Their biological systems are different elsewhere, that's why we needed €9 meals, it's an Irish medical imperative.

Correct me if I'm wrong, bit didn't the UK have the exact same issue we had with sperating out restaurants/gastro pubs with wet pubs (yeah we all hate that term) we went with a €9 value (frozen pizza) they went with scotch eggs.

So much easier in the US where some states it's done on sales, 51% food you're a restaurant, 51% alcohol your a pub.

Not to rehash that argument, but making out like Ireland was unique in trying to separate business compared to the UK is incorrect.

OwenM

podgeandrodge wrote: »

Is this 105 minute rule based in any way on good science? It seems that a lot of experts don't think so.

It was drawn from guidelines written by Failte Ireland I believe..... It's not going to be policed anyway

timmyntc

seamus wrote: »

Ignoring hospitalisation, we can at least see how many people in each age cohort have tested positive and how many have died.

This means that we can say that the IFR for the 25-34 age group is 0.029% (13 deaths out of 44,737 cases).

If, in a "let it rip" scenario, we saw 50% of this group infected, (330k cases), that would probably result in about 90 deaths. Even 25% infected would lead to 45 deaths.

Sounds relatively small in the context of nearly 5,000 overall. Not sure I'd be happy to tell those 45 families though that they lost a family member in the prime of life so that people could go clubbing again a few months quicker.

Firstly - your IFR is flawed. There are plenty of vulnerable people in the 25-34 age group, most of which would have made up the death figures sadly. Those people have already been vaccinated, so the real risk of death for 25-34 excluding vulnerable people is no doubt a magnitude of difference lower.

45 deaths would probably be about 10 deaths to be honest. Possibly even lower. Unfortunately without a better breakdown of data from HPSC we can't estimate to a higher degree of accuracy

podgeandrodge

podgeandrodge wrote: »

Their biological systems are different elsewhere, that's why we needed €9 meals, it's an Irish medical imperative.

I cant believe this trope is still being pushed.

The decision was only premises serving food could open. €9 was an arbitrary figure selected to stop people pulling the piss by selling peanuts with every pint

Lumen

Deleted User wrote: »

I cant believe this trope is still being pushed.

The decision was only premises serving food could open. €9 was an arbitrary figure selected to stop people pulling the piss by selling peanuts with every pint

There has to be a term for this, something like "threshold fallacy".

It goes like this:

Why is a €9 meal safe but an €8 meal not? DOES EXPENSIVE FOOD KILL COVID?
Why it is safe to go 120kph on the motorway but not 121kph? SPEED LIMITS ARE BULLSH!T.
Why can I buy alcohol on my 18th birthday but not a day before? DOES MY LIVER HAVE A CALENDAR?

lukas8888

Deleted User wrote: »

I cant believe this trope is still being pushed.

The decision was only premises serving food could open. €9 was an arbitrary figure selected to stop people pulling the piss by selling peanuts with every pint

And i can not believe you still think that the decision was not ridiculous and completely abused wholesale.All it lead to was jammed pubs ignoring the meal criteria.Where as if all were open the numbers indoors might not have lead to the same outcome.Probably best though not to rehash the debate that was flogged to death months ago.

JDD

People forget that lockdowns, and restrictions in general, were not put in place in order to avoid every hospitalisation and every death from covid.

They were put in place in order to prevent hospitals becoming overwhelmed.

If we fully open before the under 35 cohort is vaccinated then yes, we risk infections in that category rising steeply, for a period of time until the critical mass of that age group is vaccinated. So, say we fully opened tomorrow and most of that category is vaccinated by end July, that is a window of two months.

I think it's very unlikely, even in a fully open scenario, that we will have a number infected over 10 weeks that is over the total number of infections in the state for 14 months.

But say we have the same steep rise we had at Christmas/New Years - but in a cohort that is 15% of the overall population. You might see 70-100k infections, at the very high end, over that eight week window. And remember, not everyone will be infected at the same time, so hospitalisations will only be at the highest at the end of that window.

There will of course be people hospitalised. But no where near the numbers in January/February simply because under-35s don't tend to suffer badly enough to be hospitalised. There may again be a handful of deaths.

As awful as this is, if we cast our minds back to March last year there is absolutely NO WAY the country would have shut down if we were going to have a few hundred hospitalisations and a handful of deaths over an eight week window. Advocating for extending restrictions simply because we are now used to them, in circumstances where our hospitals are not going to become overwhelmed, is simply not a decision a government who has the best interests of the whole population at heart should make.