Relaxation of Restrictions, Part XII *Read OP For Mod Warnings*

Multipass

lee_baby_simms wrote: »

Well this is what Tony’s counterpart in Scotland is saying in the middle of big Delta wave.

Two countries with broadly similar population and vaccination penetration but both CMOs living in different realities.

One is wrong, one is right.

https://twitter.com/drgregorsmith/status/1408382714013683720?s=10

God imagine having people in charge talking actual sense - I’m so traumatised by our crowd, I think I’d actually cry if it happened.

lee_baby_simms

Multipass wrote: »

God imagine having people in charge talking actual sense - I’m so traumatised by our crowd, I think I’d actually cry if it happened.

It’s a stark contrast alright!

Maybe Tony and Nolan’s model assumptions are right and the rest of Europe is wrong. Time will tell.

It's worth emphasizing that, even with vaccines administered, a cohort of the population remain vulnerable.

For instance, people with:

• immunocompromised states
• rheumatoid arthritis - or states which require corticosteroids (drugs that suppress the immune system)
• cancer
• HIV/AIDS
• Crohn's disease / ulcerative colitis

The above is quite a lot of people in the population. Even if any of the above were to take a vaccine, it may be too weak to trigger an immunological response - meaning these patients are still susceptible to severe disease post-vaccination.

Of course, this impacts the elderly, too - many of whom do not respond to vaccines as effectively, and who may be comorbid with other serious diseases.

So, whilst vaccinations are highly effective, we must accept the consequence that many people will still die or experience severe disease as a result of this infection.

Now, that doesn't mean we should delay re-opening. To the contrary, we should advance re-opening as fast as possible (irrespective of what fearmongering nonsense NPHET conjure up). We must learn to live with the virus in the same way the above populations live with the risk of other viruses that permeate society.

But it's worth considering or acknowledging that, even in a fully double vaccinated population, the above risks still exist for the populations listed above (and some others, not listed).

dmakc

Dreaming of Tony being wheeled away in August screaming "I made the BBC"

lawred2

lawred2 wrote: »

Our eyeballs

I don't think Tony Holohan is unhinged. Acutely cautious but not mad or unhinged. The people making sly references to his wife's death and potential effect are being pricks.

Chris_5339762

Whatsisname wrote: »

I emigrated 3 and a half years ago, 6 months after getting my degree. Haven’t looked back since. You won’t regret it.

Do it. Do it now, to anyone who is half thinking of it.


I didn't and now I've two elderly parents to look after. Can't leave.

Speak Now

mikekerry wrote: »

Maybe not unhinged he just has a god complex!

Bound to happen when you start making late late show appearances and the host bowing at your feet. Also superman caricatures, freedom of Dublin city, honorary fellowship from Royal college of surgeon etc

ACitizenErased

Interesting news from Germany
https://twitter.com/siobhandowling/status/1410599248232534025?s=21

gozunda

thebaz wrote: »

not sure i would use term unhinged , but he strikes me a a control freak over the past 12 months, his exagerated fear of what might happen is of the charts , given over 50% of the poplulation is now vaccinated , including the very vulnerable who would have been at most risk of the virus.

You may wish to have a read of this as to modelled outcomes over the next couple of months.

https://www.ecdc.europa.eu/en/publications-data/threat-assessment-emergence-and-impact-sars-cov-2-delta-variant

Interestingly enough vulnerable groups who are not yet fully vaccinated and remain at higher risk to COVID-19 include 75% of 60-69 year olds and & 46% 50-59 year olds have not yet received a second dose and cohort 7 who are yet to be completed

PTH2009

Speak Now wrote: »

Bound to happen when you start making late late show appearances and the host bowing at your feet. Also superman caricatures, freedom of Dublin city, honorary fellowship from Royal college of surgeon etc

The man who saved Ireland from Covid, book deals and the like await

Very much not a supporter of his but maybe he is being left with to much responsibility by MM/Leo and the likes and people are getting the wrong idea and attacking him

namloc1980

ACitizenErased wrote: »

Interesting news from Germany
https://twitter.com/siobhandowling/status/1410599248232534025?s=21

Tony says no

bucketybuck

stephenjmcd wrote: »

What lockdown ? There's no lockdown. Your making things up again

Talk about deja vu...

A few weeks ago we got responses exactly like that whenever we pointed out all the kites flying for a delay to indoor hospitality. "What kites? There are no kites, conspiracy loons, you are making it up!"

Now we can see the kites for further delays justifed by schools reopening, by flu season approaching, by the dangers of christmas and still all we hear is "What kites? There are no kites, conspiracy loons, you are making it up!"

It is unreal how so many cannot see what is in front of their faces, cannot see what absolute mugs they are being made off by a select few people in power. But there are none so blind as those who do not want to see, same as it ever was.

bucketybuck

ACitizenErased wrote: »

Interesting news from Germany
https://twitter.com/siobhandowling/status/1410599248232534025?s=21

But the public health experts say there is no value to antigen testing. :rolleyes:

Captain_Crash

[Deleted User] wrote: »

The people making sly references to his wife's death and potential effect are being pricks.

It’s been a while since I commented on this thread, but this stands out. I’d agree that it’s not cool to be making comments about his wife etc and I don’t support it and think it crosses the line… but, if someone loses someone so close, it’s obvious it will impact them in ways most of us don’t want to contemplate!

The most common thing you hear about recovering from a loss like that is to find an outlet, something to take your mind off it! In Tony’s case I believe that’s NPHET! It’s always been his baby, but now that he’s lost his wife, it’s his everything and the concept of it losing it’s importance is something he can’t handle! The letter the other day was akin to a wounded animal knowing it’s nearly over and making one last swipe! One last aggressive attack.

I don’t like the man, but I don’t think what’s happened in the last 48hrs is sinister, I do believe it’s an emotional reaction to what he knows is fading… and that’s NPHETS relevance! They’ll never recommend restrictions be removed in full, we know that and truthfully always did and can’t bring themselves to move to the next phase! My 2c

mightyreds

gozunda wrote: »

You may wish to have a read of this as to modelled outcomes over the next couple of months.

https://www.ecdc.europa.eu/en/publications-data/threat-assessment-emergence-and-impact-sars-cov-2-delta-variant

Interestingly enough vulnerable groups who are not yet fully vaccinated and remain at higher risk to COVID-19 include 75% of 60-69 year olds and & 46% 50-59 year olds have not yet received a second dose and cohort 7 who are yet to be completed

I think 50% of 60-69 and 80% of 50-59 are done, that was 3 days ago probably a small bit higher now

the kelt

ACitizenErased wrote: »

Interesting news from Germany
https://twitter.com/siobhandowling/status/1410599248232534025?s=21

Yet when we had a report done on the effectiveness of antigen testing our cmo didn’t even have the manners to look at the report, dismissing it, according to the Matt Cooper show this eve.

Lumen

OK, I expect this to be both boring and controversial but bear with me. For the avoidance of doubt I don't have a covidboner for Israel, I just think they're a useful comparison as they were so far ahead in their vaccination programme.

On 19 June I wrote:

Israel saw a decent drop start after they hit 65 doses/100, and another when they hit 100/100. We should be at the first of those points at mid-June even if we don't ramp up from the current rate of 0.8 doses/100/day

To expand on this point about Israel's first inflection point, they saw cases drop from around 800/mn/day on Feb 7 @ 65 doses/100 to around 400/mn/day on Feb 22 @ 87 doses/100. That's a halving over two weeks. They then flat-spotted for a while until they hit 100 doses/100.

Mapping these vaccination thresholds to Ireland, we had 74 cases/mn/day on June 9 @ 63 doses/100 (ahead of my prediction). We haven't hit 87 doses/100 yet, that's around 4.35m doses, but we should do around 4 July at around 59/mn/day. We won't get to 100/100 until late July.

So whilst we haven't achieved Israel's initial halving of cases, we'll still have seen a respectable 20% drop in cases in these last four weeks, and we're still running at only 15% of cases that Israel had at the equivalent point in their vaccination rollout, when they were still under heavy restrictions.

Israel didn't "open fully" until early March, and then only with covid passes, which we're also proposing to do (despite resistance) in late July at around the same second "magic" threshold of 100 doses/100 people, i.e. 5 million doses.

We could still see the same pattern as they had, even with Delta, albeit shifted in time by four months.

So how is Israel's re-opening considered an international success, but Ireland's a total disaster? Is seems like a combination of justified loss of patience with vaccine supplies and fury at the incredibly weak signalling and lack of forward planning. But interestingly, Israel's green pass only supports negative tests for minors, and even then they have to be PCR, so both NPHET's advocacy of domestic covid passes and opposition to rapid testing matches policy in Israel.

Why didn't the government announce back in May that the EU digital covid cert with PCR testing would be used for indoor dining and pubs on a time-limited trial basis (say, three months) from early July? There would still have been bitching about how Paddy wouldn't stand for having his papers checked at the door of the pub and PCR testing was far too expensive, but at least they'd be able to point at Israel as a success story for near-elimination of Covid, and we'd have had a few weeks to get used to the idea.

Instead expectations were set that we'd have a largely unrestricted re-opening of indoor activities from early July, until the NPHET bomb went off with only a week to go.

In summary, it seems to me that the worst part of Ireland's re-opening strategy has been the incredibly poor planning and messaging, rather than the excessive caution of the public health advice.

I realise that NPHET are hate figures right now, but I think it's fairer to put the blame squarely at the door of the government who are ultimately responsible for setting the quality, quantity and pacing of re-opening.

Looking beyond Israel, it is true that by EU norms our current restrictions seem completely loopy, but we do share a land border with the epicentre of delta in Europe, and one of two of our hotspots is Donegal. Another country with early Delta seeding is Portugal, who have seen cases rising sharply for the last month, and they share a border with Spain who have also seen cases jump in the last few days.

None of this addresses the argument that we should just forget about cases and re-open regardless, but good luck finding an infectious disease specialist that agrees with you. People were advancing the same case a few weeks ago referencing the UK's much wider return to normality, and yet the UK seems to be seriously wobbling at this point.

Flame away! This is, after all, the rage thread.

sp00k

namloc1980 wrote: »

Some amount of doom from that briefing. 4.1m vaccine doses administered and less than a bus full of people in hospital, we should be in a brilliant place. Tony talking about restrictions/lockdowns and the need to protect return to school. Absolute doom merchants.

Not to mention that some of these people are in hospital with covid, not because of covid.

lawred2

[Deleted User] wrote: »

I don't think Tony Holohan is unhinged. Acutely cautious but not mad or unhinged. The people making sly references to his wife's death and potential effect are being pricks.

That wasn't me anyway. That's well out of order.

agoodpunt

so once we are all vaccinated a new variant will be opon us so at least give us a summer glad i have my youth this will not stop so longer restrictions going forward

Captain_Crash

Captain_Crash wrote: »

It’s been a while since I commented on this thread, but this stands out. I’d agree that it’s not cool to be making comments about his wife etc and I don’t support it and think it crosses the line… but, if someone loses someone so close, it’s obvious it will impact them in ways most of us don’t want to contemplate!

The most common thing you hear about recovering from a loss like that is to find an outlet, something to take your mind off it! In Tony’s case I believe that’s NPHET! It’s always been his baby, but now that he’s lost his wife, it’s his everything and the concept of it losing it’s importance is something he can’t handle! The letter the other day was akin to a wounded animal knowing it’s nearly over and making one last swipe! One last aggressive attack.

I don’t like the man, but I don’t think what’s happened in the last 48hrs is sinister, I do believe it’s an emotional reaction to what he knows is fading… and that’s NPHETS relevance! They’ll never recommend restrictions be removed in full, we know that and truthfully always did and can’t bring themselves to move to the next phase! My 2c

Wow. Just wow.

beaz2018

That clip going around of Tony and Glynn laughing at the end of the presser about cancelling communions,with Tony blocking his face with a sheet is sick. What the fook is so funny, do they have any clue what they are putting people through. If this delta was so serious, it’s hard to believe they’d be behaving like that.

bear1

https://www.rte.ie/news/coronavirus/2021/0701/1232493-covid-figures-nphet/

God he's insufferable

gozunda

mightyreds wrote: »

I think 50% of 60-69 and 80% of 50-59 are done, that was 3 days ago probably a small bit higher now

The figures quoted were in the Nphet briefing letter dated the 28th linked previously on this thread. . Have you a link for the updated figures?

It may be a fourth wave, which sounds scary, but hospitalizations and deaths will be very much a ripple!

funnydoggy

beaz2018 wrote: »

That clip going around of Tony and Glynn laughing at the end of the presser about cancelling communions,with Tony blocking his face with a sheet is sick. What the fook is so funny, do they have any clue what they are putting people through. If this delta was so serious, it’s hard to believe they’d be behaving like that.

Where is this clip? Jesus

KaneToad

beaz2018 wrote: »

That clip going around of Tony and Glynn laughing at the end of the presser about cancelling communions,with Tony blocking his face with a sheet is sick. What the fook is so funny, do they have any clue what they are putting people through. If this delta was so serious, it’s hard to believe they’d be behaving like that.

People often laugh at things in work.

aziz

beaz2018 wrote: »

That clip going around of Tony and Glynn laughing at the end of the presser about cancelling communions,with Tony blocking his face with a sheet is sick. What the fook is so funny, do they have any clue what they are putting people through. If this delta was so serious, it’s hard to believe they’d be behaving like that.

That’s sickening

aziz

KaneToad wrote: »

People often laugh at things in work.

But not on national television

mightyreds

gozunda wrote: »

The figures quoted were in the Nphet briefing letter dated the 28th linked previously on this thread. . Have you a link for the updated figures?

Yeah I had a look at the article you posted in your post and it's on that website, maybe thats wrong I'm not sure