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

I doubt it will even get to the point where indoor dining opens in a fortnight.

Weekly LEA numbers have not appeared this evening on the data hub anyone know why?

In around 2 weeks NPHET will meet over the weekend and Tony will come with an idea of sharp lockdown in order to re-open schools

Pros and cons to it no matter which way you do it. They’re supposed to be independent advisers and not be concerned with politics, which does seem to be the case and it is important that we know what’s being advised.

The government being seen as somewhat indecisive and spineless is a broader issue to do with the current coalition personalities.

As I see it, NPHET didn’t over step the line, but the media keeps talking as if they’re the ones setting policy, rather than the government. They’re not the Troika and decisions are being made by the cabinet.

But if only vaccinated people are allowed in why would they?

A gentle reminder those averagely healthy living at home over 80s have a 94.5% survival rate...about c82-4% co morbodities x2 or more if in a nursing home.

This was the data PRE vaccination so they got an extra nudge now on top of that in the right direction

..as one 80+ year old in my family said that aint bad on top of 'they' know how this virus works now and what treatments to give you even if still somewhat imperfect but more importantly what not to do!

We have a lot of 80+ers in the family and are real about losing some of them to death probably soon enough as they are to their own mortality.

We should be asking the likes of them how they want to live the rest of their lives now and how much more stress they want to put on younger people.

We are not going for sterilising community immunity ..its harm/symptom reduction immunity.

We do need both natural amd vaccination to be part of that community immunity and treated equally.

Some potentially brighter news

Nite all ...great to have boards back warts and all😆

People end up in ICU for lots of reasons, not just covid. There's over 200 people in ICU at the moment for non covid reasons. Some of the covid ICU patients could of been heading for ICU before catching covid anyway. Its a lot less likely than hospital patients of which thousands are admitted everyday hence why I mentioned that and not ICU.

There's a delay with deaths. In the graphs you show, you can see a delay of two weeks between case rises and deaths. There is a small rise in deaths this time around, but until the UK cases plateau, we know don't what'll happen with deaths/hospitalisations.

Deaths in the UK are up 47% week-on-week. https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/

That's a doubling time of about 12 days.

I'm not sure how pointing out facts can be "scaremongering". And the usual defence is, "But the numbers are low, 47% of a low number is still a low number". The current average deaths/day in the UK is 37. With a 12-day doubling time becomes 600/day inside two months. That's how exponential growth works.

It may not. If everything does plateau then things might be very different. Lots of "ifs" and "mights" though. The UK are carrying out a gigantic experiment on their society. Nobody knows how it's going to turn out.

Professor of Immunovirology at University College Cork, Liam Fanning was on Newstalk Breakfast this morning talking sense as usual. He's not overly worried about the rising case numbers and this is probably the beginning of covid becoming endemic rather than pandemic and it'll be around for years. Also calling for a bit more clarity on those ending up on hospital/icu in terms of age and vaccination status as hard to guess where these numbers will go if we don't know if we dont know who's making uo these numbers.