The UK response - Part II - read OP

I do despair how soft people are becoming.

A minister in the UK having to apologise for commenting about us 'cowering from the virus'.

I mean, people really need to toughen up if they find that offensive.

Sure and I think the UK have made the correct and safe decision by opening up as they have done. There's still the question however of whether we're seeing a delay in the peak in deaths which will continue to rise until that point or whether the peak will come in the next couple of weeks as has been the case in the past, in which case the peak itself will be low. However please note that in either case, nobody is expecting the sort of deaths that occurred in other waves.

It's not that it's offensive; it's ill judged to suggest that people taking precautions against infection are behaving in a cowardly fashion when, as the Health Secretary, you're supposed to be trying to promote public health and reduce the spread of infection.

Be a bit like a Home Secretary criticising people for being too spineless and sheep-like in observing the law, or an Education Secretary suggesting that students were all big girlie swots. You may hate your job and despise the people you are supposed to serve, but you're not supposed to let on.

Regardless of whether the peak is considered high or low (presumably relative to previous waves which are not comparable), a good portion of those deaths could have been avoided. The UK had just under 580k cases in the last 14 days, a proportion of which will result in deaths. They are giving around 50k first doses per day now, by vaccinating alone they would have reached this level of immunity quicker. Plus there would be a level of spread anyway which would have sped up getting to current immunity levels.

Had the Delta spread been controlled for the past few weeks, they would reached the current levels of immunity less than 10 days later but with much fewer deaths and without large scale absenteeism due to the requirement to isolate. It wasn't about keeping restrictions for months more like some like to make out.

If they didn't catch Delta, they wouldn't have died from it. If Delta was less prevalent there would have been less chance of them catching it. The scale of reduction in deaths had Delta been better controlled is up for debate, "much fewer" may not be totally accurate but I don't think "wouldn't have made any difference" has any truth in it.

Testing is down but not enough to cover the drop in cases.

Free the jock's 🤣

Big drop in the north too today

24,950 today down from 39,950 last week.

The danger, however, is that remaining restrictions here, while flattening the curve (a good thing) will also have the effect of delaying the peak, so it might be into September and schools and colleges opening. This would have implications for removal of remaining restrictions.

Not being funny but it will be September going by how things have gone in the UK. Ireland is at the point now where it was the start of June in the UK and England eased all restrictions last week. The way it has turned out in Scotland maybe they could of opened at the same time but took a more safer route which is fair enough.

Maybe Ireland just misses it altogether and get's away with it quicker than others, who knows. But when you look at Scotland yeah they have had restrictions a lot as well but it has not been a total disaster for them.

It could be that the impact of the Euros and the lead up to the final accelerated cases before the relaxing of restrictions. This was reflected in the sudden uptick around that time.

I didn't think that the cases would drop off so quickly but it is promising in terms of vaccines/natural immunity among the population.

Surely the UK experience suggests that Ireland can avoid a peak at all. Presumably it is it beginning of the effects of herd immunity which has resulted in the decline in cases in the UK (don't know what else it could be). If that's the case, it is vaccinations which have built up immunity in the population, not virus spread.

The less than 1m cases in the last month are a drop in the ocean compared to the more than 37m people fully vaccinated. Even with several potential super-spreader events (Euros) and vaccination rates dropping off, daily cases barely exceeded daily vaccinations in the UK for a day or two. If Ireland keeps the curve flattered and vaccinates plenty of people throughout August, we should be in a very good position come September.

If it were purely the vaccines causing the current drop then you would not have seen the dramatic rise and fall as the delta variant wave passed.

My view is that once a certain point is reached in vaccinations particularly of the vulnerable, virus transmission itself starts to have benefits that outweigh the costs. The advantage the UK will have over Ireland is that at the moment the virus is quickly travelling through the unvaccinated and undervaccinated population. In this way many who will never voluntarily be vaccinated will gain immunity. All this while deaths remain relatively low due to existing vaccinations.

Ireland on the other hand will still have unvaccinated people coming into autumn and, because we're still suppressing the virus, they will not gain immunity through contracting it. Therefore we'll still have restrictions going into winter in Ireland.