Herd immunity is not going to happen

I must know about 20 people who have caught it. The majority from socializing. The rest from work (health sector). A few have a caught it at least twice maybe even 3 times. Most of them had mild symptoms or none. A few were quite ill, none were hospitalized. Mostly young or middle aged. Not all in Ireland.

What are you going on about? I already said that I would have restricted countries that I "could" restrict...which was obviously acknowledging that for NI and UK that it probably wasn't possible. I didn't think anyone on here would be so 'stupid' as to need that to be spelled out for them.

I understand exponential growth. Are you unaware that the government did actually bring in mandatory hotel quarantine quite some time back??? and that they did actually stop saying ah well it can come in from the UK so there's no point in stopping it coming in from any other country?

strange i know no one who got it in the last few months I work with 300 people and i socialize a few times a week weird that aint it

How do people feel about the rest of the year? We'll probably take a cautious approach, no doubt.

But what about going into next year, or is it too early to tell?

It's probably (definitely) for a different thread and a good topic, the Dutch also have the "insurance for everyone" system which means the hospitals are competing for patients as they are valuable and necessary to keep the hospital running, but I would be in favor of a Dutch style system (especially if it meant breaking the union led control of healthcare that is currently in place in Ireland). The last minister who tried it was run out of the place.

They told us vaccines were the way out. But vaccines alone isn't enough to get us through this. So what now?

I suppose no one here really knows that answer. There's still so much uncertainty around the whole thing.

Of course we will achieve herd immunity against COVID, I men look how we did it against the common cold and influenza. With such obvious success stories as those, who can doubt we will 'win'.

Having now woken up from a silly dream, I notice there is now a lambda variant out of Peru that may be vaccine resistant... Déjà Vu.

"Researchers at the University of Tokyo published their paper at bioRxiv, a "preprint server for biology," last Wednesday ahead of the paper's peer review.

In lab experiments, they identified three mutations in the Lambda variant's spike protein—called RSYLTPGD246-253N, 260 L452Q and F490S—that make it more resistant to neutralization by antibodies that are induced through vaccination. This makes the strain more resistant to vaccines than the original COVID-19 strain first identified in Wuhan, China.

The research team also identified two further mutations—T76I and L452Q—that make the Lambda variant highly infectious. They also warn that the World Health Organization's classification of Lambda as a Variant of Interest (VOI) rather than a Variant of Concern (VOC) might lead some people to take the threat less seriously." https://www.newsweek.com/lambda-covid-variant-1000-cases-us-shows-vaccine-resistance-1615668

That's what they mean.

Is Lambda not a bit moot for us because it's emerging at the same time as Delta? Surely Lambda couldn't have the fitness to achieve dominance in a nation with 99% Delta cases, it would have to be even more infectious and it took months for it to become dominant in Peru, whereas Delta becomes dominant in weeks once it infiltrates a country. I don't see Lambda being a problem, in the same way Beta and Gamma weren't an issue for many countries, particularly as they arose at the same time as Alpha was spreading, which out-performed them easily in transmissability and fitness as it solified it's place at the fore of sequencing wherever it arose.

EDIT:

This is kind of visually explaining what I'm getting at here in this graph. Granted, it's a month old, but look at that Delta explosion versus a very low and steady Lambda.

Delta's ludicrous transmission rate suppresses it easily. Not to say it might not be an issue for certain people who will catch it if the cases of it increase, but on a broad population level it should hopefully remain stifled and not develop into a serious VOC.

This has been emerging on some of the "suspect" websites over the past few weeks as the vaccination % hits high numbers, but no, and particularly not in the case where the vaccine is targeting the main evolutionary advantage of the virus (the spike protein) to evade vaccines, it would have to drop the spike and essentially evolve to another completely different virus. This is also why all the vaccines remain effective.

What you're essentially saying is that herd immunity can't happen because virus evolve, which is untrue, we have multiple cases where herd immunity has occurred.

It's a suspect anti-vax talking point which is pretty much nonsense.

The most effective spreaders are the ones best able to evade the immune system for the longest. Thus it stands to reason that evolutions of the virus will be more vaccine resistant. It can't really be any other way.

The fact that every variant of concern has been more vaccine-resistant despite evolving before the start of vaccination, is proof of this. Delta appeared in October 2020.

A variant which enters the cell really efficiently but gets annihilated by the immune system quickly will not be as good at spreading itself as one which takes a little longer to do both.

There's an argument perhaps that vaccine might speed up the evolution of more resistant strains, but the flipside of that coin is that unrestricted growth in unvaccinated populations results in way more infections, and therefore faster evolution than populations where virus growth is restricted. All while killing way more people.

What rubbish !

Unions have nothing to do with the abysmal lack of healthcare in Ireland .

Successive governments have cut beds , cut beds and staff , cut beds, staff and small hospitals, without replacing them with more beds in larger hospitals, adequate step down facilities or primary care centres.

This is what leads to the now daily trolley crisis and lack of staffed beds , never mind ICU beds , and what is driving a lot of our young graduates in medicine and nursing out of the country ..in non Covid times ...working in soul destroying substandard conditions .

Not the unions . They are just advocating for workers that have frankly had enough , and have had the marrow sucked from their bones over the last 30 to 40 years with our health system consistently losing pace with its EU counterparts as @McGiver has said .

I am not just talking about cutbacks in recent years here. This has been going on since the 1980s here.

In order to fix this, larger hospitals need to be better equipped around the country with full services , easily accessible diagnostics , consultants and specialist medical and nursing teams in every department, and build and staff the promised primary care and step down facilities and fund better care in the community. Not relying on private agencies and healthcare to take up the slack .

Easy to blame the ' unions' when it is the fat cats in the HSE management , private healthcare companies and local politicians ( with one past Health Minister who was one and the same ! ) , who fight any change that might mean a cent less in their pensions or a vote less in an election.

And let's not forget those who complain about healthcare relentlessly and its workers and yet will not pay a penny more in their taxes to improve the situation.

For those who think this has nothing to do with the subject of the thread , look at the reasons given for lockdowns through Covid , and instead of wondering why other countries have less restrictions with high cases, look at their healthcare systems coping abilities and compare to ours .

If we don't reach herd immunity with vaccination, and we continue with this constant pressure , albeit less than before, of infected cases in hospital and ICU , and infection endemic in the community , we will be constantly in crisis.

We were in and out of a lesser crisis before this , but only people who had someone in hospital / A n E ever appeared to care outside of HCWs and the unions !

Now the effects are in everyone's faces every day its suddenly " how can we fix the health service ? " with government and their shills declaring how they are" saving " it from crisis every day . This crisis was made by money being spent on everything except the fundamentals of good quality care , beds and staff .

There would not have been a need for such drastic crisis management and protracted lockdowns if we had the health service our comparatively wealthy little nation should have had in the first place .

People need to get real and prioritise what they want their taxes to go towards and make sure that they tell their politicians, " sort it or you will never get my vote again "

. Otherwise get ready to wait patiently for every appointment surgery, treatment or bed and hope that you or your loved one gets that care , as increasingly what we have now are like hospitals in 3rd world countries where relatives have to fight for care and tend to their own relatives needs in hospital , I am sorry to say .

I am coming to the end of a very interesting but increasingly, fraught career in nursing and while it was the best, most rewarding job most of the time, the last few years have been a struggle and I will be happy to leave now .

I think we need strong voices in our health system to advocate for our public health care to be the best it can possibly be . In that Unions are essential .

HSE management are adept at breaking individuals that are not unionised and bullying is endemic amongst its policies although written policies say the opposite .

That is why I stay anonymous here . Written warnings have been given to excellent staff or they have been put on " performance monitoring " for calling management out or for being perceived as " mouthy " or " disloyal " .

I do feel sorry for those left behind ..yes , and no , because they will have their time and they have their voices and the voices of their unions to speak up . And I hope they shout it from the rooftops so anti union shills can hear clearly...

Save Our Heathcare System ....

Staff our Hospitals Properly ,

Increase Beds ,

Increase Specialist Medical and Nursing posts,

Fund Primary and Community Healthcare

and Mental Health Services .

I think most people will listen , briefly .

Do I think anyone will care once this crisis is over ?

I hope so , but am not overly optimistic given past history .

People will fight for their local hospital , but don't seem to care much beyond that unfortunately .

And they will continue to vote for the same Joe Soap who got them their medical card regardless of what he does otherwise.

In that case I think people get what they deserve .

Would be happy to be proven wrong .

So you are not union bashing anymore in the above post ?!

More blah blah . Successive governments have not " done " as you say . That is spin and at this stage dangerous spin.

We are not advocating for more money but more beds more staff more services to serve more people better .

It is the rhetoric of anti union to blame unions and workers for the mismanagement of those supposedly in charge.

And we are not " piling billions " into the health service , or certainly not more than is necessary , and as McGivers post clearly shows , we are well behind other EU countries in terms of funding and beds available per capita and have been falling behind since the late 1970s .

The public are and have been paying the price for this , but it is more obvious now with the health service under the spotlight in the last 18 months .

Absolutely . But let's be clear it's not a problem of unions or frontline healthcare workers making which is the statement you made originally that I was saying was untrue.

There are managers all over our hospitals and the HSE that have achieved pay and status above the people delivering care to patients everyday but their positions are sacrosanct, even when young nurses and doctors are working in appalling conditions unable to take a meal break , or even in some cases go to the loo they are so busy .

And yet you see these clipboard kings and queens waltzing around, having long meetings with tea and sandwiches and cakes brought in by reps , discussing the latest crisis, and what everyone else should do . These are the money sponges .

I don't disagree with your posts generally , but be clear when you talk about our healthcare system about whom in particular the problem lies with .

I have worked for 36 years in Irish hospitals and have seen the insidious creep of offices and growth of these so called middle management who are utterly self serving and bureaucratic . They would step over a collapsed patient to tell a nurse rushing to help that she has to fill a form in triplicate after she has resuscitated the patient or the hospital will hold her liable !

The fact that the same nurse is probably educated to Masters or pHD level and is fully aware of taking care to do no harm does not enter into it .

In fact most nurses or doctors don't go there as they only think in terms of the sick person and how best to solve their problems . Paperwork is a secondary if important issue .

I have been at one such situation where the consultant anaesthetist had to tell 2 such people to leave the scene as they were unnecessary and in the way .

We were all ..the nurses .... reprimanded following this , despite the fact that the patient was saved and doing well .

We had to engage our unions about this bizarre behaviour .

Nothing was said to the Consultant Anaesthetist of course nor should it have been anyway .