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

I lost 25kg in the last 13 months without gyms or exercise for that mind

Yeah fair enough if you don't want to change your behaviour anyway.

I was in a small restaurant last night that checked for Covid certs via a look at the app on phone.

All fine. But then the one waitress that was serving the food and drinks, while talking to a table of tourist about Covid procedures coming into Ireland, announces she hopes to go on a holiday soon but hasn't been vaccinated.

The irony of the person checking customers being unvaccinated. Question, should they be vaccinated also ? and does not being, defeat the purpose of checking everyone else on the premises?

It's the correlation that is being drawn from ICU numbers and is being used as a big stick to force them to change their minds. I know a few myself and they are absolutely dug in on this. We've seen 5%-7% say they would get vaccinated and that's where we are now. Boosters should help with those who have responded less well to the initial vaccine.

The reality is that there will be unvaccinated people serving and cooking your food, pulling your pint, servicing your room in a hotel etc. High proportion of young people in hospitality.

There is little purpose to checking vaccine status at this stage, and no they should not be forced to be vaccinated because of an illogical fear of the small proportion of unvaccinated. Are you worried about them or you? You could have just as easily been infected by the group of unmasked tourists you were close enough to to hear their conversation - the irony.

Right, that's true, effectiveness against severe sickness remains at an elevated level.

The issue is 1) waning against infection and transmission (20% by month 7 post-second dose), 2) that effectiveness against severe sickness isn't close to total, it's in the region of 80-90% relative to unvaccinated, with up-to-date studies.

If 100% of people are vaccinated say, and infection and transmission is unencumbered 7+ months post 2nd dose, and vaccination is 80-90% effective against hospitalisation, then...if society is opened up as normal (nightclubs etc) the numbers hospitalised in this scenario will be far too high.

In summer this would be fine, but not in winter.

Hospital numbers down 16 this morning.

That's 3 days in a row that we've seen hospital numbers drop. Which hasn't happened since early September.

This is generally an indicator that discharges are beginning to catch up with admissions and that numbers will plateau if not drop over the coming days/weeks.

If numbers are back below 400 and dropping by Halloween, what will be the response then?

What if we're in mid-200s territory and stable or dropping by mid-November?

Again to NPHET's credit they had suggested that was theoretically needed was a 3-week "wait and see" period before deciding what to do next, but that wasn't a practicality so the reopening should move ahead.

But that doesn't mean we shouldn't aim to continue responding to changes in hospital numbers - up or down.

Afaik, "discharges" only counts actual discharges. Someone who recovers from covid while in hospital (i.e. returns a negative test) but remains in hospital, is removed from the covid numbers but not listed as a discharge.

Given the high level of hospital outbreaks, we should expect to see a bit of this over the next week.

The ICU numbers don't work the same; if someone is admitted to ICU with covid complications, they remain a "covid ICU" case until discharged back to gen. pop.

(Don't quote me on any of this, it's been a few months since I looked at these numbers properly)

Imagine having to show a covid cert on a bus - the journey would take hours lol

It's not a blind assumption. It's based on the available evidence.

The data shows a vaccinated person is roughly twenty times less likely to require hospitalisation than an unvaccinated person.

This isn't longitudinal or controlled data though, it's just population data that doesn't account for many confounders (you'll hear the word 'behaviour' a lot in the next few weeks). Advocates for vaccination-only public health measures were assuming that population data is the same thing as a controlled experiment. It isn't, and that's why the assumption is now breaking down as population data catches up with reality.

Longitudinal data on infection is available from some manufacturers, e.g. for the AZ vaccine.

It's there on RTE in the middle of another article on outbreaks. It's become a pattern with them to drop such stuff into existing articles.

Yes and it's even more serious than that. They have agendas about other things that aren't as obvious. They lead public opinion and have incredible power.

Honest question, if there was an election in the morning. Would you agree with having to show a covid cetificate to enter the polling station?

If only we were allowed drink where we want in this country!