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

Different laws and a different constitution.

What appears to me is that lots of kids are being confirmed positive in schools. The next highest groups are 30's -40's. So it looks like the kids are picking it up in school and passing it on to the households ie. parents, brothers and sisters. But because they have been caught from the mass testing in schools, they are not visiting older people who are most likely to get seriously ill from it.

Are you saying that our health officials have deliberately suppressed the figures in all the weekly reports? Why would they do this and what’s their motive for this ?

I certainly believe what those reports have said and have never seen the school setting as risk a for my own children, as the data has shown.

What I meant was that I would have expected the case rate for (as an example) unvaccinated 40-49 year olds to be a good but higher than vaccinated 49-49 year olds

There are surge capacity beds so where it was up to 400 would be upwards of 425 now .

ICU patients in surge capacity would be caring for ventilated patients / patients on respiratory and other support in high dependency areas of wards, in operating theatres or theatre recovery areas, all with experience critical care staff who are supported by proper infrastructure and other appropriate resources( Nurses and anaesthetists)

These facilities are not endless and are entirely useless without the specialist nurses and doctors available .

Some theatre nurses or staff from the wards who have ICU experience and training would be deployed to care for these patients .

However once you go to surge capacity it is impinging on general and elective patient care and surgeries .

Before you go into surge capacity this is already happening .Normal care as we know it would be restricted to emergencies only and planned procedures would have be cancelled due to lack of availability of staff as redeployed.

If these staff are off sick or just not there, the numbers of acutely ill patients that can be safely cared for is obviously limited.

Paediatric ICU is different, very specialised , as I am sure everyone here understands . It needs nurses and doctors with paediatric and critical care qualifications . They are not just mini adults. Every response in children is different than in the adult population and nurses without paediatrics would have to have a few years caring for sick children before they would be happy to look after a seriously ill child.

While it may be appropriate to care for a ventilated child post abdominal surgery, for example in a Regional General hospital ICU, it's not recommended otherwise and acutely unwell children are transferred before they are intubated and ventilated ,preferably Temple Street or Crumlin. Between them they have 30 PICU beds and there would be a little more with surge capacity if staffing levels allow ( against iamwhoiam said ,with cancellation of elective surgery . I have cared for patients / children in theatre recoveries for example on occasion .

Children who are too sick to be transferred to Dublin or who have ongoing chronic illness can be cared for quite well by the way , in some of the hospitals down the country eg Cork, and Waterford ,where there are Paediatric teams , wards , and consultants but there is not a dedicated Paediatric ICU . So it would be a converted high dependency area of the Childrens ward or part / section of the general adult ICU. They often do this, but it takes a lot of staff from the general paediatric service .

So it very much depends on what illness is causing the child's need for intensive care as well as type of staff and facilities available onsite .

It would be very rare for there to be more than 2 or 3 children requiring ventilation being treated around the country,and the body regulating ICU care in Ireland, NOCA , don't recommend it and have been calling for more beds for years . The beds presently are 94% full most of the year .

Every winter these beds are 100% full except last year when there was minimal flu and RSV circulating due to restrictions.

So its no wonder now with the addition of a few children with Covid added to a bad RSV season that there are no beds available.

From NOCA in 2017 ..

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://www.noca.ie/documents/irish-national-icu-audit-annual-report-2017&ved=2ahUKEwic5KHSo-HzAhUC8BQKHeBUA2wQFnoECAQQAQ&usg=AOvVaw1RcPkg4pWHNi6kPbjBOGMX

I don't know if you meant the actual size of the dose, iamwhoiam ?

They did discuss originally just giving half the dose of original vaccine as a booster , but a full dose as the extra dose for immunocompromised, but I think that may have been dropped as overcomplicated ?

Not sure to be honest.

Better be careful. Last spring and summer I frequently made the point that restrictions are now an accepted response to a struggling health service and in return I was labelled a doom mongering conspiracy theorist who didn't want restrictions to end. The fact that this scenario was always going to arise seemed to escape some people.

The justifications for lockdowns last year will be exactly the same this year. The exact cause doesn't matter, if the health service is about to collapse then you will hear the Holohans of this world call for their new toy to be used again.

And who could refuse them, after all, don't you care about the vulnerable and the front line heroes...

The vulnerable remain vulnerable even after vaccines, the point of vaccines is to get to herd immunity and stop virus circulating and when it does circulate, reduce the spread and associated symptoms. The upside is that vaccines are always way way lower risk than the disease and with SARS-COV2 your chances of encountering it are high.

Your chances of contracting Men B are orders of magnitudes less than SARS-COV2 yet you went out of your way to get it. That same thinking should mean you get the SARS-COV2 vaccine (higher chance of getting it but lower chance of severe symptoms, vs. much lower chance of getting it with a bigger chance of severe symptoms), you have your own logical fallacy to figure out before you can give advice to others.

Do you genuinely believe that will be a difficult task in Ireland? There will be a queue of parents and their children as soon as the vaccine is approved. The Irish are itching to get their kids vaccinated.

The risk/reward of the SARS-COV2 vaccines is likely greater than the Men-B vaccines, you have gone out of your way to get the Men-B vaccine, your avoidance of the SARS-COV2 vaccine is thus illogical (you can probably consult any doctor or scientist on it). This cannot be squirmed out of.

(I do notice you avoided the herd immunity bit, we can let that slide for now as your logical fallacy is more interesting)

I didn’t avoid anything my understanding is herd immunity is off the table with the Indian variant.

How long has it taken people to regain their sense of taste and smell after getting covid?

lost my taste and smell 8 days ago😞

If you didn't pick it up, he has fully recovered.