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

It was the basic tenet when we were trying to suppress this virus because we had no other way to control it. Vaccines have completely changed the landscape. We have opened up nearly all of society now and have 93% of the adult population vaccinated.

It's going to take a sea change in guidance but it makes zero sense for asymptomatic people to isolate because they are unlikely to spread as they are highly likely to be vaccinated.

Tbh our testing capacity is abysmal and it probably plays a part in our case rate. We get to what 25k a day before we need to send swabs to Germany. Somewhere like Denmark at their peak were capable of 700k a day between PCR and antigen. That is a massive difference for similarly sized countries. 25-30k a day should not be acceptable to be maxed out at.

Exactly. Cases in England have already stabilised, and are falling over the past 10 days. I'm not quite sure why some people here are already panicking about case numbers, lockdowns etc. To see the future, just roll out the boosters and look at Israel and England.

I think antigen tests should be encouraged if we have any hope of avoiding another lockdown.

I understand NHPETs apprehension on the antigen tests due to false negatives and people moving around with symptoms and a false negative tests but surely it would catch some infections that are brewing?

I was browsing online for antigen tests and this is from an online pharmacy located within Ireland. These prices are **** scandalous.

I think the word you're looking for is "enough", as in 'not preventing infection and transmission enough". By all measures, the reduction appears to be about 8-fold based on R which is probably more than adequate for a non-sterilising vaccine, however this isn't enough to get cases reducing (it seems to be fine for hospitalisations so far though).

I would argue that while you can look the trials up and down in whatever funny way you do, that Israel has effectively done the safety trial for everyone and the results are really good.

Wer're bloody lucky that the vaccine effectiveness against waning can be boosted so easily for the vulnerable and will hopefully remove the need for further lockdowns.

Toys out of the pram, like a lot of people who relish the misery. Many can't face that the emergency element to the pandemic is over and it is less of an urgent situation, being far more manageable. That guy who resigned; good riddance.

This has been really poorly communicated in media, where it's implied that false positive rates mean they're not useful. Or even just reporting accuracy, which is useless here. They have low rates of false negatives and it seems like that's all that matters right now.

Miriam on Prime Time - boost everyone over 18?! This is quite frankly disgusting, boosting healthy individuals who don’t need it & allowing healthcare workers in poorer nations get infected & risk their lives.

When is the penny going to drop that the Covid passport is a complete waste of time. It’s just a tool going to be used to force boosters on people. It doesn’t stop the spread of Covid…

Hopefully, problem though is that they opened fully at a time when respiratory viruses tend not to proliferate. I'd guess that this would attenuate rates of spread, rates in hospital etc. Look at their increase in cases/deaths after "freedom day" then imagine this happening instead during flu season when hospitals are generally snowed under anyway.

"just a few restrictions"

Easily said by someone whose income isn't ever in doubt

Why can't he tell her where to put those case numbers? A whole pile of mild illnesses

Its very concerning