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

But with context that Doctor is saying, young patients only have mild symptoms (fact), older unvaccinated paitents will have severe illness (opinion). So appears the original context was correct for now until more data is available.

@NIMAN wrote

I haven't seen any epidemiologic analysis to support this, either that's it's particularly "rife" in primary schools or that if kids get vaccinated we'll achieve herd immunity (which seems to be what you're suggesting, unless you meant something else by "contain").

From what I recall of the data, there are large numbers of outbreaks in hospitals and nursing homes too. Are those going to disappear if we vaccinate primary school kids? What about crèches and other pre-school environments?

I've no ideological opposition to vaccinating kids but to think that it's the last barrier in the way to the sunlit uplands of COVID-free hospitals is magical thinking.

Relatedly, I recall that when anyone raised this issue of kids potentially being a reservoir of infection a number of people absolutely lost their sh!t.

Definitely not the fault of the vaccinators and I made sure to say that to the exhausted lady who gave it to me

In all fairness I was 3.5 hours in a queue in the freezing cold and didnt see a single person give out to staff there . We did have the odd moan among ourselves and a whinge about the HSE and their scandalous handling of City West appointments yesterday . They gave appointments and at the same time advertised for walk ins . Gave appointments to people who were not yet 5 months past the 2 nd dose and after queuing for two hours were told to go home .

Hopefully it’ll hold out and not go over 600 in the morning

British embassy has confirmed it will Not apply to the CTA

https://twitter.com/britembdublin/status/1464745597953527811?s=21

Hospital numbers virtually always rise at the weekend. Very few discharges.

It'll be up again tomorrow morning, but if it stays under 600 it's a great result.

What has been the rate of growth over the last two weeks? What is the profile of those in hospital? Age? Vaccination status?

What are you basing that on?

If you're under 70, healthy and vaccinated, your odds of being severely impacted by Covid are absolutely tiny. You're statistically more likely to be hit by car.

If you're over 70 but still vaccinated, it's no more dangerous really than most other illnesses you might pick up at that age.

No need for the fear.

How have hospital admissions been this last week? Are they noticeably down?

I don’t follow them, but it seems to have been the case in past waves that when hospital numbers were reducing like last week we had a period of reducing admissions ahead of that reduction.

If admissions are falling it’s great news. If they are steady then they’ve either just given the system some temporary breathing room with targeted discharges - or perhaps with boosters the average hospital stay is lowering?

Little was made of the recent reduction in hospital numbers. My thought is that it is because the authorities are expecting them to fill up again.

Yeah, hospital admissions are still high, but down around 10% week on week.

Likely a combination of stalled/dropping infection rates and increasing booster rates.

On paper the indicators say we should expect at least another week of strong declining hospital numbers.

Well that’s positive. Surely with a trend of falling admissions and booster program moving along and no current growth in cases we are doing fine as is.

But leaves me wondering why then are they considering further restrictions - assume the fear of last Christmas is uppermost and they’d like hospital numbers to be right down ahead of it.

There must be multiples of lasts years incoming travellers for Christmas and less restrictions on socialising this year - a recipe for over-overcrowding in hospitals.

Dr. Gabrielle Colleran was excellent on the Brendan O'Connor show earlier.

She was slating the western world for hoarding vaccines when the poorer countries couldn't get them. She got quite upset about it.

She wasn't talking about South Africa specifically. They are still talking about vaccine equity if you listen in.

if we don’t address the enormous global inequity in access to Covid-19 vaccines, other variants will emerge.