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

Which part of Smallpox being eradicated by mandatory vaccination programs do you oppose?

Yeah, slight problem there Ted. Smallpox and the vaccines against it were both very different animals to covid 19 and its vaccines. The important differences compared to covid 19 were smallpox was only infectious when symptomatic. There were no asymptomatic cases. The vaccines weren't nearly as leaky as the covid type, breakthrough infections were much rarer and the vaccines smacked down all variants, such as they were, immunity lasted much longer and there were no animal carriers and reservoirs(covid has been found in big cats, domestic dogs and cats). But the biggest difference and it didn't require mandatory vaccines for an entire population was that you could ringfence outbreaks by vaccinating close contacts and surrounding population and the virus ended up with no more potential hosts and died out. Covid 19 and the current vaccines quite simply can't achieve that and IMHO it's a fools errand to try that.

What is more practical in the real world is to treat covid like seasonal flu. That is vaccinate(by choice) the elderly and the vulnerable where the overwhelming majority of serious illness and death occurs. 40% of ALL deaths in Ireland from covid 19 were in those 85 years or older. Five years older than the mean longevity age for Irish people. 90% of ALL deaths from covid in Ireland were over 65 years of age. In those over 65 the fatality rate was 0.7%, just over double that of seasonal flu, so not unconcerning to say the least, but if the vast majority of that demographic were vaccinated and got boosters because the same demographic are also much more likely to have less than stellar immune responses then that fatality rate would fall considerably. If we had the current vaccines in early 2020 that 0.7% would have been at least the same level of seasonal flu, if not much lower and we wouldn't have shut the nation down, just like we don't with seasonal flu.

Now we have the vaccines and they're working so keep on that path and finally improve our health service capacity after decades of ballsology from successive governments, the civil service and unions. Do that and we'd be in real world practical terms ready to live in a world beyond covid panic and would be living with it, just like we do with the flu.

In Ireland on an average day before covid there was a death every 15 minutes, so 96, nearly 100 people died in the average day. 8 extra though a personal tragedy for those people and their loved ones is not exactly a big spike overall.

That's the problem with a lot of these numbers being bandied about regarding this pox. They look bad, but when compared to the overall and much bigger numbers they don't look nearly so bad. Covid 19 itself has this problem. When this kicked off and for months afterward we had talk of tens of thousands dead from it, including on this forum and from doctors too. Now aside from understandable panic it quickly became apparent that dying from this pox was almost entirely the remit of the very old or the already chronically sick or the incredibly bloody unlucky. EG the stories of the fit as a butcher's dog 30 year old Ironman athlete that died from it splashed across the media. But as I noted above, here in Ireland ninety percent of ALL covid fatalities were in the over 65's and the over 85's account for forty percent of all fatalities. Even so the vast majority, 99.3 percent of that demographic didn't die from it.

The single biggest issue with this pox was the lackof overflow capacity in our hospitals. That was the case in Italy too, where this pox first really hit home with the harrowing stories coming from there, even though the number of those under forty who died from it in Italy was tiny, less than five in that first wave and each one was terribly sick to start with. This lack of capacity was really evident in somewhere like India, where they were running out of oxygen and basic services unless you were among the wealthy.

IMHO how we end up living with this in actual practical terms is by vaccinating the vulnerable and those who live and deal with them and improving our capacity in the health services. Something looooong overdue in this country. This would also make major inroads into other areas of our health too. Win win. Or we could keep going down the rinse and repeat route of panic, lockdowns, politicans faffing about with their advisor doommongers attention seeking on RTE every night attempting the impossible of putting the genie back in the bottle.

Thanks Rob, though sadly I feel we're on this rinse and repeat cycle for a good while yet. Goverments are large bodies and large bodies move slowly and don't like turning around on a different course when they're dead set on the existing one. This goes double when politics and egos are involved.