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

Ride it out, all early indications are it's mild. Reach the peak fast and deal with the temporary surge in hospitalizations. It's peaking already in the UK and they still aren't meeting hospital numbers for lockdown thresholds.

If we draw this out I feel we are missing an opportunity to end this covid pandemic by wiping out delta.

The game plan needs to be changed here, we are no longer dealing with delta and an unvaccinated population.

Not all of them. I happened on a brief segment of the RTE 9 news last night and a very calm Samantha Libreri highlighted much of what is raised here about discharges, in response to the super-keen cub anchor.

Not wishing to gratuitously slag him off - there's enough of that "warrior" mentality here already - but Paul Reid is, as his initials suggest, a PR man when he speaks in public. He says "most people" but there's no way of measuring this so he can get away with it. He might be right of course but that could still leave 49.9% of people waiting days. It sounds positive but is meaningless really.

It's no coincidence either that on days of huge figures of infections you hear him in the radio giving numbers of people who are boostered and it's announced suddenly that portals are opened for age cohorts who probably won't see a booster or vaccination for a few months. All an official ploy to stop the plebs eating each other. Frankly, judging by some of what I read I don't blame official Ireland at this stage.

I would have agreed with you. But Paul Reid seems to think that the peak is way off. Interesting.

https://www.rte.ie/news/coronavirus/2021/1228/1268888-covid-ireland/

He said Ireland is still at the early stage of a "rising curve" and what had been expected to happen is now happening.

"It would seem that there's a peak at some stage," he said. "We certainly aren't at that by any stretch just yet."

There have been a few articles suggesting that, because Omicron is so transmissible, that significant numbers attending hospital are not going in for covid, they just happen to have it. Not surprising when our own HSE is saying Omicron is now "rife" in the community. Plus, when in hospital, I can only imagine it's easier to catch it.

The Chris Hopson twitter thread posted earlier had some great points -

UK

"Number of patients with covid-19 in English hospitals is definitely rising, but not precipitately so. Numbers across country as a whole have risen by 27% in a week, number of covid-19 patients in London hospitals has grown by 45% from 20 Dec to 27 Dec"

"Equivalent figures for England as a whole are 8,474 covid patients in English hospitals today versus 34,336 in January peak (18/1/21) – 25% of that peak."

"Talking to trust chief executives this morning, what’s very interesting is how many are talking about number of asymptomatic patients being admitted to hospital for other reasons and then testing positive for covid. Some are describing this as ‘incidental covid’…"

"As covid community infection rate rises rapidly due to omicron, we will get more cases of this type of incidental covid-19 in hospital. Raw data doesn’t distinguish between two."

"In the words of one hospital chief executive in the South West this morning: “we’ve seen a 30% increase in covid positive inpatient numbers compared to 7 days ago. But largest proportion are incidental finding on admission, so covid-19 is not the reason for admission…overall admissions are no higher than they were seven days ago"

“It’s therefore important to look at the total number of patients admitted, not just the raw number of covid patients admitted, particularly if they don’t need full covid care. For our trust as a whole, overall admissions are no higher than they were seven days ago”

He does caution that it is still too early to say that we don’t need to worry about omicron and hospitalisations as some are unhelpfully saying / implying.

You're basing "grim" on what exactly?

Petition to ban the word “grim”. Anyone who says it is surely on a wind up?

What reason do you think would keep them closed? All we can really do with this variant is test and isolate.

There has never been predefined numbers for opening anything before. Not sure it'd be clever either. We saw on 22 October when the famous "road map" looked for forced the government's hand to open nightclubs at a time when cases were already rising.

Anyone know if “Lollipop” antigen tests are available in Ireland

Fair enough although the latter is doubtful for a bit. There is only "BIG" day to go and at most you might expect more advice and caution.

There is still more hospitality that can be targeted, they won't close schools without making sure to stick the final knife in there first.

This could be the last big chance to **** over hospitality, we can't let it go to waste.

One positive of a controlled release of numbers, i.e. system can only process so many, is that we may only get a somewhat steady 10,000 a day for a few weeks.