Relaxation of Restrictions, Part XII *Read OP For Mod Warnings*

Makes depressing reading here that people are predicting further restrictions and schools being closed. There is no reason to do it. This version is a milder version and nothing more than a cold. Schools need to open as normal and people need to keep kids who are positive out simple as that, same way people who test positive isolate. This is not rocket science and people should stop looking for restrictions as it only encourages NPHET and the government to take the easy way out. Time to start living with this.

@Floppybits of course there’s no reason to do it…. But this is NPHET we’re talking about!!

Oh, I agree and I'm not taking anything as fact either as you say but I'm also not expecting anything to be lifted until March. That's not to say they'll necessarily bring in additional measures as I don't think anyone can predict nphet these days.

What happens then? Then we get on living with this and stop the nonsense of restrictions, lock downs and covid certs especially these. No more of this caution crap that seen restrictions in place during the summer and then lifting them at the end of October, of all the ridiculous decisions they made that had to be the most ridiculous.

this supposed fear is just a figment of your imagination.

the vast majority of people are not in fear of covid and haven't been for a long time, however even if vaccinated, most people want to try and avoid it as they will still have to isolate.

I have a few mates and family members who live in fear.

Can I pass on your number to them? So you can tell them it's a figment of their imagination?

Deadly serious BTW... They ain't listening to me

Well that's wrong as I know plenty who have gotten this strain and the most severe case was a vaccinated person in bed for a day, sucking on a lemsip

The others had **** all.

What,pray tell,is a "certain type" ? 😳

the police in the netherlands had no choice as they were dealing with extremely violent far right groups some of who were armed.

it's not milder no .

some people will only get mild symptoms or none at all but they are even less likely to get flue or even be effected by it.

so covid is not milder then flue.

by tailoring public health measures to manage it.

if you were hoping for us to do nothing and class that as living with it then that was never going to happen due to the fact it would crash the country.

No. Why do you make stuff up to smear me?

I don’t think NPHET will veer off from an over cautious approach but my hope is that their approach won’t be followed to a tee. NPHET make the recommendations to the government. However, If the public mood changes towards Covid and restrictions etc then the back benchers are going to start stepping out of line to protect their seats if MM and Leo aren’t careful.

Article from Luke O'Neill in the Indo. You know the game is up when he's saying we are nearly at the end.

Everyone is wondering the same thing. Doctors and scientists are poring over the data. What might happen in the first few weeks of 2022 when it comes to Omicron? It’s strange to think it only emerged just over four weeks ago. Will it all get really bad? Will more restrictions be introduced? Will schools reopen?

Right now, it looks challenging. The number of cases has indeed sky-rocketed, as was predictable from what was seen in South Africa.

There surely must be almost no household left without a case of Covid-19 or someone who is a close contact. And yet so far at least there hasn’t been a huge surge in hospitalisations and ICU admissions. Why might that be?

Well, it’s possible the lag between becoming infected and Covid-19 progressing to serious disease is yet to fully play out. We might see hospitalisations rise, but there is now a consensus among experts that the link from cases to hospitalisations is broken when it comes to Omicron.

Hospitals feel the pressure as Omicron wreaks havoc

We are seeing the same thing again and again as Omicron takes over throughout the world.

Cases rising faster than in the Delta wave but hospitalisations lower than would be expected.

A lot fewer people in South Africa ended up in hospital when compared to previous waves of infection. That data has just been published in the reputable medical journal The Lancet . It might be different in other countries, but so far so good.

There is, however, a range from place to place when it comes to how much less severe Omicron is.

Hospitalisations were reduced by 80pc in South Africa, but so far the decrease is around 60pc in Scotland and 40pc in England. It’s not clear why this is, but the Omicron wave may look different from country to country given local immune protection and other factors like the level of other diseases that put people at risk of severe disease. But overall we should expect this Omicron wave to be significantly less troubling than earlier waves.

Data from South Africa and England also indicate that if someone ends up in hospital with Omicron, their stay is likely to be shorter than with Delta. If this pans out, it’s another piece of good news because it will relieve pressure on hospitals. 

We also have some recent interesting science which indicates why Omicron might be innately less severe. There are now six separate lab-based studies showing that Omicron can hardly infect lungs at all.

That number of studies shows how serious this issue has been taken by scientists and they all have found the same thing. It is much better at infecting the upper airways, maybe as high as 70 times better than Delta.

This may well be an important explanation why for most people Omicron is not causing severe disease.

The main symptoms being reported — runny nose, dry cough, no fever —are consistent with an upper airway infection. It’s also why it’s no surprise that people who are fully vaccinated still might become infected.

The vaccines protect the lungs but aren’t that good at protecting the nose. But, importantly, those infections might not be causing severe illness because if Omicron gets to the lungs it doesn’t lodge there, and even if it does in some (if, say, the dose of virus is high), if you’re vaccinated, your immune system will help clear it.

And there’s yet more science that gives us hope. That other important part of your immune system — your T cells — have been shown to be well able to fight Omicron. T cells work by killing cells infected with virus. Omicron can dodge antibodies, but it is less able to dodge the T cells which come to the rescue. Evolution cleverly built a Plan B into the immune system, and that Plan B is your T cells.

What does all this science tell us about the next few weeks? Because 95pc of our adult population are fully vaccinated, with over two million boosted (a huge achievement which everyone should be proud of), and because it looks like Omicron is less able to infect lungs anyway, we can be hopeful. We can also be hopeful cases will peak soon and then start to fall.

‘Up fast, down fast’ appears to be what’s happened in South Africa. It happens because the virus runs out of road. And then immunity builds up, which is even stronger in those who have been vaccinated. Fingers crossed that over the next two weeks this will happen here too.

However, because of the sheer force of numbers, hospitals are right to prepare for an increase in hospitalisation and ICU admission.

Temporary hospitals are being built in England to deal with a potential overspill of inpatients. Studies are showing that the unvaccinated make up a high proportion of those being hospitalised.

Dr Craig Spencer, an emergency room doctor in New York, recently reported that almost all of those who were admitted to his hospital for Covid-19 are unvaccinated. He said of the unvaccinated: “Every one of them with profound shortness of breath. Every one whose oxygen dropped when they walked. Every one needing oxygen to breathe regularly.”

This is also apparently the case in Ireland. As ever we must keep encouraging people to be vaccinated, where surely at this stage, with 95pc of adults fully vaccinated with no serious ill effects, not to mention the billions worldwide, fear of vaccination has been assuaged.

With all this in mind, we put our best foot forward in 2022.

One projection concludes that Omicron is going to infect 40pc of the entire world in the next two months. After this massive Omicron wave passes through, transmission should drop to very low levels.

The schools must reopen, given the damage that keeping them closed does. Ensure that good ventilation and/or air filtration is deployed there.

We’ll have to keep up with the public health measures for a little while longer because there are still vulnerable people out there, but plan to reopen hospitality and entertainment fully in the coming weeks.

Lastly, we have one more superpower to deploy: anti-viral drugs, most notably Paxlovid.

This should become available to use in the first part of 2022 and again there is a huge consensus among commentators that this will make a big difference.

Essentially the likely situation is that all high-risk people will have strong immunologic protection and newly infected high-risk people can also be given the antiviral drug to kill the virus. What a tremendous prospect to look forward to. Most of all, we can prepare for the endgame.

The next few weeks are still somewhat uncertain of course. This virus has surprised us a few times already. But we have grounds for real optimism. Just like we said about finding a vaccine in the darker days of 2020, we can use one of the key phrases from the pandemic. Cautious optimism must prevail in the coming weeks. Out with the old (Omicron) and in with 2022, the year when the Covid-19 pandemic will end.  

On the issue of research.

Reading through this article,is there any particular question that comes to your mind....?

One to watch ?