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

DLink

Thankfully Leo looks to be holding firm for now, no signs of them caving in and introducing mask mandates or restrictions... yet.

We're in that dangerous territory now though were it's clear from the numbers that COVID has peaked and is fizzling out and Flu won't be far behind.

And now we have doctors and management back after holidays.

If any action is brought in now it will be seen as the saviour when really the data tells us this is due to die down and already is.

DLink

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120068169#Comment_120068169

I think this time they'll ride it out, we're on the run up to another election, can't upset the apple cart, the economy or the masses with new restrictions.

If they blow all that spare money they just announced while staring down the barrel of a possible recession, they'll literally be handing the keys of Leinster House to the Shinners.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120068204#Comment_120068204

I think they will too.

In fact, I'm a little surprised by the hysteria. Trolley numbers are not way higher than they were back in September/October.

It's quite normal to see a spike when doctors all take their holidays.

MOR316

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120068045#Comment_120068045

Restrictions?

I don't know who needs to hear this but, we cannot afford anymore restrictions.

Everything is open now and places are closing down left, right and centre. If there are anymore restrictions, no business will survive

DLink

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120068515#Comment_120068515

If mask mandates are re-introduced, which looks highly unlikely thankfully, they're a stepping stone to more restrictions.

If whoever is calling for mask mandates see that they can get their way, then it's a potential slippery slope as they or others could (possibly) then call for social distancing, etc, etc.

We thought we were past this, but just look at all the countries who are reintroducing covid testing rules on Chinese visitors to the EU....

Cluedo Monopoly

I don't understand all these fears around the Chinese creating new variants and bringing them to Europe. Covid is rampant in Europe so aren't we just as capable of creating new variants as the Chinese?? Or Indians or any other nationality.

odyssey06

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120068580#Comment_120068580

It's because China has been isolated to a large extent, it's a precautionary concern about possible unknown variants. Especially given how guarded China is with data.

Whereas Europe India have been in more contact.

Cluedo Monopoly

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120068620#Comment_120068620

But surely China is all Omicron too? How could it be any other way?

Quick Google and found this on FT.

Data presented to the World Health Organization, an analysis of which was published on Wednesday, reached a similar conclusion. “No new variant or mutation of known significance is noted in the publicly available sequence data,” the health body said. Peter Bogner, Gisaid’s chief executive, said it was “a grave mistake” to focus solely on acquiring timely data from China, because “new variants of significance can appear anywhere in the world”.

It's like we are punishing the Chinese who, as we know, are a great bunch of lads.

live4tkd

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120068620#Comment_120068620

Did I hear or read somewhere that the latest variant originated in the US?

jimmybobbyschweiz

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120068580#Comment_120068580

Sinophobia. Trump had it. More people seem to have it now.

odyssey06

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120068638#Comment_120068638

Or maybe nobody trusts the data coming from China on anything to do with coronavirus. That's what you do with a great bunch of lads who weren't open with information back in 2020 and haven't changed their spots.

https://www.reuters.com/world/china/biden-raises-concern-over-chinas-covid-response-after-who-questions-data-2023-01-05/

odyssey06

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120068668#Comment_120068668

It is being tracked in the US, that doesn't necessarily mean that's where it originated. Just they are tracking strains and openly reporting on them.

https://www.bbc.com/news/health-64164306

Cluedo Monopoly

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120069229#Comment_120069229

I remember people stopped using our local Chinese takeaway at the start of Covid. It was gas. A few months later they were never as busy!

Cluedo Monopoly

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120069248#Comment_120069248

I don't know what China is saying but whether they like it or not they have Omicron in China. They couldn't have stopped it. So they are like the rest of us. The virus doesn't do politics or subterfuge.

My point is that every country is equally capable of producing a new variant now.

odyssey06

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120069330#Comment_120069330

They have Omicron but what else might they have?

Not every country is equally capable. China given it's size and that it had isolated, is more capable of having hitherto unknown variants.

Cluedo Monopoly

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120069352#Comment_120069352

What factors produced the Indian variant which we had to rename because it caused offence? It's huge and they did not isolate. Ifs and buts I think.

jackboy

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120069352#Comment_120069352

if they have other variants that can compete with Omicron then the bulk of people in the world will get it outside of a long term level five lockdown. It has been proven that no other measure can prevent such covid outbreaks infecting every country. The minor restrictions against China are politically motivated, they cannot possibly be intended to stop variants.

odyssey06

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120069377#Comment_120069377

I'm not sure if its origins could be definitely established. But this is an interesting read.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2021-12-29/how-delta-variant-spread-in-india-deadly-errors-inaction-covid-crisis

odyssey06

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120069412#Comment_120069412

There could be an element of that but it's not something I necessarily disagree with based on the below rationale:

"It's about a part of the world where we have concerns about transparency," he told national broadcaster ABC.

Asked if the restrictions were politically motivated, Chalmers said he didn't "see it precisely like that".

"There certainly is a lot of concern around the global health community about the transparency and quality of data that we see out of China on Covid."

https://www.barrons.com/news/australia-defends-covid-tests-for-china-arrivals-01672787109

Cluedo Monopoly

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120069418#Comment_120069418

Apologies I had to run some errands. Ah yeah, I know all about how chaotic the Indian response was. Clueless. PM Modi is a clown at the best of times. He put his people under needless duress. We all remember the poor Indians walking hundreds of miles to their home villages because he shut down public transport with zero notice.

You might remember the Indian MP who told all his supporters that you could cure Covid by sitting in muddy puddles half naked and blowing into a sea conch. I shitt you not. The fool got Covid soon after. There were all kinds of health 'gurus' spouting nonsense to confuse the gullible Indians.

In contrast the Chinese would be a lot more organised and efficient. Given their ultra cautious approach throughout, I doubt they would relax restrictions if there was a more deadly variant emerging. Don't all pandemics end with the mild strain? Is it really that feasible that Omicron will mutate back into a deadlier strain 2 years on?

odyssey06

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120069928#Comment_120069928

The Chinese seemed to end the restrictions due to public backlash rather than as part of a roadmap. I think the regime wanted to maintain the ultra cautious approach - probably due to abundance of caution, an element of social control but could it be due to something else they were trying to keep a lid on?

It's so not much about a directly deadlier strain evolving necessarily but a strain that evades vaccination \ prior infection immunity - which would indirectly be deadlier.

kirk.

RTE goes nuts I'm paying for them for this crap

https://www.rte.ie/news/

Silentcorner

Wow, a P Value of .001 on a study of 50,000 people.

It'll be interesting to see how they debunk this one!!!

walus

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120071010#Comment_120071010

‘Pre-print’ will be the first one.

Johnboy1951

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120071022#Comment_120071022

How right you were 😀 😂🤣

RetroEncabulator

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120070772#Comment_120070772

That footage from Limerick is unfortunately the situation there for many, many years. It's made a 100 times worse by the current situation but the problem is underinvestment in the hospitals and it's particularly bad in Limerick, and also to a degree in Cork. There re problems elsewhere in the country too obviously, but those two just stand out as particularly extreme. They're rapidly growing cities, but woefully served by the HSE and the political world stands over this and has done for years. Adequate investment simply has not happened and that's the result of it.

It's a disgrace and should be an embarrassment, but for some reason it's been normalised. We are a wealthy, Western European country with enormous resources at our disposal but for whatever reasons, we aren't investing properly in health properly and the projects that were big scale have been white elephants - the National Children's Hospital fiasco in particular stands out.

growleaves

Chinese stated aims and actions should not be taken at face value as Communist dictatorships, and this Communist dicatorship in particular, are made up of habitual liars.

The most recent lockdowns in China could be cover for a military buildup, or a consolidation of Xi's rule, or something else.

RetroEncabulator

I have some Chinese friends and the comments that are coming from China are largely that public think they were lied to about the effectiveness of the Chinese vaccine. It seems to have been woefully underperforming compared to the western mRNA jabs and they feel that drove the extreme caution and will probably now result in a very extreme wave.

They got deeply political about their own vaccine and wouldn't use anything not developed domestically.

Also the way an authoritarian state handles things like this is just going to be weird anyway. China defaults to control / comply stuff in a way that no democracy could sustain and that plays into the political and bureaucratic culture of the country. They were using social credit systems and all sorts of technological based tracking of people and so on long before COVID came along.

There was also a sense that the Chinese Government was going to demonstrate to the world that their way was superior to what they tend to talk about as being western, democratic chaos. A lot of the insanity coming from the US in particular was playing straight into that as the conspiracy theorists over there ranted and raved very loudly and it looked for a while like there was total mayhem going on.

China's approach to this was never going to work as it's a virus, not some kind of ideological threat to the state's power structures.

Ultimately the Chinese population got fed up with the approach and pushed back very hard, and that's why you're seeing it open up so dramatically. I wouldn't be surprised if the removal of all rules could also be a "well.. see! I told you so!" type response too. They seem to have gone from one extreme to the other without any step-down plan.

Also if you think the Chinese population in general have great trust in the government, you're kidding yourself. They basically tolerate the government as long as it's delivering. They don't have a democratic structure, but they are loud and quite capable of pushing back to some degree when things get weird enough. So, the government responds to what it sees as discontent rather than there being any notion of democratic accountability. It's a bit like the relationship between an absolute monarch and their subjects.

growleaves

'Peer review is a relatively recent innovation in the history of scientific publication. The first journal (which is still in print!) was launched in 1665 by the Royal Society in London, (Phil Trans R Soc B), while peer review as we know if began in the mid 1970s.'

https://mitcommlab.mit.edu/broad/commkit/peer-review-a-historical-perspective/

Peer review is essentially an evaluation by a committee of other scientists prior to publishing. Is committee evaluation fundamental to science? No of course not. Its just a bureaucratic mechanism which has been agreed upon, for now.