Covid19 Part XV - 15,251 in ROI (610 deaths) 2,645 in NI (194 deaths) (19/04) Read OP

Mic 1972 wrote: »

Excellent video, finally someone who understands how to look at numbers
Ireland was number 5 as most infected country per million in Europe when this video was created. As of yesterday we are now at number 4

I have to disagree. Per million is a meaningless comparison until the pandemic has burned itself out in all the countries being compared. It will take more time to spread through a larger population.

Per million population is not a valid way to compare countries at this point in time, for a number of reasons.

Different countries are using different criteria for diagnosing CiViD-19, some use differential diagnosis based on symptoms, others on diagnostic test results; some countries are only counting diagnosed hospital deaths and don't include nursing home or home deaths.

Some countries record cause of death differently e.g. one country might record cause of death as pneumonia or heart failure with CoViD-19 secondary whereas another would record the cause of death as CoViD-19 with pneumonia or heart failure secondary.

Less developed countries may not even have the capability to collect reliable statistics.

Even if all countries being compared were using the same diagnostic criteria and recording cause of death in exactly the same way it still wouldn't be valid to compare per population until after the pandemic had ended in all countries being compared.

If one person, on average infects four others, the virus will spread from 1 to 4, 16, 64, 256, 1024, 4096, etc... the same in a country of 5 million as a country of 50 million. It will take longer to spread to the same % population in a more populous country. Until the virus has spread to the majority of people in both, a per population comparison will always make the less populous country's stats appear to be worse.

The best measure during the pandemic is the rate of spread.

Since CoViD-19 seems to be asymptomatic or only mildly symptomatic in a significant percentage of cases even the rate of spread has to be inferred from mortality, ICU and hospital admission rates making comparisons between countries with different access to healthcare difficult.

At the moment the best measures are the spread or replication rate and ability of a country's healthcare infrastructure to cope. On both counts we appear to be coping relatively well and heading in the right direction.

tobefrank321 wrote: »

Why didn't the HSE send a fact finding team to Italy 6 weeks ago? Why didn't the WHO issue clear instructions to the HSE on stricter protocols for nursing homes? Why didn't the government issue even the bare minimum of PPE?

The HSE has had regular videoconferences with several international experts, including Italy and China.

It's not the WHO's job to tell local governments what to do.

The government has just spent 200 million on getting in PPE, and moved on this well before most other countries did.

We've done a great job so far. Could do better, but we have moved fast, and made fast decisions. In every huge crisis like this there will be things that could have been done better in hindsight, and you'll always have to deal with hurlers on the ditch telling you where you went wrong.

Fr_Dougal wrote: »

China getting hammered with the second wave.

No they're not. Yet anyway.

[Deleted User] wrote: »

Ah, your mistake is obvious. You confirmed your data and applied some critical thinking before blankly spouting second hand nonsense as fact. Rookie mistake

No, I was correct.

hmmm wrote: »

The HSE has had regular videoconferences with several international experts, including Italy and China.

It's not the WHO's job to tell local governments what to do.

The government has just spent 200 million on getting in PPE, and moved on this well before most other countries did.

We've done a great job so far. Could do better, but we have moved fast, and made fast decisions. In every huge crisis like this there will be things that could have been done better in hindsight, and you'll always have to deal with hurlers on the ditch telling you where you went wrong.

Er yes it is. That's why countries pay them. To provide timely and accurate information on highly contagious potential pandemics. And to offer advice on best practice. Oddly enough countries which ignored their advice on not implementing travel bans did the best out of this outbreak. Those who took on board their advice not to ban travel fared worst. So the WHO have been negligent in offering the right kind of advice in a timely manner.

As for doing a great job, FFS. They react always after the sh*t hits the fan. The nursing homes are the latest example.

Deleted User wrote: »

But the airports are still open and Mary down the road went for a 2.1k walk the other day

Ports are also open, and Jonny, wife and the kids came a couple hundred miles from London to a funeral in Birr to meet 150 of the extended family.

Widdensushi wrote: »

or are starting to believe that this approach is not sustainable as we are hearing no mention of an exit plan

I think everyone knows that the current restrictions are not sustainable in the longer term.
One thing that is not being discussed publicly by the politicians and the medical authorities is that assuming that we can ‘flatten the curve’, what are we left with and how can we deal with it?
Even if we reduce the transmission rate to very low levels, we are left with a population that mostly have no immunity. What are the prospects for the most at-risk groups in such a scenario? Are the over 70s going to be told that they must stay ‘cocooned’ until a vaccine materialises whenever that may be?
Ironically, the more successful the current strategy is, the bigger the future problem becomes.
These questions are being avoided in the public arena.

Dr Colm Henry is says what happened in St Fintans/Maryborough Portlaoise was an exemplar. at 1 hr 04 mins https://t.co/vQ73xmnWY2

Roger_007 wrote: »

I think everyone knows that the current restrictions are not sustainable in the longer term.
One thing that is not being discussed publicly by the politicians and the medical authorities is that assuming that we can ‘flatten the curve’, what are we left with and how can we deal with it?
Even if we reduce the transmission rate to very low levels, we are left with a population that mostly have no immunity. What are the prospects for the most at-risk groups in such a scenario? Are the over 70s going to be told that they must stay ‘cocooned’ until a vaccine materialises whenever that may be?
Ironically, the more successful the current strategy is, the bigger the future problem becomes.
These questions are being avoided in the public arena.

I have to say, I agree with you about this. I expected by this stage we would be at least be starting to have a discussion about how to restructure society so as to cope better with going back to work, cuccooning the elderly and sick etc. I think the govt need to come up with a detailed plan for how to handle this: sorting out some kind of accommodation alternative for people who will need to get back to work but live with an old or sick person but it seems as though that problem is just left to the individual to work out for themselves which is not really gonna cut it in this situation.

NDWC wrote: »

People seem to want to use these figures as a stick to beat Ireland with, it's bizarre

There's a lot of people who seem to delight in talking everything down. Whether that's because of politics, boredom or they are just cranks is hard to know.