Schools closed until February? (part 3)

Thats me · 17-11-2020 02:27PM

khalessi wrote: »

Are we talking masks? The evidence has been there all along. They are used in hospitals to prevent spread of infection. The only reason they were not recommended in the beginning was that there were not enough for the hospitals.

This is one of most intriguing parts of this story. My low-educated view on mask was binary: they do stop the virus or they do not. If the mask lets the single instance virus into the body, it will spread there in progression: after first 8 hours you will have 1000 viruses in the body, to the end of the first day (when immune system starting to react) it will be 100000000000000000000000 (23 zeros) instances of virus. So if single instance reached your body - you're contaminated was thinking silly me.

The WHO was obviously thinking same way and their recommendation in February was to use masks having protection standard NP95. This recommendation lead to shortage of supply of face mask and even respirators (f/example painters or welders would use these to protect from unhealalthy chemicals). As result WHO have removed this recommendation from their web site.

Other facts:

Doctors who are working with covid patients insisting any mask is better then no mask. May be they worrying about masks supply shortage and/or protecting WHO's ass, but current observations are pointing those who were wearing masks but got covid, are having easier ilness. We can only believe them or not..
Japanese were known to wear masks a long before covid, especially to protect themselves and others from flu during outbreaks in their overpopulated country. Probably it was working for them.
Covid penetrates through any mask, though in different proportions
Covid penetrates through plastic shields

So hard to say is it true that masks are really helping, at least i can see couple other reasons in requirement to wear mask:

Avoiding panic in the masses. It is always better to say "take this mask and you are safe" instead of "there is no way to prevent it". Result will be same, but casualties toll from social urest will be less.
Wearing masks is simply not comfortable, therefore requirement to wear them makes visiting public places less comfortable which in its turn decreases such visits which is great measure against the pandemic.

s1ippy · 17-11-2020 02:34PM

It's just about getting people to accept risks so that they'll maintain the status quo.

Going to work every day and getting paid when there's nothing good to spend money on anymore, no social outlet and no joy on the horizon is a pretty grim status quo but that's what we're supposed to accept.

I don't know how teachers can do it.

Thats me · 17-11-2020 02:38PM

s1ippy wrote: »

there's nothing good to spend money on anymore

MOH · 17-11-2020 03:00PM

MelbourneMan wrote: »

That is quite a charge, and unless you can justify your allegation, I call on you to withdraw it.

Would you consider that it is your logic that is flawed, and that the collective members of NPHET are far more like to be correct than yourself? And I pose this question with all respect.

Like when the NPHET chair said in July that we should be able to avoid a further national lockdown because our testing and tracing had improved to the point where we could quickly identify clusters and isolate their close contacts?
The same testing system which fell over shortly before the country went back into level 5?
The same wonderful cluster detecting system which they then accidentally admitted didn't exist because they weren't actually making any effort to look back determine where clusters originated, which is why 90% are "at home". And that they didn't have the resources for this "academic exercise".

For that matter, the same testing system which the head of the HSE said would be processing 100,000 cases a week by mid-April?

The same NPHET who justified going into level 5 by constantly talking about the 14-day average, switched shortly afterwards to highlighting the 7-day average when they wanted to claim that their additional restrictions were the cause of the turnaround, and more recently are banging the 5-day drum to say numbers are going back up.
The 7- and 5- day averages had both started falling before level 5 came in, and had stopped going up almost a week before. There was an unusually low daily positive count one day last week which skewed the 5-day lower, which is one reason it's gone up the last few days.
That's before you get into them talking about raw positive numbers climbing rapidly, while ignoring greatly increased number of tests, when it suits them; but at other times they'll talk about the positive rates. Schools being a notable example.

While none of the latter are strictly lies, choosing a different set of statistics to highlight each to prove the point you want to make is deliberately misleading, and purely political.

Thats me · 17-11-2020 03:13PM

MOH wrote: »

While none of the latter are strictly lies, choosing a different set of statistics to highlight each to prove the point you want to make is deliberately misleading, and purely political.

Different averages is different ways to represent same stats on different ways. If you see some particular is wrong you always can provide your own interpretation of same stats, with no this all of that is objectless objections. On the other hand, raw stats is not available to public.

JimmyVik · 17-11-2020 04:02PM

Thats me wrote: »

Different averages is different ways to represent same stats on different ways. If you see some particular is wrong you always can provide your own interpretation of same stats, with no this all of that is objectless objections. On the other hand, raw stats is not available to public.

There is only one reason not to release the full dataset. You dont want people to be able to interrogate the data.

MOH · 17-11-2020 04:34PM

Thats me wrote: »

Different averages is different ways to represent same stats on different ways. If you see some particular is wrong you always can provide your own interpretation of same stats, with no this all of that is objectless objections. On the other hand, raw stats is not available to public.

I've no idea what objectless objection means, and there's plenty of raw stats available to the public.

Different average are different ways of presenting the same data, but if you're making statements about the general course of the pandemic , and whether things are getting better or worse, then you pick a baseline statistic and stick to it. You don't chop and change to highlight the one that best supports the policy decisions you're trying to implement at a particular moment in time.
Being consistent is providing an objective measure of how the pandemic is progressing.
Not doing so is being deliberately misleading to try to influence public opinion.

For example, since a 5-day period seems to be the new favoured metric, then level-5 was completely unnecessary. The 5-day positive rate had peaked at just 7.6 almost a week before level 5 came in, but was down to 5.5 by the time any of the level 5 effects kicked in. It hasn't been below 3.4 since then, so clearly the bulk of the improvement is due to the restrictions that were already in place.
Or you could stick with the 14-day figure, which takes longer to turn around, and peaked the day after level 5 came in, so less of the decrease here can be clearly attributed to the earlier restrictions and better suits the narrative that level 5 was necessary. But that's still decreasing, so doesn't suit the desired story of an increase in numbers.

And that's all looking at the positive rate over the period, which is the only reliably consistent indicator that allows for fluctuating numbers of tests.

To drag this back on topic, that's a statistic that's not been highlighted that often.
Except, curiously, for schools, where most of the talk seems to have focused on the positive rate. Which coincidentally excludes counts of the number of tests being performed or the raw number of actual cases resulting from schools. Which, I'll agree, is data that doesn't seem to be publicly available.

combat14 · 17-11-2020 04:41PM

lads there were no issues during the summer when the schools were closed.. time to wake up..

Covid-19 cases could rise to 1,000 a day just six weeks after lifting lockdown, warns Nphet

https://m.independent.ie/news/covid-19-cases-could-rise-to-1000-a-day-just-six-weeks-after-lifting-lockdown-warns-nphet-39757632.html

17-11-2020 04:46PM

combat14 wrote: »

lads there were no issues during the summer when the schools were closed.. time to wake up..

Covid-19 cases could rise to 1,000 a day just six weeks after lifting lockdown, warns Nphet

https://m.independent.ie/news/covid-19-cases-could-rise-to-1000-a-day-just-six-weeks-after-lifting-lockdown-warns-nphet-39757632.html

Or .... COVID 19 is seasonal, just like the other 4 coronaviruses ....

17-11-2020 04:49PM

Why aren't NPHET pushing the expansion of ICU capacity? That's what I want to know. It boggles the mind. The Irish people have done an amazing job keeping the virus levels very low, matched by very very few countries worldwide, and none who have kept their ports and borders open next to the world COVID hotspots.

This WOULD NOT BE EXPECTED by any metric. So, why aren't we expanding ICU capacity?

combat14 · 17-11-2020 04:49PM

[Deleted User] wrote: »

Or .... COVID 19 is seasonal, just like the other 4 coronaviruses ....

not necessarily

https://www.webmd.com/lung/news/20201014/covid-19-doesnt-seem-seasonal-study-says

Boggles · 17-11-2020 04:55PM

Deleted User wrote: »

Or .... COVID 19 is seasonal, just like the other 4 coronaviruses ....

10,000+ daily cases in Florida in June?

Which season do you think it is?

17-11-2020 04:59PM

Boggles wrote: »

10,000+ daily cases in Florida in June?

Which season do you think it is?

Flu season in Florida typically runs from October to May. No reason to think COVID would be different. Also PCR tests pick up dead virus etc. Not saying it definitely is, but it seems to have followed that pattern in Europe. Also Florida is full of nursing homes.

http://www.floridahealth.gov/diseases-and-conditions/influenza/florida-influenza-surveillance-report-archive/index.html

The US graphs for deaths are utterly bizarre compared to the Euro ones. No discernable pattern or weird huge spikes and troughs.

Boggles · 17-11-2020 05:01PM

Deleted User wrote: »

Flu season in Florida typically runs from October to May.

http://www.floridahealth.gov/diseases-and-conditions/influenza/florida-influenza-surveillance-report-archive/index.html

So not June or July.

So again which season do you think Covid is?

MerlinSouthDub · 17-11-2020 05:05PM

combat14 wrote: »

lads there were no issues during the summer when the schools were closed.. time to wake up..

Covid-19 cases could rise to 1,000 a day just six weeks after lifting lockdown, warns Nphet

https://m.independent.ie/news/covid-19-cases-could-rise-to-1000-a-day-just-six-weeks-after-lifting-lockdown-warns-nphet-39757632.html

Cases rose steadily throughout the summer, at much the same rates as they increased in September. Take a look at the data

Thats me · 17-11-2020 05:15PM

JimmyVik wrote: »

There is only one reason not to release the full dataset. You dont want people to be able to interrogate the data.

No, this is not the one reason. There are at least two other reasons:

Hanlon's razor. Look at the "Religion and Place of Worship" dataset - there is no burial grounds in Ireland and only few churches, all of which are situated in Dublin. Or this one which i especially like: "Attractions" - try to guess how many attractions Ireland has. 22 (twenty two) attractions!
Privacy considerations. Looking on gov datasets i have feeling they have somewhere detailed description for every case in Ireland. But it is impossible to publish such data with no disclosing personal information, so sime kind of depersonalised view is expected in public access. May be they simply afraiding to compromise privacy by providing too consistent and too detailed information.

MOH wrote: »

there's plenty of raw stats available to the public.

The only information which you will not find there is distribution of cases in narrkwer than 10 yo bands aligned to county with demographic information per each band per county (or finer)

But you are surprising me, i didn't think you even know about existence of this data

JDD · 17-11-2020 05:21PM

I think I might be coming around to the idea that open schools is what is keeping the numbers so high.

It can't be anything else. Yes there are occasional groups of outdoor drinkers (the chances of which catching covid outside when you are half a metre or so back from another person to me seems pretty low), and the occasional house get together that is happening despite the Level 5, but I can't see that being the reason that numbers are increasing again.

And I know I have argued in the past that numbers in the 5-14 age category had not risen at a higher rate than other age categories, and therefore this must prove that children don't spread the virus as much as adults do.

But now I doubt that statistic. If more children as asymptomatic, or mildly symptomatic, they are probably not getting tested. At least not so much now that September has passed and all the usual back-to-school lurgy isn't as prevalent.

So if they catch it at school, they are probably bringing it home. Once an older person in the house gets infected and has actual symptoms, they go and get a test, and then the child is tested as a close contact. If they child test positive, it'll be deemed that the child caught it from the parent, at home, and not in the school. Then their pod will be tested, and perhaps there will be one or two other children who also test positive (they may have been the ones that spread the infection in the first place). But there might be a child on the table behind the original child but isn't part of the pod, so isn't tested, but is infected. They bring it home to their family, and the same cycle starts again.

I don't want schools or creches to be closed again. Especially creches as it is impossible to work with a toddler. But it does seem to me that we are going to stay in the 300-400 cases a day category, despite the Level 5 restrictions, while schools stay open. Can we cope with that? Well yes, the hospitals will cope, but the economy won't.

Thats me · 17-11-2020 05:22PM

Deleted User wrote: »

Why aren't NPHET pushing the expansion of ICU capacity?

Because they have to help patients to recover before they reached ICU. ICU is extreme measure with extreme death rates.

eagle eye · 17-11-2020 05:31PM

Deleted User wrote:

Or .... COVID 19 is seasonal, just like the other 4 coronaviruses ....

Well it's done spring, summer and autumn already.....

Boggles · 17-11-2020 05:40PM

JDD wrote: »

I think I might be coming around to the idea that open schools is what is keeping the numbers so high.

It can't be anything else. Yes there are occasional groups of outdoor drinkers (the chances of which catching covid outside when you are half a metre or so back from another person to me seems pretty low), and the occasional house get together that is happening despite the Level 5, but I can't see that being the reason that numbers are increasing again.

And I know I have argued in the past that numbers in the 5-14 age category had not risen at a higher rate than other age categories, and therefore this must prove that children don't spread the virus as much as adults do.

But now I doubt that statistic. If more children as asymptomatic, or mildly symptomatic, they are probably not getting tested. At least not so much now that September has passed and all the usual back-to-school lurgy isn't as prevalent.

So if they catch it at school, they are probably bringing it home. Once an older person in the house gets infected and has actual symptoms, they go and get a test, and then the child is tested as a close contact. If they child test positive, it'll be deemed that the child caught it from the parent, at home, and not in the school. Then their pod will be tested, and perhaps there will be one or two other children who also test positive (they may have been the ones that spread the infection in the first place). But there might be a child on the table behind the original child but isn't part of the pod, so isn't tested, but is infected. They bring it home to their family, and the same cycle starts again.

I don't want schools or creches to be closed again. Especially creches as it is impossible to work with a toddler. But it does seem to me that we are going to stay in the 300-400 cases a day category, despite the Level 5 restrictions, while schools stay open. Can we cope with that? Well yes, the hospitals will cope, but the economy won't.

That is pretty much exactly what is happening, it's simple common sense.

The problem I have is the narrative is pretty set that children have some sort of immunity from the virus and they will not pass it on to anyone else.

That sort of misinformation is deadly and I imagine has got a lot of people sick, maybe even worse.

JDD · 17-11-2020 05:56PM

Boggles wrote: »

That is pretty much exactly what is happening, it's simple common sense.

The problem I have is the narrative is pretty set that children have some sort of immunity from the virus and they will not pass it on to anyone else.

That sort of misinformation is deadly and I imagine has got a lot of people sick, maybe even worse.

My gut feeling was that if you are asymptomatic or mildly symptomatic, you don't shed as much virus as a properly symptomatic person. Like, if there isn't enough virus in your system to cause a strong immune reaction (temperature, coughing, wheezing) then perhaps there isn't as much to shed? This is the theory about why doctors and nurses get such bad doses. Because people being hospitalised are shedding the virus like a split nuclear reactor, so otherwise young healthy people (health care workers) are picking up massive viral loads. It stands to reason that if you are asymptomatic, you won't be as "nuclear".

That being said, if there's 25 children in an indoor room for 8 hours a day, even one child with mild symptoms might well be able to infect four or five others over the course of a few days. Throw in two more asymptomatic children and the virus has a decent chance of infecting half the room.

It's not what we want to hear. But it does seem like common sense.

17-11-2020 05:59PM

Boggles wrote: »

So not June or July.

So again which season do you think Covid is?

I just said I'm not proclaiming it a seasonal virus, just speculating. Jesus.

17-11-2020 06:01PM

Thats me wrote: »

Because they have to help patients to recover before they reached ICU. ICU is extreme measure with extreme death rates.

Shutting down the country is pretty extreme? Maybe if you're in the public sector you don't understand this. Also this is the "we don't need police or jails as these are only for extreme criminality" argument.

JDD · 17-11-2020 06:02PM

It *could* be seasonal.

Yes, there were big spikes in Texas and Florida during the summer months. But remember, their summer is not like our summer. People are much more likely to spend time indoors in cinemas, shopping etc where it is air conditioned. Their outdoor life is in the spring and autumn. Summer and Winter are indoor seasons.

17-11-2020 06:04PM

JDD wrote: »

That being said, if there's 25 children in an indoor room for 8 hours a day, even one child with mild symptoms might well be able to infect four or five others over the course of a few days. Throw in two more asymptomatic children and the virus has a decent chance of infecting half the room.

It's not what we want to hear. But it does seem like common sense.

So what do we do? The state is in danger of running out of money next year at this rate of borrowing, never mind all the huge negative effects of the lockdown. What's our Plan B, given it will realistically be AT LEAST Q2 next year before we see any vaccines.

17-11-2020 06:05PM

JDD wrote: »

It *could* be seasonal.

Yes, there were big spikes in Texas and Florida during the summer months. But remember, their summer is not like our summer. People are much more likely to spend time indoors in cinemas, shopping etc where it is air conditioned. Their outdoor life is in the spring and autumn. Summer and Winter are indoor seasons.

Now that makes sense.

Boggles · 17-11-2020 07:10PM

Deleted User wrote: »

I just said I'm not proclaiming it a seasonal virus, just speculating. Jesus.

But it clearly isn't.

Boggles · 17-11-2020 07:22PM

JDD wrote: »

It *could* be seasonal.

Yes, there were big spikes in Texas and Florida during the summer months. But remember, their summer is not like our summer. People are much more likely to spend time indoors in cinemas, shopping etc where it is air conditioned. Their outdoor life is in the spring and autumn. Summer and Winter are indoor seasons.

It's not seasonal, it's not up for actual debate, it's established science.

But if your point was to be true, why don't those states have a flu or common cold season season in June and July?

The hope is it becomes seasonal, but right now it is one big novel virus wave circling the planet and it's mitigation that breaks it up in to separate country waves.

Thats me · 17-11-2020 07:22PM

Deleted User wrote: »

Shutting down the country is pretty extreme? Maybe if you're in the public sector you don't understand this. Also this is the "we don't need police or jails as these are only for extreme criminality" argument.

ICU stands for "Intensive Care Unit", not for "Shutting down the country". ICU should be avoided by any means since it is very intrusive and having highest mortality rate.

Jinglejangle69 · 17-11-2020 07:41PM

So the numbers dropping in Dublin where the largest and most schools are????

88 today.

Schools closed until February? (part 3)

Comments