Covid 19 Part XXXIII-231,484 ROI(4,610 deaths)116,197 NI (2,107 deaths)(23/03)Read OP

This data explains why it would not be wise to open up (outdoor events aside imo) until more people are vaccinated.

https://twitter.com/dazult_pdempsey/status/1368718498072059906

wadacrack wrote: »

This data explains why it would not be wise to open up (outdoor events aside imo) until more people are vaccinated.

https://twitter.com/dazult_pdempsey/status/1368718498072059906

if this was indeed correct we would all be locked in our homes until vaccinated

wadacrack wrote: »

This data explains why it would not be wise to open up (outdoor events aside imo) until more people are vaccinated.

https://twitter.com/dazult_pdempsey/status/1368718498072059906

would you go into detail at to how it explains it? Or are you just passing off someone else's shiny graphs?

OwenM wrote: »

He states in a reply that the model has no input for the effect of vaccines, either given or to be given shortly. There's no way we would go back to 70 deaths a day now at level 3 because HIA's would be much harder to acquire, a lot of elderly people are vaccinated and it's not Christmas week.

I wouldn't call that graph a model by any means.

But agree RE never going back to 70 deaths a day let alone 150.

SusieBlue wrote: »

Click and collect and construction should be open now, and there should be plans in motion to open non essential retail from April 5th, with gyms and hairdressers following a few weeks later.

Just on this specifically, there's some international evidence that puts gyms in a high-risk category.

Click & collect should absolutely be open now, as should construction and outdoor sports.
Hairdressers before the end of the month IMHO, but 5th April is fine.

Gyms, however should belong with indoor dining in terms of risk, and should remain closed until May.

https://www.dutchnews.nl/news/2021/02/are-coronavirus-variants-spreading-less-quickly-than-feared/

The coronavirus variant identified in Britain is spreading across the Netherlands less fast than was feared, claims the AD.

Looks like Colchicine has been officially dropped from consideration.

On the advice of the DMC, recruitment to the colchicine arm of the RECOVERY trial has now closed. The DMC saw no convincing evidence that further recruitment would provide conclusive proof of worthwhile mortality benefit either overall or in any pre-specified subgroup.

https://www.recoverytrial.net/news/recovery-trial-closes-recruitment-to-colchicine-treatment-for-patients-hospitalised-with-covid-19

Post-COVID immunity should be considered as 6 months say HIQA.

https://www.rte.ie/news/coronavirus/2021/0308/1201613-immunity-duration-hiqa/

timmyntc wrote: »

Link?

So far the only evidence I've seen is spurious at best. A memo from CDC about covid spread in US gyms that were not adhering to any kind of restrictions (not even mask wearing)

Here's one that's not the CDC one; https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-11-10/covid-superspreader-risk-is-linked-to-restaurants-gyms-hotels

Nevertheless, even on a precautionary basis the expert opinion is that gyms carry a higher-than-normal risk, and there is no data to suggest otherwise.

Even on the CDC recommendation, it has to be remembered that restrictions are a lot like contraception. They massively reduce risk in perfect use. They are less effective in real-world use. If "real-world" data is that gym goers and gyms are frequently lax on the restrictions, then that's relevant to their risk profile.

In terms of reopening, weight has to be given to this. Pubs and restaurants indoors would be very safe...if the guidelines are adhered to perfectly. In real terms, most places will do pretty well, some places will be great and some places will be awful. It's unfair on the places that are trying to do their best, but it's a pandemic. "Find and fine the ones who aren't complying" is no good when they've already spread the infection.

eddie73 wrote: »

I hope you are right, although I very much doubt it. I watch the news to get the weather forecast, thats about it. f it isn't covid, its clickbait stories about men sitting on top of dead horses.

Or how we are all going to die in a storm next winter because an iceberg broke off from Antarctic last week. The media have gone to the dogs and making facebook pay for news isn't going to fix it because they are still chasing clicks.

seamus wrote: »

Hospitals had a good week last week, as we know. 419 today, which has just barely beaten my best-case estimate.

Weekly drops;
25th - 30th: Down 454 (23%)
Feb 2nd - 6th: Down 330 (21.6%)
9th - 13th: Down 314 (26%)
15th - 20th: Down 197 (21.5%)
22nd- 27th: Down 196 (26%)
Mar 1st - 6th: Down 140 (25%)

You can see this still a nice linear drop. 315-335 should be the number this day next week, but still can't rule out a plateau of sorts. Averaged 25 admissions/day last week.

Hospital numbers still look like they should be knocking on the door of 200 by Easter. If not slightly below.

====

The picture in ICU is on the face of it good. From 134 last Sunday night, we're down 31 to today, which is a 23% drop. The net difference between admissions and discharges however is just 7.

Which means there were likely 24 deaths in ICU over the last 7 days. This may just be an isolated bad week, or may be an unfortunate presence in our ICU for the next few weeks.

As we reach the point where patients have spent 6-8 weeks in ICU without improvement, end-of-life care must be considered.

60 or less in ICU by Easter seems to be a given at this point. It's good news as it means that level 3 should be very seriously on the table by 5th April. However, it is likely we will pay a heavy toll before we get to that point.

I think level 4 is best we can hope for 5th April - i agree it should be level 3 though.

I'm guessing:

5 April - level 4
5 May - level 3

SusieBlue wrote: »

But we have crushed it in the community several times over yet even during these periods, hospital and nursing home infections and deaths were still high.
So this is not the fault of the public, and clearly the public sacrifice didn’t make much meaningful impact if infections and deaths in these settings were still high.

I believe we could achieve similar results without such severe and lengthy lockdowns, as other countries have.
I don’t believe pressing the panic button and shutting the country down for months on end is sustainable, or a good solution. I don’t believe it is in the best interests of public health to do this.
I believe this leads to bigger surges when things do eventually reopen, which makes it counter productive.

I disagreed with the October lockdown, I thought leaving retail, gyms and personal services open while closing hospitality would be sufficient to lower the numbers.
The evidence indicated that level 4 was already working before we took out the sledgehammer and went to level 5.
I thought that shutting everything down for almost two months and then briefly reopening for the biggest social and consumer driven time of year would cause a pressure cooker explosion of cases, particularly when threats of lockdown #3 were looming mere days into December.
I think I was right about that.

The January lockdown was warranted to get things under control but I feared that the government would make an absolute balls of getting us out of it, as they had done previously.
11 weeks later with weak speculation about maybe opening construction in April and not lifting the 5k limit until May, and I think I was right on that front too.

Click and collect and construction should be open now, and there should be plans in motion to open non essential retail from April 5th, with gyms and hairdressers following a few weeks later.
I think that, along with allowing people to meet outdoors, would be more than enough leverage to get people on board to follow the rules until we make more progress with the vaccines.
At the moment there is no hope, so people are making their own risk assessments and doing as they please behind closed doors. We can all see it.

We have extremely weak leadership that is more concerned with covering their own arses than they are in acting in the best interests of all citizens.
NPHET are the ones making all the economic, social, educational, and health decisions for the past year, most of which they are completely unqualified to do.

We will clearly never agree on this, and that’s ok.

I really don't want to start multiquoting here but there are a number of things in this post that are demonstrably false.
The disease has not been crushed in the community several times, it was done once, last summer and came roaring back in autumn. You were advocating for looser restrictions last autumn when things were at a turning point.

What you believe and what there is evidence for seemingly are two different things. There is no evidence that the November lockdown made December worse. None. And given what we know of Irish people's behaviour is likely they would've gone and done what they did in November what they did in December.


I do agree that lockdowns are neither a good nor sustainable solutions but they are the only solution. It's the only tool we have that can be deployed quickly. Lockdowns should be lifted as soon as it is safe to do so. As a lay member of the public, neither you nor I have either the information nor the expertise to make that judgement effectively.

As for construction reopening, you've clearly never worked on a site. The nature of the job means everyone is in and out of the same enclosed spaces and when a building is weather tight you'll have teams of people working in close proximity. As for click and collect, this is another case where the theory and reality differ. Yes, collecting something from a shop sounds like low risk, but to get to that shop you might have to take public transport. Or you might decide to gather with friends in town or go to a busy cafe or the collection location has poor ventilation. With mobility you get spread. This is again another case of the selfish ruining it for everyone.

As for giving people a break to get them on board again, sounds good in theory but is not what happens in reality. Government says restrictions are relaxed, people hear that they can do what they want again, not the nuanced message they are being told.

Of all paragraphs though it's the second to last that I take most issue with. Politicians of all colours here, when it comes to the big things absolutely do put public service first. They do not want to see the health service collapse and the suffering it would bring - if they did they could simply wall themselves off and let the country fend for itself. Nphet doesn't make decisions, it advises government. You know that.

AdamD wrote: »

Whilst level 3 looks pretty appealing right now. Its a pretty grim result for May to be honest. More than likely to be reality though

Pretty grim thinking it's going to be probably mid June before we can leave our county (seeing as the rule started in October with a tiny break in December).

MrMusician18 wrote: »

I really don't want to start multiquoting here but there are a number of things in this post that are demonstrably false.
The disease has not been crushed in the community several times, it was done once, last summer and came roaring back in autumn. You were advocating for looser restrictions last autumn when things were at a turning point.

What you believe and what there is evidence for seemingly are two different things. There is no evidence that the November lockdown made December worse. None. And given what we know of Irish people's behaviour is likely they would've gone and done what they did in November what they did in December.


I do agree that lockdowns are neither a good nor sustainable solutions but they are the only solution. It's the only tool we have that can be deployed quickly. Lockdowns should be lifted as soon as it is safe to do so. As a lay member of the public, neither you nor I have either the information nor the expertise to make that judgement effectively.

As for construction reopening, you've clearly never worked on a site. The nature of the job means everyone is in and out of the same enclosed spaces and when a building is weather tight you'll have teams of people working in close proximity. As for click and collect, this is another case where the theory and reality differ. Yes, collecting something from a shop sounds like low risk, but to get to that shop you might have to take public transport. Or you might decide to gather with friends in town or go to a busy cafe or the collection location has poor ventilation. With mobility you get spread. This is again another case of the selfish ruining it for everyone.

As for giving people a break to get them on board again, sounds good in theory but is not what happens in reality. Government says restrictions are relaxed, people hear that they can do what they want again, not the nuanced message they are being told.

Of all paragraphs though it's the second to last that I take most issue with. Politicians of all colours here, when it comes to the big things absolutely do put public service first. They do not want to see the health service collapse and the suffering it would bring - if they did they could simply wall themselves off and let the country fend for itself. Nphet doesn't make decisions, it advises government. You know that.

Construction was open for pretty much all of last summer and cases continued to plummet, it was also open during the October and November lockdowns, and cases went down then too.
There is no reason why the same wouldn’t happen again if we reopened construction now particularly when many counties now have negligible amounts of cases.
There is zero science to banning click and collect, all it serves to do is inconvenience people and push sales online and outside of Ireland.
This was another thing that was open before Christmas, and we still saw cases reduce.

If you refuse to acknowledge that isolating people and shutting down the country for almost 2 months before the busiest shopping and socialisation period of the year would cause pent up demand when those privileges and services returned, then I cannot help you.
If you take away supply of anything, the demand just grows.
People don’t stop wanting to see their loved ones or stop wanting to use local shops and services just because we shut them down for months on it, it just causes huge demand issues when things reopen.
Hence everyone squeezed all their shopping, gym visits, haircuts and family time into a narrow 3 week window because we were told a few days into December that lockdown round 3 was looming.
You can deny human nature all you want but that coupled with the imported variant is why our cases exploded.
None of it was surprising.

It’s actually laughable that you’re saying NPHET are merely an advisory board when they have been running the country for the last year.
Sure Tony H was only barely back in the door in October when he undermined the government by leaking the level 5 lockdown to the media at 10pm on a Sunday night - lovely classy behaviour putting the fear in people that their jobs were going to be gone again so late at night.

If you think depriving people indefinitely of their work, of seeing their families and friends, of the ability to travel more than 5k from their house, of their hobbies, and of accessing shops and services is a good way to get them to obey extremely strict and unnatural rules then you need only look at the sheer amount of fines issued over the last few weeks to know that it isn’t a successful way to get people on board.

It’s actually safer and better for everyone if we have slightly less severe restrictions that are actually obeyed rather than a full blown lockdown that is only loosely adhered to, but you are clearly too narrow minded to see that.

The longer each lockdown goes on, the less people comply with the rules which defeats the purpose of having the economy shut down.
Leo said from day 1 that they were supposed to be short and snappy to get cases down because people simply couldn’t be expected to comply with them for long periods of time.
With the exception of the brief respite at Christmas, we have been in lockdown for the last 17 weeks with a minimum of another 4 weeks to look forward to - that is an extremely long time to be in full level 5 for.

These long drawn out lockdowns do not work when people are clearly doing their own risk assessments and breaking the rules as they please.
You only need to look around to see that.

Tazz T wrote: »

Just can't see L4 in April with current government mindset. Level4+5- is best I think we can hope for - might see the end of the 5k rule, rest of schools and construction back, that's it. We'll be lucky to see retail open in April.

Don't underestimate the power of pressure. There's an appetite not to balls it up again, but there's also an appetite to get elected at the next election.

They compressed and brought forward several elements of the original reopening plan in May last year, not long after they'd announced the plan. Partially because the numbers were still trending well, and partially because they knew it would make people happy.

If the same factors are in play come Paddy's Day, I can see them dropping hints about level 3 in mid-April, "If things continue to improve as they have"