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

Stephen Donnelly has expressed his 'disappointment' and 'discomfort' with the way in which members of the public have been critical of NPHET online

Stephen Donnelly is 100% correct. Ireland must follow Iran and Belarus and begin shutting down social media and online forums. Any criticism of NPHET is totally unacceptable. It should be a criminal offence.

This country is like some sort of parody of itself.

Responder XY wrote: »

That wasn't a mistake - it was good common sense at the time to focus resources available (AZ) on the people who could benefit (over 60s)

Delta impacting the effectiveness of one does vrs. two was a curveball that wasn't known at that time. Nobody had a crystal ball.

I disagree and the proof is in the pudding. There were known supply problems with AZ, it was known and planned there would be a 3 month gap between doses. That's what the booklet given at the time states clearly. The 'Indian' variant and the possibility of other variants were known.

A child with basic maths could have calculated/ predicted that it was unlikely that the 60s cohort would be fully vaccinated before the mid/ end of August. And even that dependent on supplies of AZ.

If the HSE had followed the logic of their programme for over 70s and applied mRNA type vaccines to those in their 60s and 50s, these would all practically be done by now and the pubs/ restaurants etc., could all open. That's the factual situation. It's been a complete cock up. And even after using these AZ vaccines, they're already saying they'll have to be 'boosted' with mRNA vaccines later. This was very poor planning and undermines public confidence in vaccines.

FileNotFound wrote: »

Maybe we could set the UK figure above and then start top live again?

We absolutely cannot follow the UK's lead on anything. If it wasn't for the political fallout, they would have gone with the "let the bodies pile high" approach.

Even today, Johnson is going to say "we have to learn to live with covid", which is his way of saying, "Many of you will die, but that is a sacrifice I am willing to make".

Furze99 wrote: »

We are well into the vaccination scheme now with large numbers in their 40s and 50s fully vaccinated. And yet, people like my wife & myself in our 60s, are not.

If hindsight was 20:20. I do appreciate how frustrating it is for those who got AZ, but at the time we were very much just trying to maximise what was available to us. If it was possible to predict how things would look 8 weeks later, then different choices would have been made.

Working class heroes wrote: »

Would you consider schools in this category?

No. Schools appear to be somewhere in the middle, risk-wise, and the main risk points are easily mitigated.

Furze99 wrote: »

I disagree and the proof is in the pudding. There were known supply problems with AZ, it was known and planned there would be a 3 month gap between doses. That's what the booklet given at the time states clearly. The 'Indian' variant and the possibility of other variants were known.

A child with basic maths could have calculated/ predicted that it was unlikely that the 60s cohort would be fully vaccinated before the mid/ end of August. And even that dependent on supplies of AZ.

If the HSE had followed the logic of their programme for over 70s and applied mRNA type vaccines to those in their 60s and 50s, these would all practically be done by now and the pubs/ restaurants etc., could all open. That's the factual situation.

Not at all - one dose was known to be almost as effective as two does at that point in time. Fully vaccinated didn't really matter. In fact there was a push to skip second doses entirely at that point to get the entire population one dose as that was thought likely to give maximum societal protection and limit spread.

Obviously things changed with Delta coming along and with hindsight we might have done something different. Does not change the fact that it was the correct decision at the time.

Another sports event lost as Ireland can't guarantee a crowd for the PDC darts in LATE OCTOBER

seamus wrote: »

We absolutely cannot follow the UK's lead on anything. If it wasn't for the political fallout, they would have gone with the "let the bodies pile high" approach.

Even today, Johnson is going to say "we have to learn to live with covid", which is his way of saying, "Many of you will die, but that is a sacrifice I am willing to make".

If hindsight was 20:20. I do appreciate how frustrating it is for those who got AZ, but at the time we were very much just trying to maximise what was available to us. If it was possible to predict how things would look 8 weeks later, then different choices would have been made.

No. Schools appear to be somewhere in the middle, risk-wise, and the main risk points are easily mitigated.

Your posts just lost all credibility with this comment. What an insane opinion.

seamus wrote: »

We absolutely cannot follow the UK's lead on anything. If it wasn't for the political fallout, they would have gone with the "let the bodies pile high" approach.

Even today, Johnson is going to say "we have to learn to live with covid", which is his way of saying, "Many of you will die, but that is a sacrifice I am willing to make".

The uncomfortable truth is that is something that will eventually have to be factored in. We can't prevent people dying from Covid, it's ****ing ridiculous to even pursue a goal of that especially those over the average life expectancy, by making every healthy person in the country pause their own lives for 18 months+. At some point, it needs to come to personal responsibility - if you are high risk of dying from it, stay out of places that you might pick it up.

Other countries seem to shoulder and acknowledge that consequence a lot better than we ever will.

Furze99 wrote: »

It's not just frustrating Seamus. I am genuinely angry that the state has knowingly exposed us both to extra risk from Covid and obliged us to take more vaccines than necessary. There are a lot of people very pissed off about it.

You are not looking at this rationly. You have the first dose of a very good vaccine. maximum long term protection is achieved from a second dose received after 12 weeks, this is being brought forward as it appears that with delta a second dose is better than just one, even though ideally that second dose should be later to give the best overall protection.

Yes, it is frustrating the way that worked out. But that doesn't make the original plan wrong. It was the right plan, executed the right way and unfortunately as often happens the best laid plans came undone by circumstances outside of anyone's control or knowledge.

Timmy O Toole wrote: »

Another sports event lost as Ireland can't guarantee a crowd for the PDC darts in LATE OCTOBER

MY GOD !!

Stephen Donnelly has expressed his 'disappointment' and 'discomfort' with the way in which members of the public have been critical of NPHET online

NPHET are the real victims in all of this. :rolleyes:

OwenM wrote: »

They are doing 330K doses a day (200k 2nd vaccine doses a day), with ~50% of the eligible population fully vaccinated already. The relationship between cases and hospitalisation is very different.

Sure. So the UK at their current rates are about a month away from hitting 60% fully vaccinated.

Everything else being equal and assuming the doubling rate remains stable, they're looking at 4,000 in hospital and 600 in ICU at that point. For us that's the equivalent of 300/50. Which is not terrible.

But 60% is an assumption. And a big one given that the UK are only using Astrazenca. They most likely will require much higher vax rates to properly flatten the numbers.

The other assumption is that the growth in hospital numbers doesn't accelerate between now and then. It already has, and if the UK reopens on the 19th, it will accelerate again. The numbers I give above are optimistic estimates of the UK situation on 1st August.

https://www.hamburg.de/nachrichten-hamburg/15239202/80-prozent-der-positiven-corona-schnelltests-falsch-positiv/

80 percent of the positive corona rapid tests are false-positive

While it was just over half in the first week of May, 80 percent of people with a positive corona rapid test result were not infected by the second week of June, as the Senate's response to a small request from the CDU parliamentary group shows. In the weeks in between, the proportion of false-positive results determined by the PCR test climbed from 52 to 69 and 71 to 75 percent.

If 'Ze Germans' cant get the antigen tests right, I don't expect the Irish to do any better. Time to stop worrying about cases all together.

niallo27 wrote: »

So would you have stayed in level 5 for the last 18 months. People trying to make a living and you are calling it ranting.

I call what goes on here among a cohort of posters ranting because that's exactly what it is, no facts or evidence can ever be good enough for them.

At the same time this cohort claims anybody who disagrees with them is "ranting".

At the heart of that hypocrisy is an authoritarian attempt by the "open it up" cult to shout down anybody who disagrees with them.

That's not a surprise given the clear links to far right politics among so much of the worldwide Covid denier lobby, it's exactly what you'd expect.

Snooker Loopy wrote: »

I call what goes on here among a cohort of posters ranting because that's exactly what it is, no facts or evidence can ever be good enough for them.

At the same time this cohort claims anybody who disagrees with them is "ranting".

At the heart of that hypocrisy is an authoritarian attempt by the "open it up" cult to shout down anybody who disagrees with them.

That's not a surprise given the clear links to far right politics among so much of the worldwide Covid denier lobby, it's exactly what you'd expect.

“Cult”, “far right”, “worldwide Covid denier lobby”… You ARE ranting and this kind of stuff belongs with the other conspiracy theories. This is no better than the people acting like Covid is just the flu.

Sobit1964 wrote: »

https://www.hamburg.de/nachrichten-hamburg/15239202/80-prozent-der-positiven-corona-schnelltests-falsch-positiv/



If 'Ze Germans' cant get the antigen tests right, I don't expect the Irish to do any better. Time to stop worrying about cases all together.

Is there similar stats for false negatives?