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

I’m sorry, but there’s some fooking horrible posters on this place! the same horrible posters that were saying a Vaccine wouldn’t be possible this time last year. I’m sure I’ll get a yellow card for my opinion… if the mods can actually navigate around the new site.

It may look level to you, to me it's creeping back up. I can't see how you can see it's been level for a couple of weeks. That's 14 days, right?

Jaysus some people on here get real arsy passed midnight.

How many would be acceptable to you ? Is it too high at the moment ? Another lockdown ? Zero covid ? Its easy to tell a poster he is wrong and selfish etc without saying anything yourself .

The floor is yours .

At the time of the 3rd lockdown, we had 491 in hospital and 42 in ICU.

More important than raw numbers is the growth rate. At that date, hospital numbers were growing by 10-15% per day and ICU numbers about 15-20%, per day. ICU numbers had doubled in a week.

Right now, hospital numbers are growing by 3% per day and ICU numbers growing about 2% per day. It's growth, but it's not getting away from us.

That's the difference.

It was all pretty chaotic. We went at the start of December from "Things are open now, be safe", to, "OK, things are getting bad, be sensible please", to "OK, we're fucked, but you can all stay open until Xmas Day is over" then to, "OK, it's 27th December, Xmas is over and we're shutting everything down for at least two weeks".

Looking at the data there's three times the daily cases there was around a month ago, hospital and ICU numbers are creeping up. It is too early to determine if numbers will continue to increase or whether we have reached a steady state.

Our healthcare system is best placed to identify the effect current rates of admission and discharge will have on their capacity taking all factors into account.

Similarly epidemiologists can factor infectivity of the different strains,% people vaccinated, rate of vaccination, effect of vaccination on hospitalisation rates and ICU rates, etc. to model the number of mild, moderate, severe cases etc.

It's not just hospitals that need to be considered. Third level, secondary, primary schools and pre schools are all opening . If there's an outbreak in a school that can effect parents ability to work.

I'd prefer to do something once and do it right than take one step forward and two steps backward, yo-yoing out and in of restrictions which would be more disruptive on society and business.

We've seen the effect a few weeks either way can have on the progress of the epidemic. If the experts advise a cautious approach I'd accept their advice. I wouldn't let my impatience overrule common sense for the sake of a few weeks.

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Hospital numbers have risen 9 to 217, but still 31 in ICU.

I dont think you understand . Things are as good as they are going to get now . You have to get on with things . Nothing is going away

If you are so anxious as to be afraid of going into pubs or restaurants, then dont!

But just because you feel uncomfortable about it doesnt mean the whole country should bend over backwards and stop living their lives just to make you feel better - if you're at risk get vaccinated. After that just live your life - or stay indoors forever. But dont tell the rest of us how to live ours.

And yet with your obvious abundance of intelligence, you still managed to end up as a close contact.

Well done you.