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

I am going for a walk now but will avoid shops . Yeh it changed last week to 5 days isolation if fully vaccinated .

Agreed. This thread used to be an interesting forum for discussion. You could get valuable information and insights. However, a few notable exceptions aside, it's now awash with WUMs, conspiracy theorists and posters with obvious political agendas.

Things seem to be looking a lot more positive. In fairness Omicron only appeared on 24 November so it’s understandable they want to give it a few more weeks. It certainly seems to be a lot milder. With hospitalisations down and the boosters being ramped up let’s hope we have a more normal 2022.

We also have anti virals on the way. I’m hoping restrictions are eased in mid-late January. Maybe we’ll fully open in spring for summer and then a better vaccine might be available before next winter. Maybe it’s so mild that only immuno compromised and elderly may have to take the vaccine and anti virals can be used for everyone else.

9200 positive swabs on 37,700 tests.

Two record-breaking numbers there.

The HSE reckon we could hit 20,000 at the peak, which means we're only a week away from peaking really, at most.

FYI; The daily case numbers over Xmas are just going to be the positive swabs. The HSE won't have the data validation capacity during the break and want to avoid the same stuff last year where a huge backlog built up.

Why did they lead with the ludicrous worst case figures? What is the probability of the worst case happening? 1 in 100, 1 in 10000, 1 in 10?

Why does nobody ask that fool nolan what the most likely expected figures are and use that as the headline?

Economists don't tell us that "worst case inflation could be ten billion percent" they give us a forecast of what they *actually* reasonably believe inflation will be.

It's only with covid where public health advisors are allowed make ludicrous unchallenged forecasts and media prints them like they are plausible outcomes.

Its positive news as more of population are will be protected by serious illness - why would that make you so angry?

The peak is more likely to occur in mid to late January if we are being honest.

The effects of Christmas gatherings, the sheer amount of travel associated with Christmas (particularly from the diaspora) and New Years celebrations will see infections jump for at least a couple of weeks after the 1st of Jan.

Yeah perhaps. Omicron builds much faster though. Any Xmas socialising we'd expect to cause a peak very early in January. It doesn't take weeks to build up waves like previous variants did.

It peaks high but it also peaks quickly.

Exactly. 10000 positive swabs today could be as many as 20000 cases, because we will be missing lots of cases with testing under pressure. At that level of infection, it's pretty inevitable it will burn out quickly. I'm afraid it's not going to be pretty, hospitals will be under severe pressure even if Omicron is a bit milder. But it will be short lived.

It’s hard to see any new variants coming along that will be significantly more transmissible than Omicron, after this peak I really think we will start seeing the end game of this thing.

But then again if we have learned anything over the last 2 years, it is how unpredictable this virus has been, so I guess nothing can be taken for granted for a good while yet.

Discuss away. Just be prepared for a contrary point of view.

Exactly. 987 cases on 22nd December 2020. 7800+ on 6th Jan 2021. Absolutely phenomenal growth. The 6th January 2022 could be very different to today.

SA looks to have reached a peak, no signs of a peak yet in the UK or Denmark though.

So SA looks to be the outlier.

9,000 cases.

Is contact tracing even bothered still going, what's the point?

Remember when we had 5 cases and opened back up and there was an outbreak in a meat plant and we all thought contact tracing had it under control😀

18 months later and 9,000 cases!!!

No controlling this thing through lockdowns etc