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

Speaking of ministers Foley has a meeting planned for Tuesday about it.

Schools depend on what the unions say I presume.

From RTE website to-day: "There are 682 people in hospital who have tested positive for the virus, a rise of 63 since yesterday. Of these, 86 are in ICU, down two".

Sorry if this has been raised before, but this implies that the 682 refers to patients with Covid, and not necessarily because of Covid. Given that the incidence of Covid is now quite high, there could be an awful lot of the 682 tin hospital for non-Covid reasons.

Did they reopen last January? I had in mind that they didn’t.

Foley's meeting on Tuesday was planned well before the surge, so can't really read anything into it.

It does give a chance for someone to pull the emergency brake though.

Cases numbers largely unchanged from yesterday, I guess we can assume ~50% positivity even though we've no swabs yet.

It's all going to be messed up now by the changes. Positivity rates of 80%+ are possible because most people presenting for PCR will have a positive antigen. Meaning that official case numbers might be 30k+ even if the actual level of infection in the community is unchanged.

So until mid-next week at the earliest we won't be able to really use the case numbers to tell us anything.

Unless they plateau or drop. Which seems very unlikely.

Do you think that many people will follow (or even know about) the "must have a positive antigen test" rule for PCR testing? It's not like it can be controlled in any way, so the people who need a test result for sick pay or any other reason will still go get a PCR test.

we can’t isolate in the house from the children. One is a newborn and other is in primary school so he obviously has to be fed and watered etc. Neither is showing symptoms. With each new variant you do worry if that variant will be worse for children then the previous strain.

If Covid wanes then Long Covid will be willed into existence. If Snake Oil can't manufacture the data then they'll wheel out their Behavioural Scientist Brit with one of his surveys explaining that the Irish people have Long Covid-PTSD. Us uneducated plebs may instead suspect that what we have is just a perfectly rational depression after ridiculously harsh economic/mental lockdowns. The likes of Pat Kenny, Eamon Dunphy, Brendan O'Connor et al will be able to explain to us why we're wrong. They will get lots of ad spend from govmt and pharma cos to assist with these non-stop public service health announcements and so ensure we remain completely docile (to our shame). 

It's funny how all the politicians, public health people and media talk about being scared of the virus but have never ever looked or acted scared. They have all greatly benefitted from Covid - they're up x% and we're down y% - so it's double-bubble for them ;-) This gravy train is going to pay for private schools for lots of grand children. HNY!

Possible we may be maxing out/peaking?

It's really 50-60k have it.

Thats 350-420k a week.

Thats another 10-12 weeks left max.

Hard to know really as we probably had pent up demand for tests combined with an unusual period of mixing.

I would expect we may have a period of high numbers for the next week and then see it drop. But then we will have schools back so that could keep things up there for a few more days.

But at some point, the virus will have infected a good chunk of the population (including the many who will not know they have it) and will indeed have maxed out properly. If hospital numbers stay calm, at that point we can look forward to a nicer spring.

excuse my mansplaining….

Even if that is the case, isn't there still the chance a new variant could emerge that could reinfect? Genuine question.

Would love to see omicron effectivly become another vaccine, but that's not guaranteed, is it?

we see in SA and Denmark cases m have peaked, people above are suggesting we may be seeing the peak here.

I don’t disagree but am just curious what stops the cases growing? Previously it was lockdowns. Without further restrictions (which I don’t want) why do they stop growing? Maybe in this case the new year reduces interactions anyway, but as people start meeting again and R is greater than 1, surely they just keep growing?