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

The booster isn't part of the COVID-pass system.

Countries have been consistently extending their use and bringing them back in (e.g. the UK), unless there is some sort of groupthink going on, the reasons I outlined (reduce impact on healthcare systems) are the factual reasons they are still in use. The coercion aspect is long finished in Ireland and was never the primary reason (otherwise we'd have stopped them after hitting a certain %).

If Omicron mildness is a verified reality, I can see it being dropped sooner.

All countries are seeing pressure on the testing system, blaming the passes for it in Ireland is a bit disingenuous.

We didn't stop them at a certain % because the cases never dropped as low as was hoped.

We're talking about deaths here, if someone as you described felt it was 'pointless' to get a vaccine and they account for 35% of deaths (not my figures, they are the OP figures) it was hardly pointless for the to get vaccinated! In fact it most likely could have saved their life?

So unless Covid is the number 1 cause of deaths in Ireland you don't care?

Do you not think that in those who have died and were unvaccinated because it was pointless for them to get vaccinated is a little silly?

The fact if they got vaccinated they most likely would have lived is pointless?

Now let's try that graph again , but with ICU cases and deaths .....

And the England/NI/Wales/Scotland comparison. It was a comparison graph after all. Don't forget the ICU also.

You can actually read quite a bit into the data already.

The Alpha case peak in Ireland was on the 10th of January with 1,310 cases per million per day on the 7 day average. The Alpha hospitalisation peak was on the 18th of January with 2,020 in hospital. So about 8 days from peak cases to peak hospitalisations. ICU's peaked on January 24th at 221, so about 12 days after peak cases.

8 days ago we had 1,359 cases per million (almost identical to the Alpha peak) on the 7 day average and today we have 656 in hospital. So a drop by a factor of 3 in hospitalisations vs cases. Its actually probably much better than that though because this year we moved straight from a Delta wave which persisted right until Omicron took off, so a lot of the hospitalisation is lingering from the early to mid December Delta wave. In December 2020 we went from almost zero covid at 60 cases per million on the 7 day average before Alpha took off so the hospitalisations were almost entirely from the late December early January Alpha wave. Obviously vaccination is going to be driving a lot of the reduction so its hard to draw a conclusion on the scale of the reduced virulence of Omicron. Unfortunately I do think it's too early to draw any conclusion on ICU's as 12 days ago the Omicron wave was really in its early stages.

The Delta peak is actually very interesting, hospitalisations peaked on the 22nd of Nov at 685 but cases kept rising until early December where they dropped slightly and flattened at a high rate of about 925 per million per day until Omicron took off. However hospitalisations fall off a cliff in late November as the boosters took effect. That makes it very difficult to compare the Delta wave hospitalisations to the current wave as Delta was characterised by waning vaccine immunity in the most vulnerable which was quickly negated by boosters, which began to be rolled out to this cohort in late October. Omicron, in terms of cases, is raging through a highly boosted population. However, real back of the paper maths here, Delta peaked at 980 cases per million on the 7 day average on the 5th of December with most of the vulnerable boosted, 8 days later there were 518 people in hospital. Thats about 1.89 cases per million per day for every hospitalisation vs a 2.07 number for Omicron. Obviously the higher the number of cases it takes to get a hospitalisation the better. This doesn't account for the backlog of hospitalisations in the drawn out delta wave but also doesn't account for the complete overwhelming of the testing system during the Omicron wave which means case number are far higher than reported.

Whats clear is that there has been a serious drop in the severity of covid compared to this time last year, you are at least 3 times less likely to end up in hospital if you are diagnosed with covid now vs in Jan 2021. Its likely Omicron is less severe than Delta but we actually don't really know how severe Delta was as it peaked during a booster campaign which seriously muted its hospitalisation rate. I actually have a lot of sympathy for the government trying to make a call on this, my feeling is that we'll be able to ride this out as we are now and then be able to relax restrictions in late January, id hate to be the one making the decision on it though. One worrying note was Holohan's estimate of 30k real cases when our confirmed cases were 20k and our positivity rate was 50%. Thats an insanely low estimate! I'd love to know where that number came from!

Red line indicates beginning of our severest wave . Cumulative . Not the same graph as LOTT posted from , and NOT referring to vaccinations ( he referred to exponential growth despite restrictions)

And the graph I was looking at was a graph showing exponential growth of the most infectious but currently mildest variant so far in Ireland and UK despite restrictions , and that has managed to evade our vaccinations for infection BUT NOT serious disease or death so far . Unlike the other variants .

Hence my post about deaths and ICU cases with this current surge .

That was my point to LOTT which you have missed again .

Great post, in a nutshell !

Why? To drag things out?