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

This fella is famously an ectotherm...

Vaccines do not create immunity.

they never have.

particularly as re-infection is now a possibility “immunity” is not something we can achieve.

we can look to have a large amount of people who will not get very sick. That is the aim

How far behind are we of London/Uk

How long after Wed did you start to feel the worst?

Their cases took off mid-December so about 2 weeks behind.

Sorry if this has been asked a million times and I'm even more sorry if it starts a huge row, but just wondering why it is said that Covid cert is needed to dine/drink indoors?

Apologies if this sounds cheeky (I'm asking a question and then dictating how I want it answered 🙈) but I'm not asking to open an argument. It's just I was asked by someone and I didn't really know what to say.

I said that I thought that it was introduced at the start when they thought being vaccinated stopped you transmitting, but I had no explanation as to why it is still needed now.

The simple answer is that all restrictions are about keeping the hospitalisation count down so the health service can keep functioning. The unvaccinated are disproportionately represented in those hospital beds (despite only being 5% of adults) so the passes keep them away from some (not all) locations where transmission is high risk, reduces their infection rate and thus reduces the numbers being hospitalised (there seems to be an exponential effect as the vax rate in a country drops, the hospitalisation rate goes up).

And again, vaccines do reduce transmission and reduce infection rates, they don't eliminate transmission or infection.

The current restrictions came in before Omicron, if we had 20,000 cases/day with Delta we'd be back in full lockdown by now as the hospitalisation rate per case with Delta was much higher. The restrictions will likely stay as is until they figure out, reliably (Christmas makes a lot of the data unreliable) what the new hospitalisation rate is and then either increase or reduce restrictions accordingly (hoping they drop the 8PM rule first). The schools will also open and then it will be 2 weeks of waiting for the data on the reopening to become available.

We'll also have new hospital treatments available in the coming weeks (Paxlovid) that should reduce hospitalisation length substantially and reducing the numbers needing ICU (early reading suggests that the pills need to be given in a hospital environment and the patient monitored, it's also contra-indicated for a few conditions such as those on blood thinners).

You could be right, I may be mixing up the risks and those that need to be monitored:

Pfizer Covid pills for Covid symptoms may be risky with other drugs. (nbcnews.com)

Interesting that Paxlovid is a treatment using two drugs:

Would be great if hospitalisation wasn't needed, but that would imply GP's prescribing it.

edit: it's a 30 tablet regime, so it's likely to be taken at home, also needs early diagnosis (5 days from symptoms) to be effective

I think that may well happen this year. Covid numbers never dropped down into double digits at any point in 2021, so they may well have to devise a system that means 'living with Covid' and accepting that there will be hundreds of new cases every day.

You mean like the way most European countries handled things in summer 2021?

Our boys running this show for covid are really the slowest boys in the class. A year later might decide to actually live with covid, like mask usage months behind the curve, antigen testing months behind the curve, easing restrictions months behind the curve etc etc.

Or maybe they're focusing on the real underlying story behind it all

Because, before the vaccine rollout a lot of deaths would have occurred unnecessarily, i.e. people that have been just fine being infected after being vaccinated, since the vaccine rollout completed (August for Ireland), it switched to opening up while keeping hospitalisation counts low. Even the UK followed this pattern, opening up once the rollout was done and being in lockdown before that (even though they had nightingale hospitals setup, they never really used them).

Now, in Ireland two things drove policy, an "abundance of caution" and a desire not to roll back on restrictions (i.e. once it was gone it was gone forever), it's turned out that the second was impractical (all countries have re-implemented restrictions) and our caution just meant delaying the inevitable till the worst time of the year (Winter), I think if it was communicated that we'd open up but add restrictions if hospitalisations rose (understanding that this needs to be done at least 2 weeks out, so the usual crowd would wail about it either way), we could have had more freedom, more infections when we could handle them and probably not need as much restrictions now.

But public mood supports restrictions, all political parties support the current plan with arguments usually being about giving more money away or going zero-COVID on the far left fringes (which I think really means a police state controlling who can come in and out as a precursor to a socialist utopia).

The EMA has issued advice already on Paxlovid meaning that NIAC can approve ahead of EU wide approval (I'm sure NIAC will drag the arse out of it though and we'll get it last anyway).

I was wondering why it is said the cert is needed.

I don't think anyone from government would have said this