Since sheâs lost the weight sheâs unreal to god
Also talks of ICU numbers going up or remaining steady.
Is it possible they are just using up the capacity as it becomes available? They were treating other people with some higher level of care, but not technically in ICU. Iâd imagine as ICU frees up those people are being rotated in.
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It should be. As should the Unherd article which explored how they have hired PR hotshots and are deliberately trying to manipulate dates and outcomes that they know are unrealistic.
Most of the media are too stupid tbh. One example would be the border zones and county by county thing they bring up. Aside from the fact that they would not work in practice, nobody has asked TomĂĄs Ryan why border countries should live differently to the rest of the South for months on end. Their take is that we can buffer the virus from the north by them- but how could they ever get out of a lockdown? One of his things was that âschools arenât safeâ and they should be opened county by county. But what happens to the kids in those counties? Would they ever see a classroom again? How is it ethical to put forward a policy like that when you canât answer that?
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It should be an indicator alone but itâs value is limited given the delay in data. The Zoe Group in the U.K. have been the best at predicting trends as they are not using PCR tests results that are a week+ behind infections.
Similarly, they are OBSESSED with mobility data and ATM withdrawals as we saw at the weekend. 10 years ago this wouldnât have happened., they would have just told people to stay outdoors if possible.
Or do they see something coming down the track and know weâll have cases through the roof again ? So it will be like January and people will accept the lockdown as cases so high âŚ
I heard Varadkar interview on Newstalk and he managed to say something similar without contradicting himself miraculously enough. He did mention R number off the bat as one of the key metrics. Iâm not sure how robust or reliable this calculation is but if its anything like the numerical reasoning below maybe they need to refresh the excel formulas or see if there are any hidden rows.
He mentioned hospitalisations will need to be < 50 and cases < 150.
By 5th April I donât think either of them are achievable. We may get down to around 250 - 300 cases a day by then but we are in diminishing marginal returns with case numbers now (Similar to where we were at start of December albeit at near peak respiratory illness season). The hope is that vaccinations will cut into hospitalisations and seasonality will play a big part too. Given that 48% of hospitalisations are under 65 it maybe only the case that will come later. 55-64 age bracket are the 4th last grouping to be vaccinated according to their roadmap which will hopefully be before end of Q2. The fact that most healthcare and residential carers have been vaccinated along with occupants will also lead to a significant easing in case numbers.
We have nearly 3.5 million tests carried out to date. You would be hoping we are reaching critical mass state with that. Over 200,000 people with natural immunity and an ever increasing number of people being vaccinated. Youâve got to think the end is nearly in sight.
Paul Moynagh (an immunologist) was interviewed before Varadkar and thought our plan was too conservative. It was good to hear an alternative voice and thought more could be done to give back to people.
What I would worry about is 2 things. Firstly Ciara Kelly put it to Varadkar that NPHET are running the country. He did not refute these claims and just what it means in the future remains to be seen. Our government seem completely impotent now.
Secondly he didnât rule out possibility of a 4th lockdown once next November and December roll around again. There seems to be no acceptance or tolerance of any semblance of risk. Someday people may have to come to grasp the nettle and accept this is something we need to live alongside like any other virus or disease and one that evolves. Just what that would mean for the health service that is always in chaos is deeply concerning. A tipping point of 1% would be bad enough but if there are still 5 -15% of people exposed to getting sick even with a vaccine plans need to be made to now. Surely the cost of doing so would be nothing compared to rolling lockdowns.
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I heard Niall Collins use the phrase âthe new variants are a virus within a virus.â
I thought he was talking about the current Fianna FĂĄil / fianna gael government for a minute.
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Iâd agree with pretty much all of that and I donât have much to say in defence of the government, but on two things there: Now is not the time for wresting back control from NPHET, or to talk about it, the government know this and have to bide their time. The other one is ruling out another lockdown, they can say we donât want one, and they should. But given how many twists there have been in this yet it would be silly to rule out another lockdown, thereâs still a lot that could go wrong. I do agree they should be a lot more positive and optimistic in their messaging though.
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ICU is always at or near capacity. Itâs a waste of resources otherwise.
Now having said that if itâs full of Covid patients then people who come in with heart attacks may not get access to it that ideally they would.
I think HSE are spooked as itâs in hospitals and just like with MRSA they are shite at managing in hospital infections. Youâd hope once all hospital staff are vaccinated the cases fall away fairly quickly.
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Is there anything to said for letting it sweep through society and gaining herd immunity, as it were
Yeah I agree. I dont think now is the time to be sparring with NPHET. I think once a critical mass are vaccinated I hope we can cut the rope there. Timing is everything. I think just like politicians public antipathy will build with NPHET from them merely being on the screen everyday relaying pessimistic messaging. It doesnât seem to matter if cases are 6000, 600 or 60 a day the messaging is always the same and hopefully people will see through that. When they do the variants will pop up but there are so many of them its literally whack a mole stuff and people will get bored of that too.
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I would say itâs likely over 750k with immunity right now.
I donât think itâs a coincidence that US cases are tumbling. They have a lot of natural immunity (maybe 30%) and with 13% with one jab they are approaching herd immunity.
We probably have had half the number of cases they have had generally so will need 20% to see a similar dent in cases.
Yeah I thought it would be around 600,000 myself so not a million miles off you but impossible to prove without T cell testing so left it out.
Are you sure about that?
Most of them catch it in hospital thoughâŚhopefully getting the doctors, nurses, porters etc vaccinated will help with this.
A negative R number would be great. People actively going round curing each other
A spreader of low viral loads who infects others only to the level where they are asympomatic is effectively giving others a level of immunity.
The follow up to that will be âyouâre not curing people fast enough!â
This was sent to âAll Staffâ in our workplace today with the subject âPositive Newsâ.
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Trying to generate Google Ad revenue for Newstalk 