@glasagusban objected to the notion that Paddy couldnāt be trusted to self test. So did @Heyyoubehindthebushes.
Itās all there.
Who is Paddy?
And I stand by it. You will have bad eggs bit you have to trust people
96% against hospitalization I believe is the answer here.
Yes thatās what I had assumed too. Which isnāt very comforting.
I thought the vaccines would basically allow us to get the virus with minimal damage ā¦which would then eventually lead to herd immunity ? Iām no scientist ā¦
It is actually.
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The problem with Delta is it seems to be reinfecting people who have already had Covid. Vaccines are great because even if you catch Covid itās highly unlikely it will kill you. My understanding is that if you are hospitalised the stay is likely to be shorter. But if itās really that transmissible, in a situation where we open up for real, thatās a mass spread environment. If it hospitalises 4% of people who get it, thatās a hell of a lot of people, and the autumn isnāt that far away.
All these questions provide great levels of uncertainty. The problem as I see it as that the OIUTF brigade have always traded on certainty and predictability, which is simply wrong.
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It really isnāt. 4% of the population is 200k.
I beg your pardon Fagan but since you seem to understand this, doesnāt 96% protection from hospitalizations mean that you take the existing hospitalization figure of, say hypothetically, 2% and reduce that by a further 96%? I dont think that means 4% of infections go to hospital but perhaps you might correct me.
Ah you have me all ends up,
But Iām happy to double/triple whatever you want yourself
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You are an honourable man in this regard tbf.
My understanding is that in Ireland currently, the hospitalisations to cases ratio is around 2%.
I believe this is expected to go down to around 1% when the vaccine has been more comprehensively or fully rolled out.
However Iām sure I read that current hospitalisations to cases ratio in England is somwhere around 4%, presumably because the Delta variant is now dominant there.
Is this Andrew Flood the renowned anarchist?
Iād never heard of him before Covid but I think you might be right about him being an anarchist, Irish anarchists generally being about as anarchist as you are.
His Twitter page is also one of the most informative aggregators of information on Covid for an Irish context and Iāve found his analysis to be consistently excellent over the last year and a bit.
Iād prefer the Lancet to be honest.
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Simple mathematics helps. If we vaccinated a population of 100 000 and protected 95% of them, that would leave 5000 individuals diseased over 3 months, which is almost the current overall COVID-19 case rate in the UK. Rather, a 95% vaccine efficacy means that instead of 1000 COVID-19 cases in a population of 100 000 without vaccine (from the placebo arm of the abovementioned trials, approximately 1% would be ill with COVID-19 and 99% would not) we would expect 50 cases (99Ā·95% of the population is disease-free, at least for 3 months).
Thanks
The shift in mood can be traced back to Chief Medical Officer Dr Tony Holohan tweeting last Monday about a āconcerning increase in transmissionā of Delta in Ireland. But there have been other signals as well.
Dr Mary Favier, the former president of the Irish College of GPs and a member of Nphet, told RTĆās Today with Claire Byrne on Tuesday that delaying the reopening of indoor dining for two to three weeks ācould make all the differenceā.
Dr Favier popped up again on Morning Ireland on Thursday with the same message. Nphet appeared to be on manoeuvres. āWeāve seen this movie before,ā a Government insider texted on Tuesday.
āThere is an air of writing on the wall,ā said a senior coalition figure. āBut itās too early to confirm anything.ā
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One senior minister half-jokingly remarked: āMaybe I should resign from the DĆ”il and go on Nphet.ā That same minister said they would ultimately follow whatever Nphet advises, and therein lies the difference between now and last year.āThe ghost of Christmas is still hanging over the whole thing,ā said another senior minister this weekend.
The Taoiseach was clear in a round of interviews to mark the one-year anniversary of the Government last week that public health advice would be followed.
āYeah, I think thereās been a consistency of approach in terms of our relationship with Nphet in recent times, by and large, overall,ā MicheĆ”l Martin told me in his office on Tuesday evening.
Across Government, there is mostly an acceptance ā albeit a reluctant one ā that if the advice is to pause, there will be a pause. One insider described the caution in Government Buildings, both from the Taoiseach and his top civil servant Martin Fraser, as āoverwhelmingā.
It should be noted that Dr Favierās view is not shared by all members of Nphet, some of whom question the merits of delaying two to three weeks when the Delta variantās transmissibility will likely lead to a spike in cases anyway and there will still be a large number of under-50s unvaccinated.
There has been no informal steer from public health officials at this stage as they carry out modelling on what impact a surge in Delta variant-related cases would have on hospitalisations and ICU admissions. Many of the decisions taken around restrictions since March last year, including locking down and unlocking, have been based on the projected impact of a surge in case numbers on the hospital system and whether it would collapse or not.
At his parliamentary party meeting on Wednesday, Fine Gael leader and TĆ”naiste Leo Varadkar encountered strong resistance from backbenchers to delaying the next phase of reopening. Many highlighted how low hospitalisations and ICU admissions are at the minute ā 38 and 13 respectively as of last Friday morning. āThere would be a big reluctance in parts of Fine Gael to delay this,ā a minister said after the meeting. āThere will be a pushback in the parliamentary party.ā
Mr Varadkar is understood to share some of these concerns, but he made the point to his party that just because these two metrics are low does not mean the Government should proceed with reopening and wait for them to start rising again. The actions taken now have an effect in 10 or 14 days, he pointed out. If cases suddenly rose dramatically in the next week or two, it would be too late to stop rising hospitalisations and ICU admissions.
This is what happened in December when the Government moved to shut the country down at Christmas ā but it was all too late to prevent the third wave. āThat is something that weighs on all of us in government,ā Mr Varadkar is said to have told colleagues. āIf youāre waiting until the ICU number hits 50, you can be sure it will hit 150.ā
Conversely, he and other ministers are said to be concerned about what happens at the end of that two to three-week period of delaying the reopening of indoor dining and increasing limits for larger gatherings, particularly if, as seems likely, case numbers are up anyway.
āThe concern I would have is that, really, is the situation going to have changed in two or three weeks if that is the intention to delay? Is it really gonna change that much? I am not convinced it will,ā the second senior minister said.