Mehole canvassing in Slatterys Pub this evening. The first brave thing heās done all year
The other effect the whole time too is the level of vaccinations which is dynamic both in terms of % population but also the risk level mitigated.
While the UK is a good test case there are a couple of differences; namely most of their vaccine is AZ (which seems to be have lesser effectiveness) and also they pursued a single vaccination approach.
It is utterly frustrating that more detail on the modelling isnāt available. The range of scenarios that were presented were so wide in range as to be next to useless. Itās also unclear why modelling info was presented so late in the day - thereās no reason that near on continuous scenario planning couldnāt be going on the whole time - everything seems very unnecessarily rushed and quite opaque (deliberately so?)
No matter your views on the appropriateness of the outcome - the whole process is near on dysfunctional with plenty of blame to be shared between the politicians and NPHET in that regard imho.
3 Likes
They should have known about the data.
They should have picked them up on the real grenade which was the demand for vaccine passports, when NPHET never asked for them before.
Martin is lily-livered though and seems to think that by just saying you are considering NPHET advice that you are holding off their super fans and the media. At some point you have to act in your own interest and be ruthless. Iād be out there saying āokay we can live with the full vaccination idea, but why did you wait until now to ask for it. This is costing X number of jobs and Xm to the economy. You arenāt doing your jobs as advisors telling us this nowā. The Varadkar show and Christmas has them scared, but people move on quickly. I donāt think they satisfied anyone today.
3 Likes
Lots of details on the hospitalisation model were made available last Autumn.
They were miles below their optimistic scenario. All because Nolan thought they were picking up 1 in 3 cases at the peak last year and thought they were getting 80% last Autumn.
I believe a half finished model was published elsewhere.
You can disagree all you want but you are wrong. Look at the winter waves for all norther hemisphere countries, regardless of what type of lockdown was in place they look similar. Itās an airborne virus so of course itās going to spread more indoors with poor ventilation, and of course itās going to spread more the more people get together. Why do you think Luke OāNeill was advising people to put granddad next to an open window for Christmas dinner?
The reality is once a certain level of vaccination was accomplished in every western country, a lot of people said fuck it and started to change their behavior. The increase in cases has not driven a significant increase in hospitalizations and death rates are very low. Ideally all young people would either get vaccinated or infected, so they have built immunity before winter when undoubtedly there will be another wave.
1 Like
Thereās no reasonable basis for keeping every aspect of the model (up to and including code) secret - this has no commercial implications etc.
The only reason I can imagine to do it is to save the blushes of Nolan and his crew. Considering what is at stake I donāt consider that an acceptable reason at all.
What would probably happen if published is that all aspects of the model ( methodology, inputs etc) would be examined by a variety of interests and no doubt many aspects would be criticised and debated heavily.
For example itās entirely possible the models are not pessimistic enough, Iām sure the Zero Covid team and Anthony Staines (whoās already commented on the lack of epidemiological modelling expertise on NPHET !!) would have their views as would others, or maybe theyāre too pessimistic or too simplistic or whatever.
Either way it would lead to more informed debate and I canāt for the life of me see why it would be a bad thing.
4 Likes
Teachers on leave of absence wouldnāt have much experience in running meetings. Amateur hour.
2 Likes
I suspect a lot of Nolanās contemporaries would love a chance to review the rational behinds Nolanās modelling and stick the boot into Philly.
1 Like
Itās bizarre how lacking in street smarts Donnelly and Mealymouth Martin are.
3 Likes
Not a screed of wideness between them.
Young people to be left on the outside looking in as nation gets partitioned
Taoiseach MicheƔl Martin, TƔnaiste Leo Varadkar and Green Party leader Eamon Ryan. Stephen Collins /Collins Photos Dublin
June 29 2021 07:02 PM
āIām all right, Vax.ā
Itās just not Irish, is it, this concept of devil take the hindmost ā one pub or restaurant customer pushing past those excluded to gain an elite interior.
The velvet rope, an emblem of elsewhere.
Not us, equal citizens of a free Republic, classless, with respect for one another.
But now Irelandās leaders are actively trying to bring back an ascendancy. In an ironic opposite perspective, it seems to mark the most depressing depth of this pandemic.
Their motives are laudable, of course ā they are trying to save hospitality along with the hospitals.
Thus the idea that pubs and restaurants will open indoors at some stage of the summer, but only for the fully-vaccinated and the immune.
Young people, in particular, already without prospect of owning their own homes, will be either outside the feast or serving at it. SlƔinte indeed.
You can see why it sticks in the craw.
Read More
- Dr Tony Holohanās letter to Government before decision: August will be worst month for exponential rise in Delta variant
- Amy Molloy: Cabinetās delayed reopening disrespects young people and hospitality sector
- Explainer: Everything you need to know about Cabinetās reopening plan delays
MicheĆ”l Martin and Leo Varadkar looked deeply uncomfortable and uneasy as they faced a press conference, although Eamon Ryan ā concerned, of course ā was too loftily occupied to exhibit any obvious signs of unhappiness.
He at one point referred to the pandemic as āthis abnormal periodā.
Thousands of deaths by September, if the worst comes to the worst. āA wave as severe as any to date,ā said Leo.
Hundreds and hundreds of thousands yearning for freedom. Tens of thousands of businesses depending on it.
Itās the very definition of a political no-win situation. And the halfway-house solution is to split Irish society down the middle.
Partition. Some inside the tent, or bar or restaurant, and others outside.
An attempt to work out how it will operate, in conjunction with stakeholders, this half-thought plan of the haves and have-nots. And it certainly will have knots.
Would there be fines in the case of sneak-ins?
The Taoiseach admitted frankly: āThat has not entered our consciousness at all.ā But perhaps it should have done, if managers are not to abruptly abandon playing policeman.
A voice sweetly pointed out a New York Times report on how Covid passports didnāt work in Israel. Publicans and restaurateurs asked to see them for a week, then stopped bothering.
āI see the apparent contradiction, of course I do,ā said MicheĆ”l at one point, over a vision of young unjabbed waiters working the room for hours, but unable to have a meal or a pint on their day off in the very same premises.
But then he also spoke of the Governmentās āconsistent approachā so far, which now happens to involve an agreed policy of radical inconsistency.
So this dreaded announcement was not a case of Groundhog Day. It was not even a no-beer variant that might be called Drowned-Grog Day, although it brutally ended the hopes of all wet pubs.
Instead it was Good Groundhog, Bad Groundhog Day, discriminating between citizens in the face of a virus that discriminates between none.
We even heard āherd immunityā.
A journalist asked (paraphrasing here) whether members of the elect, the anointed ones, would have to wear laminated ID cards (although he might as well have called them Willie Wonka golden tickets)?
Leo and MicheĆ”l had the common-or-garden Irish decency to more or less squirm. They didnāt directly answer.
Eamon made his excuses and left. He had to take Leadersā Questions in the DĆ”il in order to insist the Government was doing all it can on the housing crisis.
Things are at a pretty pass when the man from RTĆ points out that nobody from Nphet tapped the Government on the shoulder to mention that their fond hopes for July 5 would be dealt a Delta blow.
Was the relationship between advisers and advised not clearly dysfunctional?
Leo had the good grace to swallow awkwardly. āI canāt answer that questionā¦ā God knows what he might say if he did. āThis virus likes to surprise us. (It was the virusās fault) to rip up our plans, and it has done it again.ā
Would he characterise the relationship between the Government and Nphet as working well?
āYes,ā said Leo, his eyes, expression and demeanour screaming something else.
Donnelly is a lifelong gonk but youād imagine that Martin learned something on the mean streets of Nemo.
2 Likes
117 people have died from the Delta variant since 1 February in the UK.
NPHET model is 2170 deaths from 1 July to end September.
4 Likes
AZ is a good vaccine. It might not be quite on the level of Pfizer, but it is night and day compared to the Chinese or Russian ones. The UK have 48% of the entire population (as opposed to adults) fully vaccinated now.
Modelling is by nature a guess. Nobody can come up with exact figures, they canāt predict the future with certainty. They can only predict trends and these trends will depend on different variables of human behaviour. Modelling can only say, āif you open the pubs, the number of cases is likely to go up, and probably by a lot, in a short period of time.ā The UK is the only real case study we have of the Delta variant invading a population and we see what itās doing to cases.
What we need to do is wait to see how it affects hospitalisations and what it does to those hospitalised by it. The early evidence is reasonably encouraging on this score. But then we also need to wait and see how the UKās case load progresses, especially if they do open up fully, and see what happens then.
There is dysfunction because there are so many conflicting opinions. I think hystericism has steadily gripped public debate on Covid, especially online. Thereās so much information and so much bickering that people are genuinely losing the plot, they feel paralysed inside. It has become a culture war thing and thatās tragic. Online especially is driving the debate and the most hysterical debate is to be found online. Itās extremely hard to navigate online debate, most people arenāt equipped to do it, and they crave simplicity and certainty. I genuinely think a lot of people in Government have been scouring online debate since the start of the pandemic and this is paralysing them.
Christmas wasnāt pessimistic enough. I recall being surprised about how low they thought the cases would go, though to them catastrophe was 1,000 cases a day when it was really north of 5,000. We can glean Nolanās thought process from his tweets and the hospitalisation model, that they put a lot of faith in the antibody study last year despite it clearly being very flawed. It appeared at the time that it was simply being used as a plug by them as they needed something to use for their model.
The best study that was done was in nursing homes last summer, which showed far more prevalence of the virus that the surveillance suggested.
Their best efforts at modelling actually came last Spring. They likely locked down a few days too early based on what the strategy was then.
I will disagree.
To address a couple of those points.
-
Yes AZ is a good vaccine but as you accept it is not at the same level as Pfizer (look, weāre already agreeing). Iād like to know has that been incorporated into the thinking. If not, why not
-
Again I agree that modelling is a guess. As I said yāday all models are wrong but some models are useful. For that reason itās even more important that the details are laid out because otherwise they are a black box which naturally attracts suspicion. NPHET are naturally conservative and would appear keen to put forward the best case possible to extend restrictions. A fear in such a situation (for any organisation) is that the modelling falls into line with the needs of the organisation.
-
On the basis of your point of waiting to see how things go elsewhere (while assuming the potential worst), then itās hard not to conclude weāll never have sufficient information to make anything other than an ultra-conservative decision. I think the point McConkey raised during the week about needing to have a reasoned debate about risk directly feeds into that line of thinking
-
I donāt disagree with your point about strong debate online and elsewhere but thatās not the point I was making. My point was that the mechanics of making very very big national decisions like this is bonkers. Thereās not a chance that an annual budget would work whereby the Dept of Finance dropped off a letter with projections and recommendations (including an utter U-turn recommendation contrary to all previous gov policy) at 9.30pm in advance of a meeting which decided which path to take. Thatās even before you get into the advisors advise and politicians decide quagmire. Itās just dysfunctional and is completely separate to the online rows.
12 Likes
NPHET donāt have one model, they have four. Your figure there is the worst case scenario. NPHET are ethically bound to give a worst case scenario model. Otherwise thereās no point in modelling at all.
There are considerations other than deaths too. The long term health of people who contract Covid, especially this variant and especially the unvaccinated, who will tend to be younger. Mass spread would be a mass experiment on the children of the country. The health service. And the ethical obligation in a worldwide pandemic to not enable mass spread for the hell of it, given that variants tend to emerge from places with mass spread. The rest of the world is going to be fighting this long after weāve returned to something approaching normality.
Itās a fucking joke. Vaccine passports are a decision that in time will seep into all aspects of Irish society. They canāt just agree to that in a few hours because NPHET have suddenly recommended it, having never mentioned it before. It has to be debated, the societal pros and cons discussed and the alternatives explored. I might support vaccine passports but not just in a kneejerk fashion because Tony Holohan has been keeping them up his sleeve like a secret ace he had planned.
Another factor to consider is the ethical grounds thatbthey expressly said that wanted to avoid an apartheid society, if that apartheid involved young people going to pubs and old people staying home.
4 Likes
It is absolutely insane.
I donāt think the letter was even delivered by 9.30 was it? This in itself it mental. I donāt think thereās any justification for this. Work all weekend, do your work on time.
The letter was delivered so late that the committee NPHET is supposed to report to was cut out of the process. You can rest assured they circumvented that on purpose.
Then you get to the content of it. Why are they dropping bombshells? Government should not be getting surprises in memos, itās basic stuff, they should know well whatās in them before they get them. This is a complete breakdown in the relationship, itās entirely dysfunctional.
This is not the first time NPHET has actively tried to bounce the government into a decision either.
5 Likes