I think you have to look at two things separately, the rate of admissions to hospitals/ICUs and the nursing home deaths. By the first metric the system has not been overloaded and restrictions should be eased as those numbers start to come down. By restrictions being eased I mean most people going back to work, not opening pubs or allowing larger gatherings just yet.
The nursing home deaths will sadly continue for a while, as absolutely no measures were put in place to protect those places from rampant infection.
generally agreed. I don’t think they’ll have the confidence to go for it if the deaths continue to double weekly by the end of the current restrictions, regardless of the ICU numbers, that will skew their thinking. i think FG and HSE are bought in to a very cautions footing now.
Absolutely, you’ve been solid on this since the beginning, you’ve proverbially put your head where most lads wouldn’t put their studs over many weeks, admirable in the extreme whether you agree or not. Disappointing to see you accused of flip flopping, you’ll come out of this with much credit no matter the outcomes,
If the deaths in hospitals continue to double for the next 3 weeks to May 5th, then the measures taken will have been a complete failure, as no flattening of the curve will be evident. I would hope measures are in place to stop new infection hot spots in nursing homes, but would be pessimistic about those numbers for a while yet considering the scale of infections up to now.
it’s very hard to know where you’re at with the 5-14 day asymptomatic period, added to that the 14-28 day (or more) treatment to outcome for severe cases. Throw in the testing lag and you can clearly see why we’re being more cautious. This three weeks are huge, if wee see a drop off in severe cases and hospital deaths then it will be clear the measures have been effective. The nursing home situation is disastrous, i suppose a lot will depend on how quickly policy can be put in place to effectively nullify the spread of infection in care homes, the more people that are out and about, the more difficult that is.
The deaths we have are total, including nursing homes.
Not quite sure what the curve on hospitals are. I see on the 10th, 156 of the 288 who had died were in nursing homes. I believe it is 187 of 406 now, which would suggest the rate is increasing more there.
Finally. Someone who can expand his field of vision out to look at other pertinent variables. Reading back over some of the shit that was posted this afternoon is depressing. Deaths, death rates, more death numbers, etc. Are people simply unable to analyze more than one variable at a time? Yes, look at death numbers, but also look at variables such as age, underlying illness, environment, pollution, hospital factors,…
I know, and that increase is to be expected. The rate of mortality in a nursing home would be far higher than the general population, the highest you would expect really. I would imagine that’s what Leo meant in terms of expecting higher numbers in the near term.
Which is nonsensical if true, given that patients in nursing homes are the most vulnerable, and should have been the first to be protected. Then again this is the organization tasked with preventing pandemics who objected to travel restrictions.
I don’t know the source of the information Tim provided. Given that data it looks like the deaths in hospitals is heading towards a weekly doubling as well
Holohan said yesterday it was 187 from nursing homes and another 35 in residential care units. On further reading, isn’t clear how many of those were in hospitals.
