SARS CoV-2 coronavirus / Covid-19 (No tin foil hat silliness please)

Rajma said:
Sorry I’m not really following Ireland related Covid news but are you saying that you guys still haven’t fully opened up yet since vaccinations have began? Must be frustrating.
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Not fully opened up but life is pretty normal. Still need vaccine passports to go to restaurants (not often enforced) and some restrictions around large gatherings which doesn’t affect many people.
 
Massive Spanner said:
Is it a surprise? Our rubbish healthcare can't cope in winter even without Covid. The government have shown they will do whatever it takes to not expose it for the shitshow they have helped it become.

I'm still optimistic we will lift restrictions and that this is mostly scare mongering and trying to gauge public opinion.
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I disagree, whatever you think of the healthcare is irrelevant. Covid cases are going up almost everywhere and its due to opening up too much too soon. Also a lack of mandatory vaccine.
 
Massive Spanner said:
Is it a surprise? Our rubbish healthcare can't cope in winter even without Covid. The government have shown they will do whatever it takes to not expose it for the shitshow they have helped it become.

I'm still optimistic we will lift restrictions and that this is mostly scare mongering and trying to gauge public opinion.
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I wouldn’t disagree that our healthcare service is pretty shitty but when it comes to uncontrolled exponential growth the difference between a shitty service being overwhelmed and best in the world ending up just as screwed is only a matter of a few weeks.

That’s why improving the healthcare service has never been a way to get through the pandemic. It’s something we should be working on regardless and it’s good that the pandemic has made this even more of a priority but it’s just not possible to build a heath service so good that we can completely ignore covid. I’m hopeful that the vaccination roll-out has been good enough that we won’t get the crazy explosion of cases we got this time last year. Or anything even close to that. But you can see why the people calling the shots have squeaky bums right now.
 
Pogue Mahone said:
Not fully opened up but life is pretty normal. Still need vaccine passports to go to restaurants (not often enforced) and some restrictions around large gatherings which doesn’t affect many people.
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I see, anyway I don’t think there’s much sense to any further restrictions when you see in real-time what sort of positive impact booster shots are having on the delta spread. Countries should just focus on the roll out of those 3rd shots as quickly as possible to the most vulnerable groups.
 
Rajma said:
I see, anyway I don’t think there’s much sense to any further restrictions when you see in real-time what sort of positive impact booster shots are having on the delta spread. Countries should just focus on the roll out of those 3rd shots as quickly as possible to the most vulnerable groups.
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Yeah, we’ve started on 80+ and immune suppressed. I’d like to see us crack on all the way down to aged 60 before the weather gets properly shit and everyone is indoors all day and night.
 
Stanley Road said:
I disagree, whatever you think of the healthcare is irrelevant. Covid cases are going up almost everywhere and its due to opening up too much too soon. Also a lack of mandatory vaccine.
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We have 92% of over 12s fully vaccinated in Ireland so I really don't know what on time is if that's still too soon.
Pogue Mahone said:
I wouldn’t disagree that our healthcare service is pretty shitty but when it comes to uncontrolled exponential growth the difference between a shitty service being overwhelmed and best in the world ending up just as screwed is only a matter of a few weeks.

That’s why improving the healthcare service has never been a way to get through the pandemic. It’s something we should be working on regardless and it’s good that the pandemic has made this even more of a priority but it’s just not possible to build a heath service so good that we can completely ignore covid. I’m hopeful that the vaccination roll-out has been good enough that we won’t get the crazy explosion of cases we got this time last year. Or anything even close to that. But you can see why the people calling the shots have squeaky bums right now.
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I don't disagree with any of that. It is horribly depressing to have vaccination rates like ours and still potentially be in a position where we can't lift restrictions fully. Somewhat predictable, though.
 
Massive Spanner said:
We have 92% of over 12s fully vaccinated in Ireland so I really don't know what on time is if that's still too soon.

I don't disagree with any of that. It is horribly depressing to have vaccination rates like ours and still potentially be in a position where we can't lift restrictions fully. Somewhat predictable, though.
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Yeah it’s shite. Cases on the up everywhere. In other highly vaccinated countries too. Much less bad than it would have been without such a high take-up. Still shite though. Delta is such a fecking cnut. I’m fine with current restrictions through the winter, if that’s what it takes. Disappointing all the same.
 
Pogue Mahone said:
Yeah it’s shite. Cases on the up everywhere. In other highly vaccinated countries too. Much less bad than it would have been without such a high take-up. Still shite though. Delta is such a fecking cnut. I’m fine with current restrictions through the winter, if that’s what it takes. Disappointing all the same.
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I'm a bit of a pessimist and sort of thought that was always going to happen. Not the end of the world, it would be nice to not have to do table service at the pub but other than that it's not so bad. I do think the government cocked up though by encouraging people to go back to offices on Sept 18th while other establishments still haven't opened at all in 18 months. The missus is on the train again cause roads are too busy and she said it's pretty full up again.
 
Massive Spanner said:
I'm a bit pessimist and sort of thought that was always going to happen. Not the end of the world, it would be nice to not have to do table service at the pub but other than that it's not so bad. I do think the government cocked up by encouraging people to go back to offices on Sept 18th while other establishments still haven't opened at all in 18 months.
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The thing I think they really fecked up on was the decision to stop contact tracing in schools. I didn’t understand the rationale and primary schools are the one and only indoor space where 90%+ of people are unvaccinated. It might be a coincidence that cases stopped decreasing and started increasing within a week of that decision but it doesn’t look good.
 
Pogue Mahone said:
The thing I think they really fecked up on was the decision to stop contact tracing in schools. I didn’t understand the rationale and primary schools are the one and only indoor space where 90%+ of people are unvaccinated. It might be a coincidence that cases stopped decreasing and started increasing within a week of that decision but it doesn’t look good.
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My understanding was that they simply couldn't handle the caseload and that's why it stopped but maybe I'm wrong?
 
Massive Spanner said:
My understanding was that they simply couldn't handle the caseload and that's why it stopped but maybe I'm wrong?
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I don’t think so. My understanding was that they thought testing and asking asymptomatic primary school kids to self-isolate was too disruptive when they don’t get very sick and don’t cause many community outbreaks. I’m not even sure the kids are driving this but each time they relax surveillance like that it sends a signal to be a bit more relaxed about covid in general. With predictable results.
 
Pogue Mahone said:
I don’t think so. My understanding was that they thought testing and asking asymptomatic primary school kids to self-isolate was too disruptive when they don’t get very sick and don’t cause many community outbreaks. I’m not even sure the kids are driving this but each time they relax surveillance like that it sends a signal to be a bit more relaxed about covid in general. With predictable results.
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See, I told you it was the kids and schools! I joke.
 
Massive Spanner said:
See, I told you it was the kids and schools! I joke.
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Hehe. Hoist by my own petard!

It’s weird though. Cases fell for several weeks after schools reopened. Which is the exact opposite of what you’d expect if schoolkids were driving transmission.

Yet anecdotally I know an absolute shit-load of cases happening in primary school kids. Every parent does. The timing of this recent increase is hard to explain. If kids driving spread why no increase much earlier in the school term? Why only an increase this last week? Has anything changed other than stopping primary school contacts isolating? Maybe more people back in offices? My office opened up exactly two weeks before this mini-surge. If other offices opened around the same time that might be contributing.
 
Pogue Mahone said:
Hehe. Hoist by my own petard!

It’s weird though. Cases fell for several weeks after schools reopened. Which is the exact opposite of what you’d expect if schoolkids were driving transmission.

Yet anecdotally I know an absolute shit-load of cases happening in primary school kids. Every parent does. The timing of this recent increase is hard to explain. If kids driving spread why no increase much earlier in the school term? Why only an increase this last week? Has anything changed other than stopping primary school contacts isolating? Maybe more people back in offices? My office opened up exactly two weeks before this mini-surge. If other offices opened around the same time that might be contributing.
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The 18th was only the guideline for offices. I know a lot only had tiny trial periods then and have been steadily ramping up since. Trains have also increased numbers week on week, assuming other forms of transport too. Then you have universities, schools etc. It's shitty timing that the reopening coincided with all this and coming into winter, I guess.

The problem is that people are saying to keep current restrictions til January which is all well and good til you realise that January and February are the coldest fecking months in Ireland!
 
Pogue Mahone said:
Hehe. Hoist by my own petard!

It’s weird though. Cases fell for several weeks after schools reopened. Which is the exact opposite of what you’d expect if schoolkids were driving transmission.

Yet anecdotally I know an absolute shit-load of cases happening in primary school kids. Every parent does. The timing of this recent increase is hard to explain. If kids driving spread why no increase much earlier in the school term? Why only an increase this last week? Has anything changed other than stopping primary school contacts isolating? Maybe more people back in offices? My office opened up exactly two weeks before this mini-surge. If other offices opened around the same time that might be contributing.
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You've made me so happy using that quote correctly.
 
Looks like at least some of those odd - LFT says positive, PCR says negative - test results are related to problems at one of the testing labs (where the PCR samples get sent). Tests done between 3rd and 12th October in some parts of the country may be affected.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-58921280.amp

More details, to follow later today apparently.
 
jojojo said:
Looks like at least some of those odd - LFT says positive, PCR says negative - test results are related to problems at one of the testing labs (where the PCR samples get sent). Tests done between 3rd and 12th October in some parts of the country may be affected.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-58921280.amp

More details, to follow later today apparently.
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It gets worse - looks like the PCR problem affected tests between 8th September and 12th October.

From what I've read so far, it seems to be tests done at local testing centres in some parts of the country - in particular Berkshire and to the west.

UK public health are estimating 43,000 positives were missed on PCR. Hopefully the people with symptoms stayed home despite the positive PCR. More likely they took the result literally and went back to work/school/uni and round to their gran's as normal.

I suspect we'll see a guidance change about how seriously to take a LFT positive.
 
Today is the first day where the Covid Pass is required to go to work in Italy. There had been a lot of fears in the news that there would be mass protests but so far there is nothing, a few small gatherings here and there but not enough to disrupt anything. As a country we're up to 85% vaccinated and many of the regions are well over 90% so i guess there's just not enough people against the vaccine.
 
looks like we are heading into another winter of restrictions - because of the cnuts that wont get a vaccine it would appear
 
Pogue Mahone said:
He has a point. With cases as high as they are in the UK we were always going to be dragged along with them. Which is not to say we don’t have issues of our own to deal with but still…
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I bet it was some DUP heads sent undercover to cough everywhere down here. Germ warfare
 
Dumbstar said:
Damn. Are these Russian numbers? Then you probably need to double it?
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If The Economist is right then undercounting in Russia runs very high. Comparing excess deaths to official covid deaths prior to July 31 2021, they reported 155k covid deaths, but had 652k excess death in the same period.

As a comparison, most European countries are within a few percent on official covid deaths to excess deaths.

https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/coronavirus-excess-deaths-tracker
 
I see that cases are on the rise again, consistently over 40k and, even more worryingly, the hospitalisations heading towards 1k per day, even before flu season.

This winter is going to be brutal!
 
Jericholyte2 said:
I see that cases are on the rise again, consistently over 40k and, even more worryingly, the hospitalisations heading towards 1k per day, even before flu season.

This winter is going to be brutal!
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Hospital rates are slightly worrying but deaths compared to ever rising infection rates are really encouraging. Still under 200 a day at peak times of the week.

Shows the vaccines have done their job so lock down in any form is not required. The stats will sort themselves out when the anti vaxxers tired of this life have run out of it. Those that can't take the vaccines but would like to will require very special care and isolation. Hospital admissions too should reduce as a result.
 
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