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

hellhunter said:
Not to be pedantic but Spain also doesn't border Belgium :D
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Got lost in the paragraph - of course meant France! Bordering both of those countries with varying case rates and varying vaccination rates that don’t fit the correlation.

@Rektsanwalt agreed I wouldn’t call Poland and co. Eastern Europe, they’re straight up central for me, but I was just sticking with 11101’s definitions to avoid regional pedantry. Failed miserably there!
 
Rektsanwalt said:
Also, I don't think - geographically speaking - that Germany has any borders with eastern europe. czech republic, Poland and Austria aren't in my books.
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Of course Czech Republic and Poland are Eastern Europe, it is mainly a geopolitical term, not only a geographic.
 
massi83 said:
Of course Czech Republic and Poland are Eastern Europe, it is mainly a geopolitical term, not only a geographic.
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There's many different understandings of said term and obviously there's the rather historical connotation becaues of the cold war. Most approaches I read about while googling don't include czech republic and poland, though, which I feel like is appropriate in 2021. But to each their own, I just wanted to share my opinion as a german that saying germany has borders to eastern europe feels antiquated.
 
massi83 said:
Given that Belgium has more cases and more people in ICU per capita than Germany, then obviously they are not sruggling due to Germany.
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Maybe I should say “parts of Germany” seeing as it’s an extremely diverse country in terms of how this pandemic is/was being handled. That’s been one of their biggest challenges, it’s been impossible to get a consistent approach in every region. The trend of higher cases as you traverse Europe, west to east is fairly fecking obvious anyway.
 
Brwned said:
Yeah sure, you could do that, if you ignore the likes of Belgium having the same level of vaccine uptake but a completely different case rate. I’m not sure why you would do that but no doubt we can create some contrived explanation for the difference that once again paints Italy in a wonderful light. And when Italy experiences an increase in cases at some other time we’ll no doubt have a whole new explanation for why that’s not really the point. Rinse and repeat.
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Like I said, I don't know enough about Belgium or the Benelux countries to comment. I do know there's a pretty high correlation across the rest of Europe between vaccine uptake/lack of anti-vaxxers, level of restrictions, and deaths. And yes Italy is one of a few countries coming out well in that. Its almost like this virus should be taken seriously.
 
11101 said:
Like I said, I don't know enough about Belgium or the Benelux countries to comment. I do know there's a pretty high correlation across the rest of Europe between vaccine uptake/lack of anti-vaxxers, level of restrictions, and deaths. And yes Italy is one of a few countries coming out well in that. Its almost like this virus should be taken seriously.
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When you compare the strictness of our lockdown with the British one, it's like night and day.
 
What is going on in Ireland ? Cases are one of the highest in Europe, I thought there was a high level of vaccination there. Is this impacting the health system or is it just high cases with lower serious illness because of vaccines?
 
djembatheking said:
What is going on in Ireland ? Cases are one of the highest in Europe, I thought there was a high level of vaccination there. Is this impacting the health system or is it just high cases with lower serious illness because of vaccines?
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Very high level of vaccination so hospitals less stressed than they would be otherwise. This many cases 12 months ago would have completely overwhelmed hospitals/ICU’s. Still a shit show though. We have major hospitals already cutting back to essential services only. And thousands of HCWs off sick (only boosted in last week, should have been done two weeks ago IMO)

Hard to know why case numbers take off so quickly in Ireland. Same thing happened at around this time last year. Obviously doesn’t help that cases also extremely high in UK (with loads of cross border travel) but there has to be something else going on, unique to us, that means cases skyrocket every time we take the brakes off. It makes it incredibly difficult to open up when things get out of hand so quickly. My personal theory is that we rely too heavily on poorly ventilated boozers for our social life.

Tagging @Massive Spanner because this sort of insane rise in cases is exactly why I have more sympathy with the reluctance to open up that he’s found annoying in the past.

I think we need to boost the whole population pronto. We just seem unable to keep on top of community transmission by any other means.
 
Pogue Mahone said:
Very high level of vaccination so hospitals less stressed than they would be otherwise. This many cases 12 months ago would have completely overwhelmed hospitals/ICU’s.

Hard to know why case numbers take off so quickly in Ireland. Same thing happened at around this time last year. Obviously doesn’t help that cases also extremely high in UK (with loads of cross border travel) but there has to be something else going on, unique to us, that means cases skyrocket every time we take the breaks off. It makes it incredibly difficult to open up when things get out of hand so quickly. My personal theory is that we rely so heavily on poorly ventilated boozers for our social life.

Tagging @Massive Spanner because this sort of insane rise in cases is exactly why I have more sympathy with the reluctance to open up that he’s found annoying in the past.
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I wouldn’t just blame the pubs but they obviously do play a part. We socialise here in a very different way than most other countries, that much is apparent. I also weirdly think our incredible vaccination rates have gone against us in some ways because we just assumed they were a silver bullet as a result and people haven’t been taking care like they used to. It’s largely been a big shit show.

the schools are a massive contributor too, though, despite constantly being told over and over that they’re not. I work with people with kids who have said that most parents at the schools are basically resigned to getting Covid from their kid at some point.

I’m hoping they’ll reintroduce WFH and power through until the winter is over then but new restrictions wouldn’t surprise me :(
 
Massive Spanner said:
I wouldn’t just blame the pubs but they obviously do play a part. We socialise here in a very different way than most other countries, that much is apparent. I also weirdly think our incredible vaccination rates have gone against us in some ways because we just assumed they were a silver bullet as a result and people haven’t been taking care like they used to. It’s largely been a big shit show.

the schools are a massive contributor too, though, despite constantly being told over and over that they’re not. I work with people with kids who have said that most parents at the schools are basically resigned to getting Covid from their kid at some point.

I’m hoping they’ll reintroduce WFH and power through until the winter is over then but new restrictions wouldn’t surprise me :(
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The schools don’t explain why cases are taking off here way worse than most other places. They’re an issue everywhere. If anything, our schools should be less of an issue as we’ve been ahead of the curve on getting 12-18 year olds vaccinated.

If I was a betting man I’d go with WFH/power through. But it will be touch and go.
 
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Pogue Mahone said:
The schools don’t explain why cases are taking off here way worse than most other places. They’re an issue everywhere. If anything, our schools should be less of an issue as we’ve been ahead of the curve on getting 12-18 year olds vaccinated.
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But they're not less of an issue. They are a massive contributor. I never said they are the explanation as to why we are such an outlier (yet again), but whenever our cases do spiral, the schools are open and we always get pedalled some shit that they aren't a big part of the problem when they clearly are. You constantly told me on here that the schools were not a big a problem!

Anyway I don't really know why you tagged me. My problem has never been reintroducing restrictions when they are necessary, it's keeping them in place when they're not and opening too late. The whole point of this incredibly slow opening vs almost every other european country was to not have to reimpose restrictions so if they do happen again, that slow opening seems really fecking pointless.
 
Massive Spanner said:
But they're not less of an issue. They are a massive contributor. I never said they are the explanation as to why we are such an outlier (yet again), but whenever our cases do spiral, the schools are open and we always get pedalled some shit that they aren't a big part of the problem when they clearly are. You constantly told me on here that the schools were not a big a problem!

Anyway I don't really know why you tagged me. My problem has never been reintroducing restrictions when they are necessary, it's keeping them in place when they're not and opening too late. The whole point of this incredibly slow opening vs almost every other european country was to not have to reimpose restrictions so if they do happen again, that slow opening seems really fecking pointless.
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But that’s exactly my point. For some reason I can’t quite work out (and I’m sure NPHET are baffled too) every time we ease off the breaks, covid takes off like a runaway train. Accelerating far more dramatically than almost any country you can think of. So that’s why they’re so nervous about opening up and why we stayed in lockdown so much longer. There’s something unique to our situation here that justified what seems like an overly cautious approach. That’s the point I made to you in the past and our exponential increase right now (despite excellent vaccine uptake) endorses all the caution to date. Imagine where we’d be right now if we’d opened up even earlier?!

Re the schools. They opened up months ago and we’re only really taking off now. Plus half term didn’t make a jot of difference. If anything that coincided with an acceleration in our cases. All of which confirms they’re not the main driver here.
 
Pogue Mahone said:
But that’s exactly my point. For some reason I can’t quite work out (and I’m sure NPHET are baffled too) every time we ease off the breaks, covid takes off like a runaway train. Accelerating far more dramatically than almost any country you can think of. So that’s why they’re so nervous about opening up and why we stayed in lockdown so much longer. There’s something unique to our situation here that justified what seems like an overly cautious approach. That’s the point I made to you in the past and our exponential increase right now (despite excellent vaccine uptake) endorses all the caution to date. Imagine where we’d be right now if we’d opened up even earlier?!

Re the schools. They opened up months ago and we’re only really taking off now. Plus half term didn’t make a jot of difference. If anything that coincided with an acceleration in our cases. All of which confirms they’re not the main driver here.
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Eh, probably where we'll be in a month regardless? Not sure what your point is.

I never said they're the main driver, why do you keep at that? I'm saying they clearly play a big part in our overall caseload. There's obviously a myriad of other factors at play but you and many others tried to claim they were practically irrelevant whenever they opened up in the past which is clearly nonsense. My best guess is that the schools being open by themselves wasn't a massive issue but now a combination of schools being open combined with the teachers and parents of those children being able to fully socialize again as well as the kids being able to do loads of shit outside school has made them a bit of a covid gathering ground. Pretty much everyone I know with kids has been getting them and their kids covid tests in recent weeks due to outbreaks in their schools.

Like I said, I dunno why you tagged me. I agree, we're a massive outlier, probably because of how we socialize, it sucks, we'll probably need to reintroduce restrictions, but I hope we can keep schools, pubs etc. open in some capacity and power through. Let's see.
 
Pogue Mahone said:
Austria’s going to go with an “unvaccinated lockdown”. If you’re not vaccinated you can’t leave your home. Even as someone who’s in favour of mandates for people with certain jobs this seems draconian to me.
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My understanding was that it was not quite that extreme: you can leave to go to work, for instance.
 
So with Ireland (and presumably other countries too) talking about bringing back some measures, despite having a massive percentage of the population vaccinated, it makes me wonder what more we can do to stop this? In previous lockdowns, it was waiting for a vaccine to be produced and then it was waiting for said vaccine to be given to enough people, but now what is it? What's the next thing that we need to change to bring the numbers down long-term (without lockdowns)?

I'm not against more restrictions if that's what needs to be done. I'm just wondering what is next on the horizon to help against this. I can't really think of anything?
 
I'm on day 8 here and things are easing up am much more awake and not so tired. Got a little cough now which is a bit of a nuisance that's all.

All I can say is fortunately the vaccine has helped keep me safe from the worst of it please get it if you have any doubts.
 
The Cat said:
I'm on day 8 here and things are easing up am much more awake and not so tired. Got a little cough now which is a bit of a nuisance that's all.

All I can say is fortunately the vaccine has helped keep me safe from the worst of it please get it if you have any doubts.
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Glad things sound like they're heading the right way.
 
BD said:
I'm not against more restrictions if that's what needs to be done. I'm just wondering what is next on the horizon to help against this. I can't really think of anything?
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People still can’t deal with the inevitability of it all.
It’s either, save the outrageous sums of money lockdowns cost and spend it instead on hospitals, doctors and nurses etc, and crack on, else keep doing this shite forever, swimming against the tide.
It takes how many months just to vaccinate 80-90% of adults in a country? Then the protection varies depending on the individual so some are still protected, whilst other aren’t and rich countries are boosting whilst poorer haven’t had enough first dose; there’s simply never going to be a single moment in time when 95-100% of the World is all vaccinated at the same point.
This is here to stay, and needs to be lived with, forever. Restrictions forever sounds like a wank way to live.
 
BD said:
So with Ireland (and presumably other countries too) talking about bringing back some measures, despite having a massive percentage of the population vaccinated, it makes me wonder what more we can do to stop this? In previous lockdowns, it was waiting for a vaccine to be produced and then it was waiting for said vaccine to be given to enough people, but now what is it? What's the next thing that we need to change to bring the numbers down long-term (without lockdowns)?

I'm not against more restrictions if that's what needs to be done. I'm just wondering what is next on the horizon to help against this. I can't really think of anything?
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It'll always be about not overwhelming the health service. It doesn't seem likely it'll happen this time due to our vaccination rates. Hospital and ICU numbers are still far lower than January, so any restrictions put in place should be far less disruptive. Bringing back WFH was always a logical approach, for example. I also think the government hedged all their bets on the vaccine being a silver bullet with their extremely cautious approach to reopening until we got high enough rates and now that it looks like it's not quite as effective as they hoped, they will probably try to power through and keep the economy functioning as opposed to avoiding any sort of strain on the health system or excess deaths, basically find a reasonable middle ground.

They really need to fecking embrace antigen testing though, the eejits.
 
@Pogue Mahone

my own thoughts on ireland is that the antivirus wanes at 6 months, quicker than expected. Now with close contacts being done away with in schools, public transport being rammed with people, people being forced to come back into offices when the pandemic is clearly taking off again and people thinking 2 vaccines is enough, we’ve reached a point where the big wigs are scratching their heads. For me, boosters should have been rolled out at 6 months automatically to everyone that got vaxxed. Now I know parents at school who aren’t going to take a booster because they are pissed off with pubs being closed at midnight. I was told that by someone today, the same parent took her child to a leisure facility when they were waiting on a Covid result. The power is in the general publics hands but most are showing a lack of common sense.

on a work related point, I’m job hunting now, remote only. I’ve noticed that there is more more in office jobs and less remote now. I got turned down recently for managing a call centre because I refused to work only in the call centre. A job I’ve done remotely without any issues at all.

it’s like business and individuals have decided it doesn’t exist anymore. I’d like to see a public forum between business and health officials plus government. We need legislation to not force people into city centres If they don’t want too and bring in those who do
 
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golden_blunder said:
@Pogue Mahone

my own thoughts on ireland is that the antivirus wanes at 6 months, quicker than expected. Now with close contacts being done away with in schools, public transport being rammed with people, people being forced to come back into offices when the pandemic is clearly taking off again and people thinking 2 vaccines is enough, we’ve reached a point where the big wigs are scratching their heads. For me, boosters should have been rolled out at 6 months automatically to everyone that got vaxxed. Now I know parents at school who aren’t going to take a booster because they are pissed off with pubs being closed at midnight. I was told that by someone today, the same parent took her child to a leisure facility when they were waiting on a Covid result. The power is in the general publics hands but most are showing a lack of common sense.

on a work related point, I’m job hunting now, remote only. I’ve noticed that there is more more in office jobs and less remote now. I got turned down recently for managing a call centre because I refused to work only in the call centre. A job I’ve done remotely without any issues at all.

it’s like business and individuals have decided it doesn’t exist anymore. I’d like to see a public forum between business and health officials plus government. We need legislation to not force people into city centres If they don’t want too and bring in those who do
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I definitely think we should be firing out boosters asap. We’re more or less on track for that now though.

80+ and younger clinically vulnerable done. 70+ being down this week. And so on. I got my second jab at the end of June so wouldn’t be due a booster until late December.

I am a bit worried about how we can roll out boosters as quickly as the original jabs with so many vaccine centres closed (Aviva now being used for rugby, football etc) If we’re to hit the 6 months post second jab target for everyone we need to roll out the boosters as quickly as we did the original vaccines. Which will be difficult.

The really bad cock up with boosters already was leaving it so long to boost HCWs. I’ve a load of doctor friends that went down with covid the week before they were (finally) due to get boosted, 7 or 8 months after their first course. Needless to say they’re fecking hopping mad.
 
Here in Germany, they closed down 5000 ICU beds since last year. Now we have "code red" and additional measurements (testing required to enter certain places even when vaccinated) based on 3000 ICU covid patients in a rich 83 million country. The absurdity. Of course the pandemic will never end when 350 Covid patients in 18 million Nordrhein-Westfalen apparently collapse the healthcare system.
 
Pogue Mahone said:
I definitely think we should be firing out boosters asap. We’re more or less on track for that now though.

80+ and younger clinically vulnerable done. 70+ being down this week. And so on. I got my second jab at the end of June so wouldn’t be due a booster until late December.

I am a bit worried about how we can roll out boosters as quickly as the original jabs with so many vaccine centres closed (Aviva now being used for rugby, football etc) If we’re to hit the 6 months post second jab target for everyone we need to roll out the boosters as quickly as we did the original vaccines. Which will be difficult.

The really bad cock up with boosters already was leaving it so long to boost HCWs. I’ve a load of doctor friends that went down with covid the week before they were (finally) due to get boosted, 7 or 8 months after their first course. Needless to say they’re fecking hopping mad.
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Then the next question will be how long are boosters effective?

we’re in our 7th month now after 2nd vax so I’m curious how long it will take.

and yeah, boosters for HCWs shouldve been done and dusted weeks ago. No brainer
 
golden_blunder said:
Then the next question will be how long are boosters effective?

we’re in our 7th month now after 2nd vax so I’m curious how long it will take.

and yeah, boosters for HCWs shouldve been done and dusted weeks ago. No brainer
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Hopefully a very long time. They’ve been proven to generate a much more robust immune response than the second dose anyway. As @jojojo posted in a tweet above. Even pushing out the second dose by a few weeks (which they did in the UK/Canada) delays waning, so waiting a full 6 months for a booster could give a very long duration of action.

There are other vaccines which need boosters a long time apart. Whooping cough vaccine (along with tetanus/diptheria) is given as a few doses close together to babies, then again aged 5-6 and again aged 12-13 and that’s it for the rest of your life.
 
They should of reopened the country much earlier in August or September, waiting to it actually starts getting cold and when the vaccines start to wane was always going to be a clusterfeck. If you have the people a break from the restrictions like the UK has it would be more easier to take more restrictions.
 
christy87 said:
They should of reopened the country much earlier in August or September, waiting to it actually starts getting cold and when the vaccines start to wane was always going to be a clusterfeck. If you have the people a break from the restrictions like the UK has it would be more easier to take more restrictions.
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I don’t think that’s true. Going backwards sucks just as bad no matter how long the “freedom” beforehand lasts. If anything it would be worse the longer and more used you’ve got to living without any restrictions.

The midnight curfew is a bad idea though. Just pushes everyone onto the streets at the same time. Plus clubs and late night bars have put a lot of effort into setting up procedures around contact tracing and vaccine cert checks. They’ll be a much safer environment than the alternative, which is thousands of house parties.
 
Pogue Mahone said:
Hopefully a very long time. They’ve been proven to generate a much more robust immune response than the second dose anyway. As @jojojo posted in a tweet above. Even pushing out the second dose by a few weeks (which they did in the UK/Canada) delays waning, so waiting a full 6 months for a booster could give a very long duration of action.

There are other vaccines which need boosters a long time apart. Whooping cough vaccine (along with tetanus/diptheria) is given as a few doses close together to babies, then again aged 5-6 and again aged 12-13 and that’s it for the rest of your life.
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Well fingers crossed we’re talking about boosters every few years at worst
 
Pogue Mahone said:
I don’t think that’s true. Going backwards sucks just as bad no matter how long the “freedom” beforehand lasts. If anything it would be worse the longer and more used you’ve got to living without any restrictions.

The midnight curfew is a bad idea though. Just pushes everyone onto the streets at the same time. Plus clubs and late night bars have put a lot of effort into setting up procedures around contact tracing and vaccine cert checks. They’ll be a much safer environment than the alternative, which is thousands of house parties.
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Honestly, the border could start doing that. I was surprised that I had more checks in bars than I did coming across on the plane.
 
F-Red said:
Honestly, the border could start doing that. I was surprised that I had more checks in bars than I did coming across on the plane.
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The border is basically non-existent. Nobody even checked my ID the last time I got off a plane at Heathrow, never mind a vaccine cert. For better or worse, the Uk and Ireland is a single region when it comes to this pandemic.
 
A couple of things on boosters.

Looking at early data from the UK rollout. Summary: anyone who's eligible should get one!


Also, first studies from Israel on how long the boosters work for are looking encouraging:
 
christy87 said:
They should of reopened the country much earlier in August or September, waiting to it actually starts getting cold and when the vaccines start to wane was always going to be a clusterfeck. If you have the people a break from the restrictions like the UK has it would be more easier to take more restrictions.
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The UK effectively reopened in May, there were some controls until July but they didn't have a big impact on household mixing and mobility.

In doing that, it took a gamble and it has cost lives. I suspect we could have done better - for example, if we'd given vaccines to the over 12s earlier and done that part of the rollout faster - but we could have done worse, and personally I sympathised with the JCVI reasoning on that. Vaccine waning was faster than the UK anticipated - so booster ramp-up and detailed preparations for the most vulnerable groups were a bit late too.

If the boosters go out quickly enough, if the uptake is high enough, and they prove to be as effective as we hope, then basically the UK will rumble through winter now. Case rates will stay high (though should start falling in the vaccinated and in some areas where past infection levels are high) but if the vaccines reduce hospitalisations and deaths - I doubt anyone will care.

For Ireland and the rest of Europe, it may be too late for that UK style gamble, it may already have been too late in September - given that Ireland had lower rates of past infection. The risk now is that you'll end up with your highest case rates at the worst time - that they'll peak in the run up to Christmas and hospitals will be packed even before the flu season kicks in.
 
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