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

Conor said:
As someone who completely stopped paying attention to all this depressing shit once everyone was double jabbed, are the deaths/ICU admittance numbers going up along with infection numbers? I'm trying to understand why Ireland is going back into lockdown.
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Yes.

A hell of a lot less than they would be in an un-vaccinated population but they are increasing.

The other big problem now is in previous waves we basically shut down all non-covid healthcare services and we’re desperate to avoid having to do that again.

The third and final complication is that previous lockdowns wiped out almost all non-covid infections which eased the pressure on hospitals. But this time round, with society fully open, there’s a load of other illnesses (e.g. influenza) in the mix.
 
Conor said:
As someone who completely stopped paying attention to all this depressing shit once everyone was double jabbed, are the deaths/ICU admittance numbers going up along with infection numbers? I'm trying to understand why Ireland is going back into lockdown.
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In the UK, case rates have been high for weeks and hospital admissions and deaths have tracked them, but the vaccines have kept them below the levels we had when we had similar numbers of cases before:

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We're now expecting to see hospitalisations and deaths start to fall as booster rollout continues, there are hints of that already in the last week or so, but it's still early days for that to really make a difference here.

In Ireland, as Pogue says, ICU cases rose fast. Faster than the health service can handle. Realistically the only things that might reduce that case/hospitalisation link further in the immediate future are going to be boosters for the 6 month vaxxed risk groups and vaccines for the unvaxxed of any age.
 
Fecking grim watching this again. I knew Covid wasn't going anywhere soon but thought we were done with lockdowns at least.
 
Boss is in hospital with covid. Didn't get jabbed. Not really sure why, because he's not been anti anything really. Very considerate with WFH, following the rules etc.

But yeah, get vaccines people!
 
Big-Red said:
Boss is in hospital with covid. Didn't get jabbed. Not really sure why, because he's not been anti anything really. Very considerate with WFH, following the rules etc.

But yeah, get vaccines people!
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Even if he is being careful, kids are going to school, visitors, shopping etc. not hard to catch it this time of year. Anyone unvaxxed now out of choice is playing Russian roulette
 
Sparky Rhiwabon said:
Has the UK escaped because of being further ahead with its vaccine programme?
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That, and a higher threshold for avoidable deaths, and because more people got infected in the UK so more natural immunity. Not much of an escape really, they just had a different starting position once vaccines were ready. A much worse one than most countries, undoubtedly.
 
golden_blunder said:
Even if he is being careful, kids are going to school, visitors, shopping etc. not hard to catch it this time of year. Anyone unvaxxed now out of choice is playing Russian roulette
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That's it, think it was mainly vaccine anxiety rather than anti-vax combined with that "I'm being careful" mentality. But as it stands with the spread of covid there's only so safe you can be.
 
Sparky Rhiwabon said:
Has the UK escaped because of being further ahead with its vaccine programme?
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If anything, the early start to the UK vaccine programme should have made you more vulnerable to this current surge. Which is largely driven by the vaccine efficacy waning over time.

As @Brwned said, the very large previous waves in the UK have helped with population immunity plus this current wave started earlier in the UK than the rest of Europe. So it’s burning out (hopefully!) now while other European countries are only just getting started.
 
I read a little bit about side effects and will get my booster next week. I have a question for you guys, especially @Pogue Mahone

Some months ago when Israel reported major side effects (especially myocarditis), I did some digging becaues I was suspicious as this kind of side effect is something I am very eager to avoid if possible for obvious reasons. At the moment, I can't find anything to back it up, but I read that aspiration after pushing the needle into the muscle (to check if you hit a blood vessel) is an important test to reduce the risk for myocarditis. Is this any true? The theory behind it was that because of the pressure properties of our heart, the nanoparticles can enter and remain easily inside the heart, if you hit a vessel while injecting. Also, since more trained and fit people tend to have bigger and more vessels, especially male athletes, there's a higher chance to hit these vessels in the deltoid muslce.

So, does anybody know the current procedure to reduce myocarditis risk? I personally will ask my doctor to do an aspiration test before injecting the vaccine, since it can not do any harm but hurt a little bit more afterwards.
 
We are slowly but surely going into another full lockdown here in Austria. With only a 65% full immunisation rate, hesitant politicians and many, idiotic vaccination refusers and conspiracy theorists, our explosively rising infection rates were unfortunately to be expected. Meanwhile, intensive care beds are getting short again and triage has to be carried out in some places. We are currently the model country for how not to manage this crisis.
 
Pogue Mahone said:
On a side note, it’s interesting to see that Sweden doesn’t seem to be affected by the wave nearly as badly as Denmark or Norway.
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Do you have a good source on this? Genuinely interested, as it seems like the testing and reporting strategies are very different (at least for Denmark and Sweden, I don't know much about what the Noggies are doing).
 
Pogue Mahone said:
Having poo poo’d your weather theory yesterday (because Ireland’s having a mild autumn) it’s hard to ignore what the only countries swerving this spike (so far!) Spain, Italy, Portugal, Greece have in common.
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The last four winners of the Euro Championships.
 
Stanley Road said:
They're doing it right now though
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The lockdown you mean? Yeah but if intensive care beds had been increased, better information about the vaccination provided, compulsory vaccination introduced earlier in certain areas, the lockdown could have been prevented. But the government is not solely to blame. Unfortunately, we have an ultra-right party with many voters that spreads a lot of conspiracy theories, plus quite a few media outlets that fuel nonsense about the vaccination and the virus, and therefore a very low vaccination rate. The whole thing is a mess.
 
Godfather said:
The lockdown you mean? Yeah but if intensive care beds had been increased, better information about the vaccination provided, compulsory vaccination introduced earlier in certain areas, the lockdown could have been prevented. But the government is not solely to blame. Unfortunately, we have an ultra-right party with many voters that spreads a lot of conspiracy theories, plus quite a few media outlets that fuel nonsense about the vaccination and the virus, and therefore a very low vaccination rate. The whole thing is a mess.
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Someone called for me with my gif?

Do you need more ICU beds though considering the vaccination rate? What are the stats on hospital and ICU admissions?
Or is it another case of shitting the bed whilst the y axis is shooting up with regards to cases, in the belief it won’t naturally start to come back down again?

Considering the months it takes for any country to vaccinate a significant proportion of their population, it seems practically impossible for a country to ever reach close to 100% vaccinated at the same point in time. That was always the problem with a non sterilising vaccine.

Surely countries after 85% vaccinated, should simply be living with it, unless ICU is exploding.
 
Regulus Arcturus Black said:
Someone called for me with my gif?

Do you need more ICU beds though considering the vaccination rate? What are the stats on hospital and ICU admissions?
Or is it another case of shitting the bed whilst the y axis is shooting up with regards to cases, in the belief it won’t naturally start to come back down again?

Considering the months it takes for any country to vaccinate a significant proportion of their population, it seems practically impossible for a country to ever reach close to 100% vaccinated at the same point in time. That was always the problem with a non sterilising vaccine.

Surely countries after 85% vaccinated, should simply be living with it, unless ICU is exploding.
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Can only quote official dashboards here: https://covid19-dashboard.ages.at/dashboard_Hosp.html?l=en

33% of ICU beds are free (including emergency capacities) but:

24% are occupied by COVID patients. If the threshold value of 33% is exceeded, it is assumed that COVID-19 patients are in clear competition with other patients requiring ICU beds. So we are pretty close to that already. PLUS: We don't have enough care workers and those we have are extremely overworked and strained. So it's not looking that good.

And we are still far from a 85% vaccination rate. We are only at 65%.
 
Godfather said:
Can only quote official dashboards here: https://covid19-dashboard.ages.at/dashboard_Hosp.html?l=en

33% of ICU beds are free (including emergency capacities) but:

24% are occupied by COVID patients. If the threshold value of 33% is exceeded, it is assumed that COVID-19 patients are in clear competition with other patients requiring ICU beds. So we are pretty close to that already. PLUS: We don't have enough care workers and those we have are extremely overworked and strained. So it's not looking that good.

And we are still far from a 85% vaccination rate. We are only at 65%.
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Much more understandable then.
 
McGrathsipan said:
Does that mean the vaccines are not effective?
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Define effective?

If stopping people getting it, then no, but we knew that anyhow.

If stopping people getting seriously ill and hospitalised, then yes they are massively effective.
 
Stanley Road said:
They're doing it right now though
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Certainly the restrictions are the right response.
But the cause of their problems are associated with their low vaccination levels.
As they say, what goes around comes around...
 
McGrathsipan said:
Does that mean the vaccines are not effective?
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Effective yes, but it takes months and months to vaccinate so many people, and it’s not a smallpox-esque vaccine so it seems pie in the sky to expect 97% all vaccinated at one time.
So it’s effective at what it is supposed to do, which I’d hoped was to prevent countries from shitting the bed by keeping admissions low enough to cope with.
If countries continue to shit the bed every time the y axis for cases starts shooting up, this is the future for those countries.
 
Regulus Arcturus Black said:
Effective yes, but it takes months and months to vaccinate so many people, and it’s not a smallpox-esque vaccine so it seems pie in the sky to expect 97% all vaccinated at one time.
So it’s effective at what it is supposed to do, which I’d hoped was to prevent countries from shitting the bed by keeping admissions low enough to cope with.
If countries continue to shit the bed every time the y axis for cases starts shooting up, this is the future for those countries.
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That last sentence? It isn’t happening. Believe it or not, you don’t actually know more than the public health officials in these countries about the relationship between case numbers and burden on hospital resources.
 
Hold on here @Pogue Mahone, you’re suggesting the public health officials are making decisions based on evidence and local experience, the thing they’ve been trained to excel in? I dunno, @Regulus Arcturus Black’s shitting the bed in all contexts sounds more plausible…
 
Pogue Mahone said:
That last sentence? It isn’t happening. Believe it or not, you don’t actually know more than the public health officials in these countries about the relationship between case numbers and burden on hospital resources.
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There’s little doubt at this point that many are still making decisions on the assumption that the only way to guarantee bending the curve on the y axis is a form of lockdown.
 
Brwned said:
Hold on here @Pogue Mahone, you’re suggesting the public health officials are making decisions based on evidence and local experience, the thing they’ve been trained to excel in? I dunno, @Regulus Arcturus Black’s shitting the bed in all contexts sounds more plausible…
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I get the piss take, but countries have bent that curve of cases and admissions without lockdowns pre vaccines and these vaccines are very effective.
I’ll swap out shit the bed for “overly cautious” then.
 
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