Yes
No
Check out the recent "dark side of the ring" episode about himOriginally Posted by Kingdom
I actually don't see how that promising, as it means that the vast majority of the population are still vulnerable to infection, doesn't it?
I think what a lot of people are hoping is that the virus is actually much more prevalent in general population than we think, and that much more people have had it (suffering only mildly or not at all) and are now immune to it than we think.
Unfortunately, there are questions now about whether even having it and recovering from it results in immunity to it.
Last edited by osarusan; 21/04/2020 at 9:50 AM.
They might actually be able to eradicate it on the island. I think I read that they're leading the world for tests per capital. As long as they keep the borders closed ... so no Jack Byrne!
They've tested 1/8th of the population (as has the Faroes).
We've tested 1.8% by comparison, the Yanks have tested 1.2% and the Brits are at 0.7%.
Keeping the borders closed is the harder part though. Where will all the wives come from for starters?
My understanding of Iceland is that the fishermen don't use them while they're at sea, so there's enough to go around.
"Promising for football league competitions to proceed as planned on June 6th".
It's not as if the virus would be eradicated but it would have run its course for now as an active agent. I think that's the main precondition for sport to commence.
Strange as it may seem, tourists/visiting professional footballers (eg. Jack) are exempt from the advised 2 week quarantine for returnees, it's a medical fact here that such people are not regarded as a viral threat
Sorry, I misunderstood and thought you were talking about football in general getting back up and running, not just in Iceland."Promising for football league competitions to proceed as planned on June 6th".
It's not as if the virus would be eradicated but it would have run its course for now as an active agent. I think that's the main precondition for sport to commence.
Strange as it may seem, tourists/visiting professional footballers (eg. Jack) are exempt from the advised 2 week quarantine for returnees, it's a medical fact here that such people are not regarded as a viral threat
Probably that's what Ireland will be looking at, lifting restrictions completely over a 6 week period from the time the new confirmed case rate has bottomed out.
Last edited by geysir; 21/04/2020 at 10:43 PM.
Hi everyone, I'm following developments from Canada - and the numbers in Ireland are actually shocking. The government is getting praise as are the Public Health Officers, yet with over 15000 cases, Ireland's per capita rate is higher than The States and The UK, it's nearly half the figure of here in Canada. Comparably sized countries have a fraction of Ireland's total - Croatia is under 2000, Slovenia under 1500, New Zealand has absolutely crushed the curve and has been in single-figures for new cases for the past week. So can anybody pinpoint what's going on that has caused the figures to be so high - is there a failure of public policy? Are people defying public health recommendations in large numbers? Did that last rush to the pubs lead to high community transmission? Or was it the thousands returning from Cheltenham?
You can't compare our figures with the US and the UK, who aren't taking it remotely as seriously.
For a start, the Brits are only including deaths in a hospital, and I think the US are the same. More than half our recorded deaths are in nursing homes - which are explicitly not included in the US/UK figures. They weren't included in the French figures either, and then a week ago they added them in and their death toll increased from 500 per day to 1,500 for one day.
Our testing figures are 2-3 times what the US/UK rates are too, so it's only natural that there'd be more cases found here. The reality is that infection rates in the US and the UK are way higher than being reported.
Thread on twitter about it here: https://mobile.twitter.com/Care2much...19591090155523
Basically, we're including all deaths from the virus, but other countries are (e.g. UK) are only including hospital deaths, or disregarding unconfirmed cases
In the US, I know one example from two weeks ago, where a large production plant in a mid-west State had approx 250 positive tests among it's employees causing the plant to be shut down, and this figure accounted for more than half of the hitherto confirmed cases in the state itself at that point.
I thought that to be eye-opening.
Here they come! It’s the charge of the “Thanks” Brigade!
no one can be sure but it was reported last week that there was a cluster in westmeath that could be strongly linked to cheltenham...
https://www.independent.ie/world-new...-39121412.html
it was completely stupid to let it proceed as it did and the attempts by the horsey people to justify the decision is a nonsense.
interesting article re cheltenham here...
https://www.irishtimes.com/sport/rac...head-1.4234957
Irish response was slow off the mark initially, allowed flights to land from Italy for a rugby match that was eventually cancelled, and allowed the Cheltenham crowd home without (to the best of my knowledge) any checks or tracking of their subsequent contacts or movements. That probably contributed a lot. Since measures were taken, I think they've been followed by and large, although there are always exceptions...but maybe the cat was out of the bag by then. I'm not convinced the govt are deserving of all the praise they are getting for their response myself.
Apart from that, as Stu said, our testing levels are higher than most, and when you test more, you find more cases. In all countries, the actual rate of infection will be higher than the recorded rate, but the more you test, the close the latter gets to the former.
to be fair we were one of the first countries in Europe to call off a big sporting event (Italy match) which decision was made fully two weeks before cheltenham took place. however, it seemed daft not to also ban flights from italy at the same time as a lot of the italian supporters still made their way here.
I think the flights were not cancelled because the assumption was they were coming here for the game, and if there's no game, then why come here? That's just my opinion, I haven't read anything from the government to support it.
You could ask a similar question about the pubs here - why did the government still allow them to open if you couldn't have more than 100 people inside? It wasn't until the the videos from Temple Bar went around that they realised they couldn't trust people to stay away, or pubs to keep to the new occupancy limits, so they were shut.
One thing I've noticed is that there's been more coverage of the Liverpool - Athletico game and its role in the numbers of positive cases in Liverpool than the amount of coverage of Cheltenham. I wonder why that is?
Could be that I read far more football-related media than horse racing.
A separate test should to be done on a random selection of the untested population, 4,000 should be enough in order to get an idea of what's happening with the general public.
Another one is to record recoveries and have a visible graph over a period of time showing the numbers of recovered v confirmed active cases, then one can simply see where Ireland stands. That's much more informative than to have to listen to a politician drone vague nonsense about how good we are at flattening the curve, or a medic honestly saying we don't do those figures in Ireland / we assume they recover over time.
Hire and train people to do the work, print out a medically qualified questionnaire, make contact with the people already confirmed, collect data on symptoms experienced if any and what was the date of full recovery - absence of symptoms.
Germany did something similar to this - tested the population of a town called Gangelt. Selection of the town was not random, as it was a hotspot for Covid-19, but they randomly selected 1000 of the population of the town, and between 15-16% tested positive for either the virus or the antibodies.
That virus test wouldn't be reflective of Germany as a whole. I suspect the antibody test will not be an accurate reflection of immunity. Virus tests are done via a nose & throat swab but if a confirmed case develops no symptoms, that means the virus has been dealt with by the first line of defence - the innate immunity, and no antibodies would be called into play. The stats could be adjusted to include the number of those people who had tested positive - developed no symptoms - who are immune but have no antibody activity.
I see that Ireland has just released data on the numbers of recovered and it looks positive, that the peak has been reached, but another 7 days should confirm.
If so, then the slope back down should move at the same pace as the upward slope.
Last edited by geysir; 22/04/2020 at 7:24 PM.
It's the slope back up again that I'm more worried about.
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