Covid-19

[osarusan]

And the elephant in the closet is - when will the next pandemic arrive? This isn't the first this century - SARS and Ebola to name two - and there's no reason at all why another one won't come along in a decade or two. I think many of us here will live through this again.

SARS (2002-4) and Ebola had nowhere near the impact though, in terms of lives lost and impact on society and finance.

Hopefully the realisation that a virus can cripple effectively the whole world as badly as , and for as long as, Covid-19 is doing will cause the powers that be to take notice and work hard to ensure it doesn't happen again/we are more ready if and when it does happen.

[pineapple stu]

SARS (2002-4) and Ebola had nowhere near the impact though, in terms of lives lost and impact on society and finance.

No - and thank God for that. But that's not to say that something in the future won't be as bad. Ebola in particular is a nasty little disease. There's no particular reason why a virus with covid's contagiousness and even SARS' mortality rate (approx 10%) can't come along in the future. Then we're in big trouble.

You wonder how much has been learned about the origins of covid. It and Ebola seem to be linked to bushmeat and unsanitary conditions of markets in China and parts of West Africa. In terms of stopping a future pandemic, that seems to be the big learning point, and I haven't heard it discussed too much. (That's not to say it hasn't been discussed, and obviously for now the focus has been on managing what we have)

[John83]

Discussion of the origins gets kind of politicised, plus the conspiracy theorists row in pretty quickly. I think that stuff is best left to the professionals, and I expect they're at it. The WHO sent a team to Wuhan for just that reason recently.

[nigel-harps1954]

At this point, largely frustrated, fed up, thankful, and disgusted, all at once.

I've been out of work since March. No sign of going back, music industry will be the last back to work. The group I work with putting on gigs have targeted a return for Halloween, and that's pretty optimistic. As for playing music in pubs or heading out on the road, who knows when that'll return. I don't foresee that before 2022. In the meantime, going to be lumped with a huge tax bill whenever I end up back to work from PUP. Small grace though for being able to pay the bills since March, however.

I've two small kids, one of which is school age, and the other which is a torture when trying to do school work with the older chap. The school work I can handle, lucky in that respect not to be working, we try to do about three hours a day, so it's not completely taking over.

The other half is working, not entirely from home, but mostly. She's still considered a frontline worker, so will be back in the office in the next week or two, despite the continuing Level 5 restrictions.

Thankful however, despite losing a couple of people I know through the pandemic, it's not hit the immediate family. Both my kids have asthma, one of them has it fairly bad too.

Disgusted at the response from the government, and large portions of the public. There's no middle ground, and a complete lack of common sense. Mainstream media is largely to blame for the problems we face, in my view. The government response, we all know, has been brutal, but the media coverage of it has been woeful as well. Everyone looking for that clickbait article. There are a couple of journalists I follow on Twitter for my updates now, and that's about it.

[dahamsta]

On the vintners, as I said in my post, they should have been campaigning for supports, not reopening.

I will blame them for that, they were wrong.

[NeverFeltBetter]

The GAA is the one that sets me off, it was crazy the amount of airtime they were getting on RTE around August/September. It'll be the same come NHL/NFL season in a few months. This whole crisis has really made me realise how powerful interests like vintners, hotels and the GAA are, in terms of just automatically having that ready made soapbox.

[boynemunich]

The GAA is the one that sets me off, it was crazy the amount of airtime they were getting on RTE around August/September. It'll be the same come NHL/NFL season in a few months. This whole crisis has really made me realise how powerful interests like vintners, hotels and the GAA are, in terms of just automatically having that ready made soapbox.

The fact its completely amateur also would make you question what they can actually do in terms of making it safe as they all have other jobs to go to. This is especially at club level anyways where celebrations resulted in multiple outbreaks across the country last year. Even at inter-county levels some players were questioning the safety of it. Unfortunately it is the be all and end all when it comes to sport in this country whether it comes to finances or safety, if the GAA don't have their way then they will fight tooth and nail for other sports to not have their way also.

[tetsujin1979]

I've been messing with the data from COVID 19 Data Ireland.
I created this chart with the chart.js library, combined the positive and negative swab tests each day into a stacked bar chart and overlayed the positivity rate as a secondary line
https://tetsujin1979.github.io/testsVpositivity/

[tetsujin1979]

I've been messing with the data from COVID 19 Data Ireland.
I created this chart with the chart.js library, combined the positive and negative swab tests each day into a stacked bar chart and overlayed the positivity rate as a secondary line
https://tetsujin1979.github.io/testsVpositivity/

Updated this with a few more viewing options, looks quite good now

[tetsujin1979]

Few more updates added, including the option to export the graph as an image, or the data as a text file - https://tetsujin1979.github.io/testsVpositivity/
Unless I think of something else, I'll probably leave it at this

[tetsujin1979]

Added cases and deaths to the dashboard, and share links for facebook, twitter, and email:

e.g. rolling seven day average of daily deaths in January-February

https://tetsujin1979.github.io/covid...trendLine=true

Weekly total swabs from the last two months, displayed as a table instead of a graph
https://tetsujin1979.github.io/covid...trendLine=true

[passinginterest]

Added cases and deaths to the dashboard, and share links for facebook, twitter, and email:

e.g. rolling seven day average of daily deaths in January-February

https://tetsujin1979.github.io/covid...trendLine=true

Weekly total swabs from the last two months, displayed as a table instead of a graph
https://tetsujin1979.github.io/covid...trendLine=true

That's really interesting. The rolling 7 day average really shows how much progress has slowed since cases reduced to around 1,000 again. This seems to be a really critical stage now, the UK variant being so prominent and clearly more infectious is a huge issue. Reopening schools will immediately increase movement and interactions, if the numbers can be kept down in schools it'll give real hope for more extensive opening in April. If there's another surge, we're probably going to be in lock down until late summer when vax levels are extensive enough to allow more mixing. Of course that's all dependent on the vaccine remaining effective as new strains inevitably seep into the country.

[backstothewall]

This is my story. I'm not looking for sympathy or attention, but it will help my mental health to anonymously shout this into the void of the internet, so you guys are it.

On Feb 25th a fella in my work took a phone call from home. His son had been on a skiing trip in Northern Italy over half term, and had been sent home from school to self isolate. The following day the isolation was all knocked on the head as none of them had any symptoms and although they had gone through Milan Airport the resort they were in wasn't thought to be in an affected area at that time.

Thought little more of it until last friday when we were talking about it and he mentioned the son has developed a cough. The kid is 17 so he's as fit as a fiddle.

Then yesterday my daughter started coughing. It's dreadful now. We've explained the situation to her GP who hasn't sent her to be tested on the basis that she has no fever, and has a history of developing croup during the cold months. They have to draw a line somewhere and it seems reasonable to me that they aren't pulling the emergency .

If she has it i'm fairly sure that I've carried it home from work, and that it will go through the house.

She is under self-isolation now, although she doesn't know it. Our entire company is working from home.

But she was with my parents yesterday for over an hour. They are in their 60's and in really good health for people at that age. My dad has a few issues with sciatica which causes him problems like needing to uses the lift in Lansdowne rather than those god forsaken steps, but I'll shake hands right now on that being my biggest issue at his age.

I would suffer with some anxiety related issues from time to time, but this is different.

I'm legitimately scared this time.

What a wild year that was.

I thought i should update this. Everyone made it through. Parents, parents in law and wife all now vaccinated.

I've never been fully convinced that the AZ jab is as good as the others. That's not some antivaxxer nonsense, but my reading around the subject suggested that the Pfizer/Moderna versions are better. But once the wife was given the Pfizer one I knew where they were using it, and by taking charge of booking them in to the same place I was able to successfully get Pfizer into the parents arms.

If the AZ is what i end up being offered when my time comes i'll take it in a heartbeat, but it's reassuring that everyone else has got the gold standard.

I don't think we'll face a third wave on this side of the border. The vaccinatation rate we've already achieved has to have a serious impact on keeping it in check.

Ursula von der Leyen and Stella Kyriakides should have resigned by now. They've made a complete balls of vaccine procurement.

[John83]

I'm glad to hear everyone's okay, backstothewall.

I'm generally quite pro-EU, but it feels like they've dropped the ball on vaccines procurement, yeah.

[tetsujin1979]

Added cases and deaths to the dashboard, and share links for facebook, twitter, and email:

e.g. rolling seven day average of daily deaths in January-February

https://tetsujin1979.github.io/covid...trendLine=true

Weekly total swabs from the last two months, displayed as a table instead of a graph
https://tetsujin1979.github.io/covid...trendLine=true

Started a twitter account to publish the updated vaccinations, swabs, cases, and death graphs on twitter
Follow it here

[tetsujin1979]

I added a doughtnut graph to the daily vaccinations tweet to show progress for first and second vaccinations.

[John83]

Sounds like it'll need a third ring eventually.
https://www.independent.ie/irish-new...-40319574.html

[dahamsta]

While I accept that Covid is likely to become the next flu, with annual shots, personally I'd prefer to hear that from independent doctors, not a vet with a conflict of interest.

[backstothewall]

What a wild year that was.

I thought i should update this. Everyone made it through. Parents, parents in law and wife all now vaccinated.

I've never been fully convinced that the AZ jab is as good as the others. That's not some antivaxxer nonsense, but my reading around the subject suggested that the Pfizer/Moderna versions are better. But once the wife was given the Pfizer one I knew where they were using it, and by taking charge of booking them in to the same place I was able to successfully get Pfizer into the parents arms.

If the AZ is what i end up being offered when my time comes i'll take it in a heartbeat, but it's reassuring that everyone else has got the gold standard.

I don't think we'll face a third wave on this side of the border. The vaccinatation rate we've already achieved has to have a serious impact on keeping it in check.

Ursula von der Leyen and Stella Kyriakides should have resigned by now. They've made a complete balls of vaccine procurement.

I'm getting my first dose at 3.20 next week. Not sure how far along things are in the south but I'm in the 35-40 age bracket. This is going to start causing problems soon. Hoards of vaccinated Nordies, myself included, are going to be looking at Donegal with hungry eyes.

I'm booked into the same place as the wife and parents so i've a decent chance of getting Pfizer. If it's AZ so be it.

[tetsujin1979]

Table for the times taken to pass 100,000, 200,000, 300,000, etc first doses