Covid-19

[backstothewall]

There are only 9 ICU beds left in NI tonight. Some of those are paediatric, and given the delay in the data those remaining adult ones are likely filled by now.

We need help. I'm sure they will pull a few more bits of equipment out of cupboards and I imagine there's a chance of a plane full of Cuban doctors arriving into Belfast by the end of the week, but unfortunately the unnecessary deaths will start tomorrow if patients can't be transferred across the border or over to GB (fairly impractical).

[backstothewall]

Jesus. 13 dead today.

We now have 5 more unoccupied ICU beds than yesterday. So at least 8 were admitted.

May God rest their souls.

[pineapple stu]

13 in the North. 5 here. (Edit - I see you've referred to NI figures before, apologies! That's just by way of clarification then I guess)

The number of deaths is unfortunately likely to rise in the coming days. You don't die instantly, so deaths are based on cases a couple of weeks ago, not today. I've heard it suggested that deaths today should be around 1% of cases three weeks ago. Three weeks ago we were recording 500 cases a day, so 5 deaths a day now is about right. But of course we hit 1300 cases a day last week, so we can probably expect to see 13 deaths a day soon.

[peadar1987]

13 in the North. 5 here. (Edit - I see you've referred to NI figures before, apologies! That's just by way of clarification then I guess)

The number of deaths is unfortunately likely to rise in the coming days. You don't die instantly, so deaths are based on cases a couple of weeks ago, not today. I've heard it suggested that deaths today should be around 1% of cases three weeks ago. Three weeks ago we were recording 500 cases a day, so 5 deaths a day now is about right. But of course we hit 1300 cases a day last week, so we can probably expect to see 13 deaths a day soon.

There have been a fair few people mouthing off in Scotland recently that the pubs have been shut for ten days and cases and deaths haven't decreased. I've given up trying to explain the concept of incubation periods and exponential growth to these people.

[dahamsta]

Surprised that this thread died off. So to speak. I've been wondering how compliance is going on around the country, purely out of curiosity.

In the last few weeks I've been over to Waterford city, around and about Cork city and surrounds a few times, and of course locally in east Cork and I think we're doing pretty well. The number of people I've seen not wearing face coverings is very low, I'm surprised when I see someone, and even the nose-exposers aren't too common. People still seem so have trouble with some aspects of distancing, but again, it's not a big thing.

What's your experiences with the rest of the country?

[Mr A]

Yeah siliar to that to be honesy. Generally good compliance. That said I noticed previously that two shops a couple of miles apart could have radically different levels of compliance in the past.

[John83]

I'm in Dublin, and see much the same. Most people wear masks, and most of them wear them more or less correctly. If there's a serious issue with compliance at the moment, I expect it's in terms of visiting homes.

[NeverFeltBetter]

More or less the same. People are wearing masks where they are supposed to where I am and for the most part social distancing is maintained. I am in the GPO fairly regularly for work purposes, and they have staff there who do order people to adhere to floor positions for queues. At the same time my local supermarket has clearly stopped caring. They have a "Green/Red" light system at the front door, but it isn't monitored so no-one pays it any mind, and the few times I have been there in the last month it's mobbed. The bus was pretty full this morning too I noticed.

In terms of home visits, it's easy for me as my family are on the other side of the country, but I know people who have broken the restriction regularly. Sometimes they don't care, sometimes they are pressured by their parents who don't care. It's hard for people I suppose, and no one is going to stop them.

[dahamsta]

So at least we seem to have finally seen sense on the masks anyway.

The only group I really see intentionally acting the maggot on masks are teenagers and maybe young twenties, mostly when I'm up near my office in the northside. Just the ignorance of youth I guess, and the rebellious attitude of northsiders.

Numbers are still crazy high that. Reading articles parroting VFI press releases do my head in.

[passinginterest]

It's a mix around my area in Dublin. There's definitely more social visits going on than when we had full lockdown (in fairness within the regulations in terms of social bubble in some cases). It can be a bit hit and miss with masks, definitely more wearing than not, but no shortage of chin wearers, or pull them down as soon as in the door merchants.

Plenty of groups of teens, bigger groups that I'd have expected with the running club and the astro park had about 40 people in there the other day (it's closed but there's a gap in the fence and some of the pitches are unlocked, there was refs and all there at the weekend). General interactions are higher than a full lock down and in fairness level 5 was never meant to be full lockdown (in the way of the initial one), but it presumably explains why the numbers didn't drop as quickly or as suddenly as the government would have liked.

I though it was funny when the schools went back, NEPHET said they noticed more movement and interactions in the week after, they said it wasn't kids so they wouldn't say it was school related. But, I think it's pretty obvious that most kids are still being brought to school, that leads to parents meeting and that leads to going for a coffee or just standing having a chat for longer that they would otherwise. I know they don't want to pin anything on the schools (I love how only the school outbreaks are asterixed with "transmission within the school cannot be proven" unlike every other outbreak) but it's hard to imagine that the schools being open is not a significant factor in the community transmission cases refusing to disappear again.

With all the talk of the vaccine I'm sure people will start to slip a bit further now too in terms of social interactions. There's a serious amount of fatigue and angst and with Christmas looming, it's only human that more interactions are going to happen, and common sense will start to go out the window (it might be level 3 but I think it'll be more like no restrictions in day to day interactions, only work from home might still continue for a lot of us).

[tetsujin1979]

we were told this morning that our office reopen date has been postponed again, until March. Think that's the fifth time it's been postponed.
If it does reopen then, it'll be a year since the last time I was at my desk

[NeverFeltBetter]

Read an interesting article about Turkmenistan yesterday, a country that refuses to acknowledge the virus’ existence officially, and has referred to the mountain of sick people showing up at hospitals as suffering from pneumonia. Now that they are due to host sporting events “Foreign track cyclists arriving in Turkmenistan will be vaccinated against unspecified “infectious diseases” with the Russian-made Sputnik V vaccine, which Turkmenistan has approved the registration of”


https://cyclingtips.com/2021/01/covi...t-acknowledge/



Also, a nice bit of Comical Ali in there: “Berdimuhamedov also noted that “Turkmen tennis players win prizes in international competitions”. [Related: Turkmenistan’s leading male tennis player, Aleksandr Ernepesov, is ATP-unranked and has career prize money of US$104].”

[boynemunich]

Read an interesting article about Turkmenistan yesterday, a country that refuses to acknowledge the virus’ existence officially, and has referred to the mountain of sick people showing up at hospitals as suffering from pneumonia. Now that they are due to host sporting events “Foreign track cyclists arriving in Turkmenistan will be vaccinated against unspecified “infectious diseases” with the Russian-made Sputnik V vaccine, which Turkmenistan has approved the registration of”


https://cyclingtips.com/2021/01/covi...t-acknowledge/



Also, a nice bit of Comical Ali in there: “Berdimuhamedov also noted that “Turkmen tennis players win prizes in international competitions”. [Related: Turkmenistan’s leading male tennis player, Aleksandr Ernepesov, is ATP-unranked and has career prize money of US$104].”

Their dictator is Kim Jong Un levels of crazy. There's an excellent series on Netflix called Dark Tourist where the presenter goes to very obscure places around the world. One of the episodes covers Turkmenistan and gives you a good insight into their dictator.

The presenter manages to get into the country as a "journalist" covering their Olympic style national games. The venue built for the competition cost billions of dollars, can't remember the figure but I think it was more than what was spent on the Rio Olympics if I recall correctly. It's well worth watch.

[pineapple stu]

Turkmenistan is bat**** crazy, even with Turkmenbashi dead. They enforced mask wearing in July because of dust, and asked people to observe social distancing for no reason at all - but they definitely had no covid.

There's a really interesting book called Murder in Samarkand written by a former British Ambassador to Uzbekistan (Uzbekistan is just as crazy) who was sacked by Jack Straw for repeatedly pointing out that information the Uzbeks gave to the war on terror was obtained through torture. He has a section outlining how Ambassadorships are actually decided, and as no-one really wants to go to Central Asia, and as there's no oil there, so European Embassies - which should be helping put pressure on idiot leaders like this - are at best utterly dysfunctional, if they're even there at all. The local Government is of course given added legitimacy by having first world diplomacy, and all the better that they can completely ignore them too.

It's a sad state of affairs for the locals of course, and while most of the blame is on the national leaders, the western world is definitely guilty by association.

[dahamsta]

So how are we all feeling about another month of this?

I've been ok up to now, but I'm not happy about another month of home school. I blame the bars and restaurants for an awful lot of the recent numbers, and then MM's decision to allow Xmas, and I'm sick of the schools being blamed for it.

Yes, the new strain is more virulent and perhaps that does indeed justify it, but I'm very, very angry now with the vintners for lobbying for opening rather than supports, the people they represent, and MM and FF.

[passinginterest]

I think it's very, very hard on parents and the elderly at this stage. I'm very lucky, no kids, work from home works well for me and the wife has a good balance of days in and work from home and our jobs are very secure. We can keep safe pretty easily, we're a two minute walk from my wife's parents and we have a limited amount of contact with them as a social bubble. I'm also a bit of a loner at the best of times so in most ways life suits me as it is.

I have a huge amount of sympathy for anyone trying to work and home school and for the elderly who are so worried about leaving their homes. We have a few friends who are living alone and this lockdown seems to be affecting them much more than the other ones too. I don't like apportioning blame, every industry is fighting to stay alive, almost every Government seems to have made big mistakes at one point or another, the main thing is protecting as much as we can for when there can be some return to normality. The Christmas easing of restrictions was a massive risk and it backfired, but the you'd have to wonder would it have happened anyway, even without a formal easing of the restrictions? There was a huge amount of unrest and a desperation to see families and friends built up over 9 months. Plenty of people managed to do that safely and no go overboard, but the new more infectious strains and the percentage who completely lost the run of themselves seems to have landed us in an absolute disaster zone.

Hopefully, one we get to the 5th of March we'll have finally broken the back of it in terms of numbers, and there can be a consistent roll back of restrictions. We're probably still talking September before we're in a level 2 type situation and I can't see recommendations to wear a mask, wash hands and social distance disappearing completely before the end of the year. I reckon mask wearing at events is going to to with us for a long time. We're an island so dependent on import and export that even with mandatory quarantines etc. in place we'll find it very hard to ever reach zero covid in the way New Zealand did.

[boynemunich]

So how are we all feeling about another month of this?

I've been ok up to now, but I'm not happy about another month of home school. I blame the bars and restaurants for an awful lot of the recent numbers, and then MM's decision to allow Xmas, and I'm sick of the schools being blamed for it.

Yes, the new strain is more virulent and perhaps that does indeed justify it, but I'm very, very angry now with the vintners for lobbying for opening rather than supports, the people they represent, and MM and FF.

I'm not sure you can blame vintners too much now they are always going to lobby for their industry, its ultimately up to the government who make the decisions. The wet pubs also haven't been open since the pandemic began.

Going to a match this year looks like a complete write-off anyways which is depressing as hell, we will be lucky to have crowds of 50 at outdoor events according to the journal today.

What really worries me though is the change in narrative in the past few weeks. It was we'll get the most vulnerable vaccinated and then start re-opening. Now its get everyone vaccinated. Also cases are going down again and the vaccine roll-out has begun and all I'm hearing about is more restrictions ? I'm not sure when or how this ends the way its going and I think we might be getting a bit left in the dark about vaccine efficacy. Hope to god I'm wrong though.

[jbyrne]

More frustrated and annoyed than previous lock downs. Education is the big loser because a section of the general public felt entitled to some form of decent Christmas and that they deserved a break from Covid restrictions. It was complete madness and stupidity. Cant keep blaming the government though as people well know the risks and what they need to do at this stage.

saw a lad on telly last week who claimed "me family did everything correctly" yet was somehow baffled as to how a load of his family caught covid in his ma's house on Christmas day.
How does a load of his family (think he said 10) in his Ma's house on Christmas day constitute doing everything correctly????? The stupidity is mind boggling.

[pineapple stu]

I'm not sure you can blame vintners too much now they are always going to lobby for their industry, its ultimately up to the government who make the decisions. The wet pubs also haven't been open since the pandemic began.

I agree with that. A lot of what happened over Christmas in particular seems to have been private gatherings and parties, which effectively means what would have happened in the pub just seems to have happened at home instead. Publicans have been among the worst hit in all of this - a year out of work with literally no idea as to when they can re-open.

I'm not sure if the narrative ever was "get the vulnerable vaccinated and then re-open" though? That's not really how vaccines work - you need a reasonable amount of the population vaccinated for them to have any effect. That's why the small amount of anti-vaxxers in the US are causing growing problems with, for example, measles for everyone.

2021 largely looks like a write off, which is very frustrating. I've cancelled my Euro 2020 tickets, so that's one less thing to look forward to. I think we've seen now how quickly this can flare up, so really we know now that until we have critical mass of vaccinations, things won't go back to normal. That's a few months away at best, and then lurking in the back of your mind has to be the question as to how effective are the vaccines? If you have to get a booster every six months, then you're going to be chasing your tail. I've an event I want to travel to in November that even now I think is only 50/50, but it's what I'm keeping focussed on in terms of a return to normality.

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.

[sidewayspasser]

As a single person living alone and working from home, isolation is an issue for me. But at least I have a support bubble who I meet once a week, that helps.
What affects me most I guess is the uncertainty when I will be able to meet my elderly parents again. As they aren't living in Ireland (I'm the only one of my family living here), I haven't met them in over a year now, and even though we talk via Skype, that's not the same. I hope they'll get vaccinated soon, so that they are at least safe from this disease (hoping that the vaccine does its job).