Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Ireland drops most Covid restrictions in wake of 'Omicron storm'

reuters.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

201–210 of 401 posts

Re: Ireland drops most Covid restrictions in wake of 'Omicron storm'

#201

Post by ls15 »

jjoonathan wrote: post #180
ls15 wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The only thing I'm dreading is the smugness of the antimask/antivax crowd who will ignore the herculean effort that avoided complete collapse of the health system and just claim they were right all along. I am pretty happy that the vax-mandaters are being taught a lesson by the virus. They would have pulled through otherwise.

LOL, just what lesson do you think that would be? I'm happy that Omicron is getting some immunity into the selfish idiots of the anti-vax crowd.

I was vaccinated. Almost everyone will catch Omicron.

Re: Ireland drops most Covid restrictions in wake of 'Omicron storm'

#202

Post by ricardobayes »

refurb wrote: post #100
Mizza wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Am I fucking crazy for not knowing what's going on any more? US hospitalizations are at an all time high, 2000 people are still dying every day, and it feels like everybody is just okay with that now. What happened? I get that everybody is tired of it, I am too, but it feels like we wasted two years of everybody's life just the take the bullet anyway.

For the most part we did stumble our way to this point, but nobody could predict the outcome. After two years and now 4 shots being discussed it’s clearly apparent:1) people will still get infected, 2) despite the lower risk of death with vaccines, plenty will still die, 3) we can’t keep borrowing money and giving to people when we shutdown their businesses. And I feel like the protests in Australia, Canada, US, Euro…

Spain plans to treat covid as endemic after 6th (current) wave is over, and it's already peaked. Rolling out vaccines and paxlovid is a 'science win'.

Re: Ireland drops most Covid restrictions in wake of 'Omicron storm'

#203

Post by kspacewalk2 »

encryptluks2 wrote: post #161
VoidWhisperer wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you considered that you may have had more mild Omicron due to being vaccinated? It is true that breakthrough infections exist, especially in something as transmissable as Omicron. However, the point has also been made that being vaccinated helps prevent more serious illness[1] which in turn can help prevent hospitals from collapsing under the weight of the severely ill. [1]: https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-…

This is called moving goalposts. The vaccines application states it will prevent transmissions, not lesson the symptoms. If it is simply "lessoning" the symptoms which has not been my experience with Omicron, but not preventing transmission then the authorizations should be pulled until they can be resubmitted.

The clinical trials for Pfizer and Moderna were testing for severe outcomes, not transmission. The vaccines got emergency use authorization based on that.

Some non-clinical studies suggested a drop in transmission (e.g. CDC study in spring 2021 which examined healthcare workers who got the jab early and were tested weekly), but it's clear now they were just picking up a transient effect, months long but wearing off thereafter.

So the mRNA vaccines are doing exactly what they were trialled to do 1.5 years ago. What your local politicians and public health authorities misunderstood from that is their problem.

Re: Ireland drops most Covid restrictions in wake of 'Omicron storm'

#204

Post by acdha »

encryptluks2 wrote: post #172
acdha wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The vaccines were approved to keep people from dying, with a secondary goal of REDUCING spread. The experts were very clear that vaccinated people would spread it less than the unvaccinated, and all of the data shows that’s correct. Omicron didn’t exist when that data was being assessed, so think about it like someone in 2000 saying RSA 1024 was good encryption — they were hardly in the pocket of big crypto when they…

Have you read the EUA?

Have you? You’re just regurgitating right-wing talking points, conspicuously short on sources or demonstrated understanding.

When you do read the lengthy material at https://www.fda.gov/emergency-preparedness-and-response/coro... note that the approvals are based on fighting the disease. Reducing transmission — at which the vaccines were clearly highly effective prior to Omicron — is one part of that but an even more important part is preventing severe outcomes. Even with Omicron, the vaccines are highly effective at keeping you out of the hospital and even better at keeping you out of the ICU.

https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#rates-by-vaccine-s...

Re: Ireland drops most Covid restrictions in wake of 'Omicron storm'

#205

Post by alistairSH »

ls15 wrote: post #159
acdha wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That you should be glad that your vaccination made you an order of magnitude less likely to have a severe case? Polio didn’t kill most people either.

> That you should be glad that your vaccination made you an order of magnitude less likely to have a severe case? For Omicron? And even if. It is great if it is a result of my personal decision to get vaccinated. It is awful to force others to get vaccinated, especially if most claims regarding efficacy get weakened a lot over time and people ignore that. Vaccine mandates and mandatory passports everywhere have faile…

Vaccine mandates … everywhere have failed

Smallpox and measles mandates worked.

And which western/first world nations actually had COVID mandates? The US sure didn’t.

Re: Ireland drops most Covid restrictions in wake of 'Omicron storm'

#206

Post by mrobot »

Yayyyyyyy... i guess. Now, everyone stop being arrogant and just emulate what China and the evil ceeceepee did about COVID. They did it right. You didn't. Now, get over your arrogance and do what is correct. When you are sick, you stay home. Stop coughing on everyone. Stop coughing on the world while investing in Moderna stock. Thank you.

Re: Ireland drops most Covid restrictions in wake of 'Omicron storm'

#207

Post by jjoonathan »

cm2187 wrote: post #173
acdha wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's also many times less pathogenic than Delta This is a misleading way to say your risk of hospitalization is about half of what it was with Delta. Vaccination is making it safer to get closer back to normal — which is why Ireland can consider it with their much higher rate of over 92% versus the U.S. 63% — but we still need to be thinking about masks and improved ventilation when it’s spreading, especially since…

Why on earth would you vaccinate kids? It’s not going to do anything to the spread of the virus, as the grand parent post mentioned it is extremely infectious and neither masks or the vaccines have been shown to make anything else than a dent in the levels of infections. They aren’t at risk of the virus either. The energy would be better spent convincing the few >60yo who haven’t been vaccinated to get the shot. But…

1. Vaccination is not a hardship.

2. Reducing R flattens the curve, and pushing it below 1.0 ends the pandemic.

> vaccines have been shown to make anything else than a dent in the levels of infections

Oh?

https://www.webmd.com/vaccines/covid-19-vaccine/news/2022011...

This applies to all ages, but if I had linked to an ICU with adults I'm sure you would have blamed the pattern on old people.

Vaccines make a big difference, it's just that the vaccine doesn't protect people who don't take it. Even so, it kinda does: herd immunity and R are real. It's hilarious that anti-vaxxers seem to think that anything less than the vaccine somehow managing to protect 100% of people who don't take it is some kind of failure on its part.

Re: Ireland drops most Covid restrictions in wake of 'Omicron storm'

#208

Post by spion »

rfrey wrote: post #85

Many (I suspect most but I only follow a few) epidemiologists are saying there's no stopping Omicron. It's more contagious than measles - if you're in a room with somebody who has it, you're exposed barring a properly fitted N95 mask. All of us will be exposed by mid February. It's also many times less pathogenic than Delta, and it's a gift that nothing at present can outcompete it. I believe it's the version that wi…

The thing I find most baffling is that we have very good reason to believe [1] that HEPA air purifiers can keep the air clear of the virus, and yet they are barely talked about.

In the UK we're still waiting on results from trials in schools [2] and we've barely started running trials in care homes [3], and this is 2 years in. In March 2020 our government was trying to comission Dyson to mass produce medical ventilators of questionable use for emergency, and yet we never really tried to get them to mass produce something that is their core competency and put it in classrooms and care homes.

HEPA filters are unobtrusive and can be made quite silent by using larger fans. Its mind boggling enough that we're barely using them, but its even more mind blowing that we have no trial data for them 2 years in.

There is also reason to believe they would work synergically with masks. All masks leak [8], some more than others - portable HEPA devices should take care to limit the (cumulative) effect of leakage to a minimum. Especially in indoor spaces where people spend long amounts of time, and especially in winter as well as in these "modern" business buildings with windows that don't open.

So why does this matter? Mainly because we keep pretending long covid doesn't exist. In the UK, ONS esimates that a 1.3 million (2% of the population) [4] people report long term symptoms, of which 1/2 million (nearly 1% of the entire population) have had them for 1 year or longer, with 247,000 (20%) reporting that their ability to undertake their day-to-day activities had been “limited a lot”.

Information on vaccine protection from long covid has been conflicting [5], with some studies showing they enable return to baseline [6] while others showing almost no effect [7].

Additionally, since Omicron is so new, we don't (and cannot) have any long covid data on it.

It therefore makes sense to continue limiting spread and focus our effort on understanding long covid risk, prevention and treatment better, before completely lifting all restrictions. Especially if it can be done with the help of tools that are almost completely unobtrusive, such as portable HEPA filters.

[1]: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-02669-2

[2]: https://www.leeds.ac.uk/news-health/news/article/4953/can-ai...

[3]: https://www.bristol.ac.uk/news/2021/october/airfilter-study....

[4]: https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/healthan...

[5]: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-03495-2

[6]: https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.01.05.22268800v...

[7]: https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.10.26.21265508v...

[8]: https://www.pnas.org/content/118/49/e2110117118#:~:text=Medi...

Re: Ireland drops most Covid restrictions in wake of 'Omicron storm'

#209

Post by encryptluks2 »

nkrisc wrote: post #130
akmarinov wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Child death rate is basically 0

Cool. Can you say the same for my elderly relatives that would like to spend time around our child? I’m not as worried about the child as I’m worried about him spreading it to someone who won’t be spared.

Is the action of your elderly relatives spending a lot of time around your child worth compromising your child's normal youth and mental health?

Re: Ireland drops most Covid restrictions in wake of 'Omicron storm'

#210

Post by tagoregrtst »

jycoo wrote: post #189
tagoregrtst wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“US hospitalizations are at an all time high,” How do you know that? My question, really, is how do you know what you know and are not being misled? (A la WMD to use an easy, universally understood, example?) “2000 people are still dying every day,” No, they’re not. According to the CDC (why do I trust them?) its currently 500/day [1]. It hasn't been > 2000 since September in the midst of the Delta spike. But even be…

Quoted post unavailable.

“ 2 years is 66% of my toddler’s life. A toddler that doesnt know what a peer’s smile is since she’s masked all day.”

Check your math ;)

And, seek help. Life is beautiful, but depression and deep-seeded pain (dont ask me how I know. I wont share) makes us forget this.

The lockdowns have created a mental health crisis and its important we seek each other and help

Post reply on HN