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

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

#241

Post by ramoz »

tagoregrtst wrote: post #127
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.

“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…

I’m just going to add, because I want the same trust in the system but it’s f’d me up.

In early summer 2020, my mom passed in hospice from cancer. 4mo before that she had a fighting chance, but faced intensive surgeries (ICU for sure based on experience) and chemo — all in isolation. Literally the hospital made it that choice - family has to leave. They basically gaslighted her out.

I was furious, and because the hospital was not overwhelmed. there were precautions obviously, but no - it was not filled with Covid or people dying from Covid. Utter bs.

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

#242

Post by jseban »

rfrey wrote: post #114
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Many (I suspect most)epidemiologists are saying there's no stopping Omicron. Which doesn’t mean we all have to get it at the same time. I’m so tired of these false dichotomies. There’s a lot of middle ground between full lockdown and completely giving up so everyone gets it at the same time. We’re already running out of ICU beds and emergency treatments like monoclonal antibodies where I’m at. Yet the prevailing lo…

I don't mean to present a false dichotomy, thank you for alerting me that I may have. Slowing it down is obviously helpful and anything we can do to accomplish that is important. In Canada I'm still doing everything I can because it's not clear that we've peaked - the government is saying we have but they've also cut way down on testing so I'm not sure. In South Africa and increasingly in the UK it looks like a diffe…

> Slowing it down is obviously helpful and anything we can do to accomplish that is important.

It's not that simple. It's not a matter of doing something good vs not doing it, that's what an oversimplified black and white thinking is. It's about priorities, and about looking at certain types of damage compared to other types of damage, and choosing the best path that causes the least overall damage.

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

#243

Post by ryanbrunner »

aurelianito wrote: post #91
ryanbrunner wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's people who are at risk of dying from COVID even when vaccinated. For many immunocompromised people, the vaccine has limited effect.

These people also die from the flu and common cold. We cannot stop the world for them.

Public health has also traditionally worked in the interest of high-risk and vulnerable people. With COVID it looks like we'll largely abandon that - for not completely illogical reasons, obviously public health has a cost, but I think it's important to acknowledge that this is giving up and not business as usual.

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

#244

Post by andybak »

smitty1e wrote: post #194
andybak wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of us have been giving it careful thought all along. Something about your phrasing suggests to me that your views are outside the mainstream? (In which direction I don't know because you seem cagey about actually stating your view)

The point is to encourage thought in the general population. The moderation here is less than encouraging.

OK. Time to bite.

1. What's the horrifying precedent? 2. Assuming we can another pandemic one day which is more severe, how would you handle restrictions to protect public health - assuming you would at all?

(I think a lot of the debate around Covid stems from the unfortunate fact that it's too severe to ignore but not severe enough to get everyone on the same page. I can respect "we didn't need to this time" but I'm curious about people who argue "we should never do this")

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

#245

Post by zdragnar »

distances wrote: post #144
stephenhuey wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, in a lot of the US. I know so few people who do not drive kids to school that the outliers are remarkable.

I see, sorry to hear that. It's better in Europe though here too the number of parent chauffeurs has definitely increased. I thought the school bus is still the US way but that's probably then just movies keeping up that appearance.

School busses are the norm for rural and suburban schools. City public transport or walking is more common in larger metro areas, but in states that get very cold, even metro areas still have school busses so that young kids don't have to risk walking to a bus stop.

TBH, I have never heard of a US school district where the majority are driven to school by their parents, though to be fair to the parent poster I can't sat that I would be terribly surprised if such a place existed.

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

#246

Post by hwers »

IG_Semmelweiss wrote: post #4

Irish govt realizing that if it doesnt change something soon, all of the irish will throw their tourist and entertainment euros... across the border. Refreshing to see tha even at the govt level, there is competition of ideas.

Competition at the government level feels like a big argument against trying to unify the world into a one world country.

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

#247

Post by maxerickson »

tagoregrtst wrote: post #214
maxerickson wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Why These Numbers are Different Provisional death counts may not match counts from other sources, such as media reports or numbers from county health departments. Counts by NCHS often track 1–2 weeks behind other data." Your source itself says that it does not yet have complete data for January 2022.

So where did OP get a 2000/day number?

It's widely reported in reputable media sources.

It's a bit rich to go on about being misled by mysterious forces and trusting the CDC and so on and then "do your own research" and fail to understand the basic reporting methodology of the source you land on.

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

#248

Post by ptero »

ryanbrunner wrote: post #79
ptero wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is not clear to me that low incremental death rates are due to lockdowns (or, for that matter vaccination rates). Balkans had low rates with no lockdowns (and vaccination rates of under 35% throughout last summer). I am not claiming that your statement is wrong, just that the causal relationship is not at all clear to me. It is probably much easier to show for vax rates, but lockdowns -- I have not seen a convinci…

Canada and the U.S. might be a better comparison (particularly prior to vaccination, since the US has a notably lower vaccination rate). Canada largely had stricter lockdowns than the US and had about a third of the death rate. The populations aren't identical but fairly comparable, and the most notable differences in 2020 were degree of restrictions, along with better support for people unable to work due to COVID i…

I do not see it this way. Lockdowns have significant costs (medical, mental, economic). If we implement them, it should be based on strong causal relationship to health outcomes which should be observable on most countries.

I can understand a quick reaction for a week or two as we plan a strategy; maybe for a month. But two years is ridiculous. This seems to be driven by politics more than health. Which seems to be agreed to by most people in many countries who largely ignore it (except for countries like Australia and NZ, which imposed real, hard lockdowns). In the Eastern Europe in the summer where masks were required inside, most people wear them on the chin (even at the airports). And say "cannot wait when those jerks from the EU stop pushing those rules down our throats".

And last but not least: I know well two people who are immunocompromised. Their care took a definite turn for the worse, because in many countries there is at the moment a single disease worth fighting and everything non-COVID becomes a distant second. Whew. That turned into a rant. Sorry!

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

#249

Post by tzs »

throwaway6734 wrote: post #107
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.

>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? Imo the only thing that really matters is the hospitalization rate of the vaccinated. If it's near bad flu numbers, then there's no more concern

Hospitalization rates for the vaccinated are an order of magnitude lower than the rates for the unvaccinated, and death rates more so.

However, even though I'm fully vaccinated and boosted so personally have no reason to fear COVID from the point of view of landing in the hospital or dying directly from COVID (and all my friends and family are in a similar position) it is still an indirect concern because the unvaccinated are taking up hospital resources that I might need.

Even in my county in the US, which has been in the bottom quarter for case, death, and hospitalization rates in my state, which has been in the bottom 5-10 states for all of those statistics for the entire pandemic, there are enough unvaccinated people in the hospital now with COVID that hospitals are almost unable to take new patients. Omicron looks like it is peaking here, so it will probably be OK to go ahead and have my heart attack or get hit by a drunk driver without worrying about whether I'll be able to get treatment, but there are a heck of a lot of places in the US right now where this is not the case.

The good news is that after omicron, enough of the unvaccinated will have some immunity via omicron that it should bring their hospitalization rates down enough that it is no longer a problem. That's when we reach the "it can be treated like a a cold or flu from a public health perspective" stage. A recent NTY covid briefing email looked at the data from places that are ahead of the US on the omicron curve, and that's what they concluded.

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

#250

Post by smitty1e »

andybak wrote: post #244
smitty1e wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point is to encourage thought in the general population. The moderation here is less than encouraging.

OK. Time to bite. 1. What's the horrifying precedent? 2. Assuming we can another pandemic one day which is more severe, how would you handle restrictions to protect public health - assuming you would at all? (I think a lot of the debate around Covid stems from the unfortunate fact that it's too severe to ignore but not severe enough to get everyone on the same page. I can respect "we didn't need to this time" but I'm…

The horrifying precedent is small numbers of people who do not always stand for election making highly consequential decisions for large numbers of people.

Stipulate that the current crop of names all have noble intent. Not taking swipes at anyone in view.

You've no guarantees of such going forward.

The current situation is Checkov's Gun[1]. At some point, if we don't enjoy a collective think on where this is going, there will be dismay.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chekhov's_gun

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