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

301–310 of 401 posts

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

#301

Post by ls15 »

twofornone wrote: post #184
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-…

Have you considered that 99%+ of cases are mild or asymptomatic and that this reasoning amounts to confirmation bias? Especially with Omicron? Moreso in healthy people under 50 who are orders of magnitude less likely to suffer severe illness or complications. The fact that you had mild symptoms, or any sort of symptoms for that matter, while vaccinated does not actually imply that you would have been substantially wo…

> Have you considered that 99%+ of cases are mild or asymptomatic and that this reasoning amounts to confirmation bias? Especially with Omicron? Moreso in healthy people under 50 who are orders of magnitude less likely to suffer severe illness or complications.

Omicron is 90% less deadly than delta for unvaccinated people and there is a 100% lower risk to need mechanical ventilation, according to this paper:

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.01.11.22269045v...

During the delta wave covid survivors had better immunization than people with only vaccination. This contradicts some of the mandates that are currently in place, such as in Germany, were people who previously recovered are still required to get a subsequent shot:

https://news.yahoo.com/natural-immunity-more-potent-vaccines...

> This isn't the damn plague and it's high time we stopped acting like it was.

During the pandemic I looked up information about the public reaction to the Spanish Flu. It was almost exactly the same, including vaccines with unclear efficacy and anti-mask groups. However, the Spanish Flu killed up to 50 million people while the world's population was only 1.6 billion and it only took a couple of months.

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

#302

Post by IAmGraydon »

christophilus wrote: post #178
IAmGraydon wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s definitely strange that there’s such a disparity, and I assume it’s because there are differences in what is considered a “Covid death” in the US vs elsewhere.

There’s that, and American obesity / general lack of health. (Just a guess.)

Maybe, but consider that 64% of adults in England are overweight. In the US it’s around 70%. Not that big of a difference.

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

#303

Post by biorach »

bryanlarsen wrote: post #294
scop wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. This isn’t the same virus as at the start of the pandemic. 2. There is a treatment protocol for COVID, unlike at the start of the pandemic. 3. There are now vaccines. There is now a large portion of the population that has vaccine immunity. 4. There is now a large portion of the population that has natural immunity. 5. It should be abundantly clear that case counts is no longer a meaningful metric. 6. Covid is a d…

> 8. It should be clear that universally containing an aerosol virus like COVID is impossible. What is possible is targeted containment, I.e. keeping nursing homes under more precautions. China has done it for pre-omicron variants, so it is possible. You and I are not willing to accept the restrictions necessary to do it and that's fine, but you cannot say it is impossible.

Whether China can keep it up until the end of the pandemic is yet to be seen

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

#304

Post by catblathrow »

jseban wrote: post #296
Ekaros wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also accept the reality that hospitals being at capacity is the normal and not a anomaly. Just part of our hyper-optimized JIT economy. Near 100% utilization rate has been reality at flu-seasons for long time. And economically it is just not realistic in general to keep excess capacity.

Yeah according to news headlines health care have been overwhelmed for as long as I can remember. Population increases as well. Obviously the solution is to increase capacity, not to ban dancing, lol

It's much easier to introduce restrictions than train medical staff in a week.

Also capacity has been increasing year on year for the past 100 years in the EU, USA and the UK . Faster than population actually.

Also there is cyclical and situational capacity management. For e.g.: flu waves, new year and now covid waves.

I only know about those regions

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

#305

Post by ls15 »

glogla wrote: post #138
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…

Some people just have black-white thinking. See also "vaccines are not working" and lots of other nonsense.

> Some people just have black-white thinking. See also "vaccines are not working" and lots of other nonsense.

The same applies to people who assume that unvaccinated people must be idiots.

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

#306

Post by JPKab »

scop wrote: post #68
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.

1. This isn’t the same virus as at the start of the pandemic. 2. There is a treatment protocol for COVID, unlike at the start of the pandemic. 3. There are now vaccines. There is now a large portion of the population that has vaccine immunity. 4. There is now a large portion of the population that has natural immunity. 5. It should be abundantly clear that case counts is no longer a meaningful metric. 6. Covid is a d…

This is an excellent comment regarding how unsustainable these practices are. School closures and even the isolation tactics when a asymptomatic child test positive are completely unsustainable. They are deeply punishing to the working class and to children from underclass households where every minute they are in their house versus in a school is a net detriment to their education and mental health.

I used to do work for the Democratic party many years ago. It was sort of a given back in 2014 that we were going to get the vast majority of Latino votes going into the future. These unsustainable policies have caused Latinos to shift dramatically away from the Democratic party. It is politically unsustainable and destructive. It is politically, unsustainable and destructive.

Regarding the unvaccinated nurses getting fired, should be noted that virtually all of them had natural immunity. My sister-in-law is one of these who did not want to get vaccinated because she had already contracted the virus and had attended several patients suffering from adverse events as well as friends who had their menstrual cycles disrupted. There was no scientific harm from this decision because her natural immunity was more protective than the vaccine based on multiple studies, including a CDC study that was just released last week.

Your comment on being a father is also 100% correct. People seem to think that children's brains continue to develop at the same rate between the ages of five and eight as they do between the ages of 3 and 5. That's just not how it works. You have these tiny windows of time where the brain is going through rapid development and you can't make up for these windows in a later time period.

History will likely not be kind to the policies against children that were pursued to protect unionized teachers and elderly people who will long be dead when the repercussions of this horrible policy towards children are fully felt. But perhaps I have too much faith in the people writing the history to be honest, considering that the laptop class are the most powerful and the most paranoid and frightened.

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

#307

Post by thdespou »

lljk_kennedy wrote: post #291
Graffur wrote: post #46

The headline doesn't capture the remaining restrictions (although the article does). Masks are still required in shops, taxis, buses, trains. It's unclear for takeaway restaurants and chippers. All staff in those places will still need to wear masks. I assume bar and restaurant staff will also need to wear masks. So really, the 8pm curfew on hospitality has been lifted but that was always silly in the first place. Wh…

What failures? I’m pretty proud of our overall response as a nation, apart for the anti-mask loonies. Most of us did what was asked, and as a national policy we (mostly) followed the medical and scientific advice, with obvious compromises for economic, educational and social factors. And here we are now, having mostly gotten through it without massive loss of life, without overloading the hospitals (apart from unvacc…

Excuse me but there have been times last year where Ireland had the highest infection cases in Europe (shamefully). To be honest I wasn't very convinced that there was a ever a real lockdown here, just people using their cars less. Now it's back to normal almost.

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

#308

Post by MildlySerious »

tagoregrtst wrote: post #282
MildlySerious wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> [2] ironically, a person who doesn't understand that doesn't have much to live for. What's the point of concluding with such a cynical and subjective-at-best remark?

Im sorry if it came out as cynical. What is worth living for that isnt also worth dying for?

Pizza comes to mind.

On a more serious note, I may be misunderstanding the nuance of what you are saying/asking, but for me there is relatively little overlap between "things worth living for" and "things worth dying for". A few people in my life, that's it. There are plenty of things to live for. Seeing technology advance, traveling, experiencing things, meeting people, creating something of value and/or meaning, having a positive impact. Ultimately, none of those are things worth dying for. I'd rather not have them, than not have them and be dead.

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

#309

Post by biorach »

smitty1e wrote: post #250
andybak wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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,…

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

Nothing new there, beaurocrats and public health officials have long had the power to make highly consequential decisions for large numbers of people.

Yes we could do with some debate about the power they exercise and about how to handle the next pandemic, and there will be a next pandemic. However your dramatic tone is unwarranted and unhelpful.

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

#310

Post by biorach »

jamps wrote: post #195
cm2187 wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

That's correct. At some point we need to look at the real data of deaths. https://www.euromomo.eu/graphs-and-maps/ In Europe, there has NEVER been A PANDEMIC for people All care should have focused on the elderly (early treatment, access to doctors even when positive...). No restrictions (mask, mandatory vaccine, lockdowns..) makes sense for those aged under 45yo.

>In Europe, there has NEVER been A PANDEMIC for people What? This is completely, wildly,untrue. See for starters Spanish Flu (killed mostly those aged under 45), smallpox (disproportionately affecting children)
Post reply on HN