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[TD1]

Which part of Ireland? The colleen flirting with me from Galway seems to think Cavan and Galway areas are gonna be locked fast.

[ChairmanPoo]

Well I think everything is more or less locked down by now so that bit doesn´t make any difference.

Not that I´m in either county mind you.

I think Cork and Limerick will precede Galway in restrictions.  TBH Galway itself isn´t even that big. Pop density is overall very low, I think except for Dublin a good chunk of the population of each county live in small hamlets and only go to the (smallish) cities to go to the mall.
In all honesty I think Ireland has been  spared the bluntness of covid elsewhere in Europe mostly thanks to this low population density, plus relative geographical isolation. Otherwise I´d say the HSE has got less resources than other healthcare systems to cope with big waves. It´s pushed to the brink every winter with the flu. I know many people in the hospital are worried. I think that´s why the NPHET guy wanted level 5 off the bat: covid hospital admissions come with a delay of 2-3 weeks so you have to anticipate, plus there are not enough ICU beds to cope with a big wave (That´s the objetctive truth. There are only around 240ish ICU beds in the ROI, and I dont know to what extent it´s possible to expand them like other countries did, given the scarcity of healthcare personnel)


BTW picture from a couple of weeks ago. As it turns out my NOte10+ CAN do long exposures. And the low urbanization means light contamination is low

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Do you actually get auroras in the north? I mean to photography that sometime.

[hector13]

According to a Beeb article I read a while back, it seems less likely to be covid with aches and/or sore throats, though it doesn’t rule it out.

Apparently the loss of taste/smell is a super common symptom though.

Hopefully all is good though, I don’t think anyone needs the extra worry.

[Starver]

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Looks nice, for the fraction of a second before it crashes my browser (4096x4096, I see, from the img--tagged URL, though I've had so many other problems with the newsest Firefix for Android that I don't think that's the only issue - and if it shows at all it shouldn't then quit, Shirley?).

Do you actually get auroras in the north? I mean to photography that sometime.

Borealis? It is not unknown, for the whole of the British Isles, but being more northerly is naturally a bonus to your chances. I think we're currently in a solar-lull, though (or is that just sunspots?) so I'd not be expecting anything spectacular visible for southern Eire anytime soon. Though, with 2020 being 2020, I wouldn't discount an inconveniently polarised Coronal Mass Ejection coming directly our way before Christmas, so stock up on batteries...

[TD1]

Do you actually get auroras in the north? I mean to photography that sometime.

Yes, but very rarely. You'd need to go to Antrim and then make a wish on a shooting star.

[Starver]

So, back to Earth for everyone, the WHO have declared remdesivir ineffective (Gilead is arguing against the robustness/incompleteness of the study, which sounds very much like a classic Sir Humphrey objection to me) to add to their prior objections over hydroxychloroquine.

And, in home news, huge bits of the UK being L2 or even L3 (apparently Lancashire wangled non-restriction on gyms, simulataneous with a Liverpool gym being fined for not closing under their default L3 conditions - which makes this 'simple consistent approach' less a reality than advertised). Fun!

[Reelya]

They spent too long bullshitting on masks to the point they need to shut down actual productive stuff. Mandatory masks are basically the least obstructive thing you can do in terms of the economics, despite being a highly 'visible' thing. If governments had done that from the start the economies of the world wouldn't be tanking anywhere near as hard as they are now.

[Doomblade187]

https://apnews.com/article/election-2020-virus-outbreak-pandemics-public-health-new-york-e321f4c9098b4db4dd6b1eda76a5179e

[wierd]

https://apnews.com/article/election-2020-virus-outbreak-pandemics-public-health-new-york-e321f4c9098b4db4dd6b1eda76a5179e

Really, this is just what is expected and normal when the playbook is HyperNormalized politics.

The BBC did a documentary on this several years ago.  It's just as true today as then, and even more poignant now that there is a very prominent public health emergency.

The politicians of this century are brought up on the dogma that no matter what happens (NO MATTER WHAT HAPPENS), they can spin it politically, and that this is "Identical to solving the problem", because the people won't question it. (or if they do, it wont matter.)


Seriously.  Watch this.  The whole 2 and a half hours.  Then reflect on the Trump administration, Bolsanaro and Co in south america, and the entire "We wont actually do what needs to be done to solve this problem, and want to ignore it out of existence" that the entire western world is engaging in.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fh2cDKyFdyU

Watch it.  Really.

[martinuzz]

So, back to Earth for everyone, the WHO have declared remdesivir ineffective (Gilead is arguing against the robustness/incompleteness of the study, which sounds very much like a classic Sir Humphrey objection to me) to add to their prior objections over hydroxychloroquine.

Over here in the Netherlands though, remdesivir has become standard treatment protocol, and does seem to lessen the severeness of the disease when administered in the early stages. Less people need to go to the ICU, and patients on average spend less time in hospital.
For more severe cases, dexamethason is used to suppress the immune system so it does less damage to the body, improving survival rates for ICU patients.

[ChairmanPoo]

and does seem to lessen the severeness of the disease when administered in the early stages.

Based on what? controlled trials so far sow little to no effect.

[martinuzz]

Based on the percentage of hospital admissions needing to go to the ICU.  It's significantly lower than in the first wave.
Death rates are also lower.

[Starver]

Like for like? (Could be as easy as: previously, only serious cases get admitted to higher tiers of care for fear of overloading the system; now, there's a lot of created space from additional beds and suppressing other more 'casual' admissions so people get put into the next level of care with less absolute need and then end up doing better than the ones that were in there out of dire necessity. Or some other change like picking any medical complications up earlier, additional proven broad-spectrum treatments, a whole lot more practice properly fitting ventilation tubes, etc.)


No, I'm not (for a long time now) even on mask-to-mask speaking terms with actual experts in medical trials, so these aren't anything like qualified objections, just passing thoughts based on very old info absorbed by memetic osmosis and still splashing around one of the many unused bits of by current brain...

[ChairmanPoo]

Based on the percentage of hospital admissions needing to go to the ICU.  It's significantly lower than in the first wave.
Death rates are also lower.

Yeah, but that's true worldwide. There are many potential reasons for that.
- more testing capacity means more mild cases are detected
- a big chunk of the most vulnerable population groups already died during wave #1
- better hospital capacity, better know-how on complication management, better resource allocation (aka: what Starver said)

Meanwhile Remdemesvir has failed several randomized trials, and it didn't even do too well in the ones that were used by the fda as a basis for approval. I'm kind of skeptical of it as any sort of gamechanger drug. The British dexamethasone trial had far more meaningful results, for instance.

[wierd]

There's also the potential that a greater degree of ambient exposure (due to the virus being now basically endemic in any public shared space, used by a reasonably large public demographic) has led to exposure levels insufficient to induce illness, but sufficient to generate immune responses, leading to less naive immune reactions when people DO get subjected to disease inducing levels of virus. (You know, like from that wedding that they just *HAD* to attend)


"Herd Immunity" is not supported by current documentation-- that is not really what I am suggesting here.  More "Less naive immune response".  That is by no means the same thing.

Compare:  You have had the flu many times in your life. If you get exposed to the flu, you will get the flu, but your body knows how to deal with flu, because it has had it before many times. With some good OTC meds, you probably are not going to die from it. / You are a native pacific islander who has never encountered flu before, and some jackass breathed H1N1 all over you. You have a very high fever, are experiencing extreme dehydration from vomiting and diarrhea, are experiencing delirium, and quite possibly could in fact die from it.


In the former, you have "Less naive immune response", and in the latter, you have "Completely naive immune response."


1st wave infection was very much "Completely naive immune response".  (While common cold is ubiquitous, AND a coronavirus, COVID-19 is a vastly different beast, and the majority of the population had never been exposed to a pathogen of that family before.)