Thread by @andrewflood

Day 3 of tracking 'NPHETs Exit' with it appears more certainty that its a date in late September. Today's 1866 cases as a blue dot are 103% last Weds & so far its a very encouraging better than minimal. Only 3 days but that's cutting into the possible peak in the near future /1

This carries into hospitalisations although the increased incidence in older groups makes me feel this is more precarious - indicated by week increases
332 Hospital is 136% last week
332 New Hospital Cases this week is 152% previous week
332 NHC is 2.6% of cases to Aug19 /2

ICU occupancy is not so comfortable, here we are more on Optomistic but the rate of increase is slower so that may fall back. Very little wiggle room
61 ICU is 117% last week
37 ICU admissions this week is 103% previous week
37 ICU admissions is 14% of NHC to August 23rd /3

What concerns me is the rapidly increasing incidence is the most vulnerable age group, the over 85s. Yesterday that had trebled in 14 days & it was up again today. With no HSE press conference we didn't here why but suspicion is nursing home outbreaks /4

https://twitter.com/andrewflood/status/1430837274019762180?s=20

The HPSC deaths bulletin to 21/08 has 5 nursing home deaths in it - given the rise in over 85s cases, the age between cases & deaths & dreadful recent experience in the north with 130 such outbreaks we may see a lot of such deaths in the next weeks /5

https://twitter.com/andrewflood/status/1430868190108823555?s=20

The leaks from the CMO letter this evening make it clear that we are not going to see restrictions coming back to control cases - rather the argument is around how soon more opening up with happen with a 90% 16+ fully vaccinated target liable to be reached as cases peak /6

Hard not to see how that will mean anything other than 100s of additional deaths, most of them in late September & then being reported through the months up to xmas. It's what the north & England (164 today alone) have been going through for weeks /7

https://twitter.com/andrewflood/status/1430199771705249799?s=20

Likewise this NPHETs Exit will involve a wave of school age infections. The unstated gamble here is that on a collective level few children will get very sick so the benefit of uninterrupted eduction for the many will outweigh that risk /8

And Covid19 will remain with us, indeed as we get very old may well be the cause of death for a lot of us. A permanent bad flu year for decades although a new generation of vaccines & the discovery of effective treatments may reduce that cost /9

This BTW is the optimistic scenario - at least it suggests an exit from the Pandemic as we have lived it for too long. Bad decisions about the economy V cost of elimination were made in February 2020 and now we live with those & hope any new variants are not that much /10

The roots of those bad decisions lie in the nature of the society we live in, one that prioritises the wealth of the few over the needs of the many. At least you've been vaccinated so you can be got back to work, a large proportion of the worlds population are cut off /11

I'm grimly fascinated by the way Electric Picnic seems to be what people most want to argue about. But music helps us through things and early on this became my theme tune of the pandemic as Boris embarked on his herd immunity experiment across the water

Latest north / south cases per 100k

https://twitter.com/auto_plot/status/1430954615818817538?s=20