As you may know I've been tracking PCR testing closely for the last 7/8 weeks.
I want to make this very clear.
There is no general self-referral HSE PCR testing system in this country anymore.
The HSE offers just 12-13k test appointments in 12 counties ...
...to a small group of citizens who have a positive antigen test (despite high false negative rates), who are not aged 4-39, or who are healthcare workers.
Despite this, all available appointments book out rapidly just after release at midnight across most of the country.
The state typically dos about 30-40k tests a day. A country of comparable size, Denmark, does about 200,000+ tests a day.
Ireland is a test free zone in comparison.
The consequences of this are many.
Firstly, it means that any isolation policy is fundamentally broken, as it relies on self-administered antigen testing
Secondly, it means that tracing is over
Thirdly, it means there is no data AT ALL to ascertain infection volumes or rates
This is the context, entirely blind but with even reported rates known to be the highest in the world, that government chose the moment to further relax covid containment.
They are doing this because they have failed.
They are removing the requirement for isolation because they can no longer test reliably for infections amongst contacts.
They are implementing the failed school contact policy across the country now.
The consequence will be simple. A country that already has the highest infection rates in the modern world, will see worse rates still.
These rates will initially convert to hospitalisations, as has already clearly begun, and in due course to ICU admissions and deaths.
Government know that this will happen. Their own overly optimistic conversion rate from infection to hospitalisation is 0.5% (far lower than has been seen in other countries, but that's a normal optimism for NPHET).
They have no idea how many ICU conversions will result.
Their hope is not many. They have no evidence on which to base this hope. Government is a fact free zone. It is described by Carl Sagan thus:
so why does testing matter?
For this very simple reason.
Anyone who is infected with covid is infectious for 2 days before symptoms arise. There is NO OTHER WAY to identify an infectious person other than tracing and testing before incubation ends and infectiousness begins.
If you abandon testing, as Ireland has done, then you are decided on infection and spread.
I see the much anticipated "peak" has been dropped as an idea by NPHET. Now it's just maybe happening according to modelling (which no real epidemiologists believe) and will be a long drawn out affair anyway.
Network scientists have a name for that. it's called an S curve.
It normally is used to describe an idea or product adoption curve, where adoption starts very slow, and then accelerates till everyone regularly adopts the product.
here the product is covid, and government have essentially handed it the market.
the idea of idea adoptions (or meme) or indeed product adoption on the one hand, and covid acquisition by a population on the other, seem to have some useful parallels.
Both are driven by social networks (physical rather than virtual). Both see clustering and breakout.
We really have to hit this nail of the head: omicron is less severe so it will be all right.
Lets take the extreme new claim. 70% less severe.Lets believe it for a moment.
so if 100 cases was delivering 10 hospitalisations, not it's only delivering 3.
Here is the problem.
omicron grows the number of cases, doubling every 2 days.
So after 4 days you have 400 cases.
3% of 400 is 12.
So you have more cases that with the original strain.
And from here it gets worse.
because omicron keeps doubling every 2 days, the next doubling will yield 800 cases, of which, I'm sure you're getting it now, 24 will be hospitalisations.
There is a very thin line between optimism and denial, and most people seem to cross it regularly.
The "optimist" looks at this graph, for example, and says "at least there is availability in donegal".
The realist looks at the optimist and wonder what is he smoking?
my conclusion is that anyone who consistently looks for the up side of a situation has a kind of mental brittleness has a character flaw not a strength.
I'm actually an infuriatingly optimistic person. But there is nothing optimistic about our position with covid. it's all bad.