So Confused; Irish cases- why there are more cases 4.7.21 than this time last year

[ThePearlOfDumbarton]

562 new cases ystrdy 4/7/2021 on the gov.ie covid stats site.
But there have been 4,369,136 doses of vaccine administered. With nearly 2m fully vaccinated.

About two months ago cases were 400 approx and now with more people vaccinated, cases are going up?

Who's left to get it?
This time last year there were fewer cases werent there?
So when nobody was vaccinated and far fewer people had had it, there were fewer cases?

We were all relaxing this time last year.

@ThePearlOfDumbarton where have you been? The delta variant is hugely transmissible and therefore loads more cases. Most people will end up getting once more than once. Testing has increased hugely. Vaccines are not 100% and never have been touted as such. It’s all info that’s pretty much available all of the time.

*it more than once

Because they stop serious illness not getting it. Delta was agame changer for that

Are 80-90% of all people in ROI really vaccinated? Both jabs? Not just adults? Nowhere is vaccinating under 12s afaik.

The vaccines work very well at reducing severe illness and death, but you can still catch covid - then your immune system deals with it much more quickly and efficiently than it would otherwise, thanks to the vaccine, making you less likely to be severely ill or die. And as others have said, Delta is much more contagious than the covid going round a year ago.

Valid point it’s 60% fully vaccinated

80% of adults in the ROI fully vaccinated, and 90% have had first vaccination according to hse website.

Ive heard of the delta variant of course but how sick do you have to be be certain you have it, to do a test? And these are vaccinated people. I wouldnt be expecting to catch it being vaccinated, so id have to be quite symptomatic and certain of it to get tested.

But if nobody else is surprised by nearly 2,000 cases per day with schools being shut for the summer, most people still working from home..... no indoor dining yet, masks still compulsory 🙄🤔 ... if two thousand cases per day makes sense to other people then im glad because i dont want my fears to be right.

Vaccines prime your immune system so they can respond to the virus so you can still get it I am not sure what point you are trying to make

Wow. The point I've made a few times now is that the number of cases is so much higher than makes sense given the high percentage of the population vaccinated. So these new cases, mostly vaccinated people, they had symptoms bad enough that they were certain enough to do a test.

Well yes, clearly the vaccines aren’t as effective as hoped at preventing infection and spread.

From what Ronan Glynn was saying the other day, vaccines are very effective at preventing death and severe disease. And that’s pretty important, yes. Very few people are dying or being admitted to ICU who have been double jabbed.

However there are clearly many cases among the vaccinated and a ‘significant proportion’ (Glynn’s words) of those in hospital have had two jabs. So it’s not all good news.

They better be throwing everything they can at helping the health service cope, because I’m not locking down again, that’s for sure.

Or a more positive reading is that we must be nearing the peak of the Delta wave soon and that percentage of vaccinated people growing and growing will eventually cause infection rates to slow, even if at an individual level, the protection isn’t perfect.

Kinda what happened in the U.K.

I hope so @TheKeatingFive, those numbers have to start dropping soon.

A "significant proportion" of double jabbed people ending up in hospital. This is not what i want to hear. But also I cant take more lockdown.

That quote wasn’t “a significant proportion of double jabbed ending up in hospital” it was “a significant proportion of those in hospital are double jabbed”. Very different and not concerning for reasons discussed at length elsewhere.

@LitPearl

Wow. The point I've made a few times now is that the number of cases is so much higher than makes sense given the high percentage of the population vaccinated. So these new cases, mostly vaccinated people, they had symptoms bad enough that they were certain enough to do a test.

But as I have said that isn’t actually surprising given that the main reported efficacy (and the studies are out there) is with preventing serious illness.

If you think that the vaccines are effective at stopping you getting it you are correct but that is reported in more than one paper from more than one country that has done the study.

Whether the viral load is less is I think up for debate

As to needing symptoms to appear that isn’t the only reason you test. A positive LFT, asked to PCR test due to being a close contact, holidays etc mean a fairly significant proportion of those cases are asymptomatic.

When you factor in the age of the unvaccinated as well and being the most mobile you can see how it spreads

So it does make sense. It’s not a perfect picture of how vaccines work

What is interesting though with NI figures is that the hospitalisation haven’t been so dramatically effected the number though small is still high

But it is also semantics significant proportion just means large enough to be noticed so could mean any figure

Yes I understood that luckily although i can see that it's not what i typed! 🤦‍♀️

Well it’s telling that they released actual figures for deaths / ICU admissions (which are reassuringly low) but not hospitalisations.

I suspect they wouldn’t say significant unless it was at least 20%. However they also said on another occasion that these stays tended to be shorter than others, which also makes sense.

There’s an article in the IT today that says they anticipate reaching 400 in hospital, so I guess we have a while to go before panic stations. The same article talked about moving towards personal responsibility for one’s own safety, which seems to downplay any idea of reintroducing restrictions.

Still no update on the figures of cases since 13 august. Will be interesting to see Tuesday's figures on Wednesday. 🤞
It is reassuring that any vaccinated people who end up in hospital have a shorter stay.