Sorry for the OT, but you know how it is when someone is wrong on the internet...

Roman?
:facepalm:
And that from an Irish person who I believe should be aware of their Celtic roots (going further back by 2 millenia, compared to Rome)?
:double_facepalm:
And anyhow, it's not like one culture can put a claim on celebrating a worldwide annual celestial occurence...

Sorry for the OT, back to business (no pun intended).

Yes. I'll send you a PM

Just today I got my first Pfizer shot, because I am a "frontline healthcare professional".

I am happy that I will be less likely to spread COVID-19 to the scores of octo- and the few nonagenarians that frequent my hospital and I am less likely to bring the virus home to my family. And I am sad too, because it makes me think of all of my patients have already died from COVID-19 and those who are yet to follow. Whole generations are being wiped out.

Yesterday, I read that it might take until September or October that the majority of people in my country will have had a vaccination. While we have plenty of money to buy as much vaccine as we want. So even with a vaccine on hand, this winter and spring the virus will cause still more people to get sick and die and more businesses to go bust.

Today I read an article that told about the Moderna vaccine being designed in a weekend after the Chinese professor put the genome sequence online - an act that caused him to be temporarily removed from his position - at a time that in China only a couple of people had died. They started their phase I trial immediately. This means that today, we still need about a small year to get from having an actual vaccin to approval.

You can argue about what course the US or any other country should have or could have taken. There is a remarkable difference between some Asian countries and other countries. However would for instance the US or EU population be ready for a lockdown Asian style with all the privacy invading measures they took as well? Most of the time we tend to be very defensive of our personal freedom. And we don't know what will happen when those Asian countries need to open up again and people start traveling again, everything might flare up again in Asia as well.

And then there are limits to a population's compliance. Over here we have something called an "intelligent lockdown" that does not seem to work very well because we clearly overestimated the overall intelligence of people.

So in the end I agree with you, Hazel. "All roads lead to Rome" applies, and it seems to me there is no clear "best practice".

One second my local news says stay indoors. Break to commercial. Next the news shows how small business goes broke while we stay at home. Damned if ya do. Damned if you don't.

Been also paying attention to the new " Neanderthal gene protects against COVID-19 "

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-h...-idUSKBN29C0GX

While others tell me

" Neanderthal gene found in many people may open cells to coronavirus and increase COVID-19 severity "

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020...rease-covid-19

My Mom had that gene test done. Being Cossack Ukranian with some Mongol thrown in. The mind wanders.
Conflicting statements or no win actions every where lately.

They've vaccinated the Queen and Prince Philip now. High time too! They're both over 90 and it wouldn't be good for the national morale if either of them died.

Apparently a quarter of our over-90's have received their first jab now, which is not bad going. The last I heard they had brought the army in to manage the logistics.

The first signs that things are easing here - "Only" 4,842 cases yesterday.

But going on the [admittedly rough] estimates we have, i.e.

• 10-14 days for new cases to show
• 3-4 weeks for hospitalizations
• 5-6 weeks for deaths

We have had a 3rd wave centred on a recent festival in December. By the month's end we'll have flooded the hospitals, & overrun the ICUs, and next month, the death toll starts seriously mounting.The Government, to be fair, are gearing up with ventilators, extra ICU facilities, and clearing private hospitals to cope with the overload. Just doing the sums, I'm counting this country's 14 day incidence at 1,322/100,000. There's counties here with a 14 day incidence of over 2,000/100,000. Meanwhile folks are going more insane than usual with cabin fever or pandemic fatigue, however you diagnose it.

This 14 day incidence is worse than: The Excited States (=875/100,000);The UK (1118.85/100,000), which also holds the dubious record for most deaths per number of population; I can't get the incidence for the North of Ireland, but they are certainly worse than the Republic of Ireland. We have had 140,000 cases in 4.95 Million since this began, they have had 87,000 in a population of under two million.

A few Ireland links @business_kid.
https://www.worldometers.info/corona...untry/ireland/
https://covid19ireland-geohive.hub.arcgis.com/
https://www.irishtimes.com/topics/to...rthern+Ireland
https://www.gdc-uk.org/information-s...rthern-ireland
https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/details/interactive-map
https://www.irishcentral.com/topic/northern-ireland

8 generations back from me, in 1720, a man left Ulster for the new world. He found himself an Irish lass to marry, once he got here. He lived until 1767, was buried in a church yard in the colony of Massachusetts. 8 generations later, with some, English, Scott, German, Dutch, Dane, Cherokee, Chickasaw, throwed in, here I am.

( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

Yes, I've noticed that the Irish of times past seemed irresistible to women . Much the same applies today.
But there's still no separate linking of NOI statistics, that allow extraction of 7 or 14 day incidence. I'd have to watch our news nightly for a fortnight, where they toss out figures and work one out myself. The comments on Boris, Brexit, & Covid are interesting also
The last link (irishcentral.com) is good reading for anyone, especially this bit https://www.irishcentral.com/opinion...xit-disastrous . You can see why I raised this: https://www.linuxquestions.org/quest...nt-4175687878/

There's a deadpan guru with an overused scientific calculator on Irish TV who's doing plots and graphs for the nightly news and the Central Statistics Office releasing all sorts of juicy details on our figures every fortnight revealing the depth of fecal matter above our nation's head Covid-wise. I just watch. There's not much else I can do, apart from becoming a statistic.

EDIT:
From one of those irishcentral.com links giving a diary of coronavirus data, I managed to extract a 14 day incidence for the NOI of 1010.05, which is frankly much lower than I expected. The place is still two distinct social groups, with different politics, and very few able to bridge divides, so that may help to explain things.

I remember (in the 1970s) being driven through Belfast by a local one Sunday morning, and he pointed out territories or districts controlled by one or the other of four groups (Provisional IRA, Official IRA, UDA, & UVF). The place was full of invisible barriers. That may explain why the Covid is just rampant there, and not spreading like wildfire.

I have to correct that as the 14 day incidence figure came over the news last night as 1292. Mine were based on http://bing.com/covid and I'd certainly trust CSO figures over M$ figures any day. bing.com is down right now.

It's likely to rise some more, btw, there's a day or two of low(ish) figures to get out of the 14 days. We were as low as 2.98/100,000 with half a dozen daily cases. They're just bracing for the worst at the hospitals and hope they can take it. There's already one hospital calling for more staff because plenty are out with covid (ill or self isolating). If we had 14 days of yesterday's figures, the 14 day incidence /100,000 would be ~1950!

OT for certain but why, business kid, would you use a Microsoft search engine?

I wasn't using the search engine. bing.com/covid has a graph you can expand showing statistics back to March. Have a look at the site. That, coupled with worldometer's population figures are the quickest way of constructing a 14 day incidence per 100k of population, which allows comparison of figures across places big and small. If there was another place logging 14 day incidence/100,000, I'd use it, because it's not m$. Have you got one?

Actually England's figures just might be worse, but I can't get them except as part of the UK, where their statistical nastiness is blunted by comparatively healthier countries.

If you think that, you're mistaken. Scotland's figures have been consistently worse than ours. Not that this kind of competition makes much sense.

Great! Not that I'm anti-English. I just wanted to find SOMEWHERE with figures worse than ours, preferably with 14 days of data so I can calculate the incidence per 100,000.

Places hit the sort of madness Ireland has (~1300 per 100K for 14 days) at the peak of a wave. It's uncomfortable that we're at that place now. Because, like England, our health service has been ramped down for decades. There's only 280 ICU beds for a population of 4.96 Million. To be fair, that's up from 170 ICU beds last March. There's a thriving business here in Nursing Agencies. Hospitals who are short of staff (because they don't pay enough) go to agencies for extra staff. The Agency Nurses often can cherry pick their days and time slots, leaving permanent staff the awkward slots. Subcontractors come from a different budget.

Have you any good links for me on English/Scottish/Welsh/NOI data?

No, I'm not studying it. Why rub our noses in the mess?

But I believe the worst countries per 1000 head of population are Belgium and Peru. Ireland comes well down the list.

Well, we're on the peak of a wave now, and we're heavily restricted. We're far from the worst per head of population, but we're pretty high on a 14 day incidence per 100k.I had no intentions of rubbing anyone's nose in it. Although our PM is getting an easier time of it than yours atm, we are paying for our Saturnalia parties now. Others, including many foreigners, are out of work and cracking up slowly in their single apartments.

What had become our favourite vegan restaurant opened about a year ago. It took off well but then came a lock down March. He was hoping to break even by year's end but was hit with another 6 weeks of lockdown. It's permanently closed.