Yesterday, Fergal Bowers of RTE reported that over the last few weeks, the Irish Government thinks it might have missed something in the order of 150,000 covid-19 cases:
150,000 recent Covid cases may not have been counted via @RTENews https://t.co/jHt5FwPuFA
— Fergal Bowers (@FergalBowers) January 6, 2022
It is not hard to understand why this might be the case: Omicron Covid is immensely transmissible. It is also, generally, very mild. We just went through the Christmas period, when the HSE naturally had fewer people available to do tests, and, in addition, the public were in a period of enhanced socialisation. It is likely that many people had Covid and either didn’t realise, or didn’t bother seeking a PCR test, having confirmed it at home with an antigen test. Or, perhaps, a family member got covid, and got tested, and everybody else in the house who got sick knew that they had the disease.
150,000 people is an estimate, but an informed estimate. It is also brilliant news. RTE haven’t really put all of this information together, in one place, but here is the other side of the coin, from Mark Coughlan of Prime Time:
Since Dec 24:
Stats –
Cases: Quadrupled. Hospitalisations: Doubled. ICU total: No change. (Add a 'yet' here, if so inclined. Full lag still to play out). ICU ventilated, slow decline.Prediction – Twitter collectively calls Hermann Rorschach. pic.twitter.com/lXuV20KuO1
— Mark Coughlan (@Mark_Coughlan) January 6, 2022
Case numbers are soaring, hospital numbers are slowly rising, ICU numbers are flat, and the number of people being ventilated artificially to keep them alive is actually falling.
And the case numbers Mark refers to do not include the alleged 150,000 missed cases.
What we have here, is victory, of a sort: We have not flattened the curve. We have not eliminated covid 19. But we have, through some combination of vaccines, better treatment, and a virus that has naturally mutated towards milder variants, almost completely eliminated the existential threat posed by Covid when it first arrived: That it would cause our health service to collapse, and kill thousands who might survive with treatment.
It is, of course, still possible – perhaps even likely – that ICU numbers will rise in the coming weeks. But the danger of a massive surge of critically ill people now seems a possibility that is beyond remote.
This is not some fringe view, by the way. It is also, we can say with absolute confidence, the view of the Government.
The Government of Ireland is no longer acting or behaving like a Government that has any real fear of a massive surge of seriously ill people. It has opened schools as normal. It has allowed people to fly in without a negative test. It is investing in antiviral drugs to help those with severe illness. The Government, for all we might criticise them, know more than anybody that the single biggest threat to them politically is not that restrictions last too long, but that the health service collapses under covid pressure. Their behaviour is a bigger indicator, even than case numbers, that they know that danger has passed.
What remains, if we are honest, is the biggest challenge of all: How to unwind the fear, and convince the public that it is safe to resume normal life.
The country remains full of people who are, even in their day to day existence, over-reacting against the Omicron surge. Keeping people from their homes. Having relatives do the shopping for them. Wearing two or three layers of facemask. Keeping children out of school.
These people are not at as much risk from Covid, as they are from their own fears.
The Government has spent tens of millions of euros on Covid advertising. Now that they have, at long last, changed the policy, it is time that they also changed the message.
The message is, and must be, that life is broadly safe, and that if you get sick, you will likely not get very sick at all. And that, even in the worst case, a hospital bed, and new, effective, antiviral drugs will be available.
The present scenario is, believe it or not, almost the best-case scenario. We now have a seasonal wave of a not especially threatening illness. It is killing, at the present rate, about as many people as the seasonal flu kills, every year.
There is no reason, none at all, to be afraid. The challenge is to convince a cowering public of that.