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Two Years of Covid in Ireland

Posted in Biographical, Covid-19, Maynooth with tags , , on February 28, 2022 by telescoper

Trying to find something other than the conflict in Ukraine to write about, I thought I’d do a quick post to mark that we have reached the two year mark since the first “official” case of Covid-19 in Ireland was detected. It seems so long ago that I had forgotten that 2020 was a leap year and the date was 29th February, and the case was reported a day later on 1st March 2020.

It was to be another couple of weeks before we went into the first lockdown and I didn’t start keeping a log of all the cases and deaths until 27th March 2020, but you will find a complete record here (backdated to the date of the first case).

Here is the latest plot, with data complete up to today:

Today is the day that most Covid related restrictions are lifted. There is no longer a legal requirement to wear masks anywhere other than in healthcare settings, though at my University there is a recommendation to do so. I dropped into Dunnes this morning to buy a sandwich to have for lunch and I’d say a slight majority of shoppers (including myself) were still wearing masks, though all the staff I saw were unmasked (a fact which I found very disappointing).

I intend to carry on wearing a face covering in shops and, of course, in classrooms (and especially in labs) for the foreseeable future. I didn’t have any teaching this morning so I don’t know what the students are doing. We are told that if a student refuses to wear a mask then lecturers can’t make them, but peer pressure may do the job for us. We do have a significant number of students off and teaching staff unavailable due to Covid-19 infection but we just have to manage this as best we can.

The requirement to have a PCR test if you are symptomatic has also lapsed for most people in Ireland, but not for me. As I’m over the age of 55 I am still required to take a test if I have symptoms.

The drastic reduction in testing implied by the change in regulations will undoubtedly lead to a steep reduction in PCR-confirmed cases (currently running at a seven-day average of around 3500 per day) and in the light of this I’m not sure it’s worth carrying on plotting the data for much longer. I will persevere for the mean time though.

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They think it’s all over…

Posted in Biographical, Covid-19, Education, Maynooth on February 18, 2022 by telescoper

This afternoon it was announced that the Government of Ireland would be accepting the latest advice from the National Public Health Emergency Team (NPHET) to wind down most of the remaining Covid-19 restrictions from 28th February 2002. The first officially recognized Covid-19 case in Ireland was reported on March 1st 2020, so that will be two years after the arrival of the pandemic here.

The decision means that face masks will no longer be required on public transport or in shops or in schools, though they will be mandatory in hospitals and other health-care settings. I assume this extends to universities too. Likewise limits on social distancing. The Chief Medical Officer has also announced that PCR testing will no longer be performed for anyone under the age of 55. It seems that even NPHET itself is to be phased out.

I know many people will be celebrating the end of these restrictions, but in case you need reminding here are the latest figures for Covid-19 in Ireland:

PCR-confirmed new cases are still running at 4500+ per day (almost double that if you include self-reported antigen tests). That means medically vulnerable people would be at risk of infection if those around them are not wearing masks. Masks protect others more than they protect the wearer so allowing the wearing of face masks to be discretionary puts such people in danger. For this reason I for one will be continuing to wear a face covering in shops, on buses, etc for the foreseeable future.

I don’t mind this – it was widespread practice in Asia long before the Coronavirus pandemic – and just can’t understand the extreme anti-maskers who liken the wearing of a face covering to being put in a concentration camp. I just hope we don’t get situations in which those who choose to wear a mask on, say, a bus get picked on by those who don’t.

At the moment in the Department of Theoretical Physics at Maynooth the situation is that a significant fraction of our students are staying away from lectures because of illness or self-isolation and one lecturer is having to do his teaching remotely. That’s not too bad; I feared much worse. I think other Departments have worse problems, missing demonstrators and tutors who are unable to come on campus.

The logic behind scrapping these restrictions is that despite the high case numbers the vaccination programme (helped, perhaps by the ‘milder’ omicron variant) does seem to have succeeded in keeping hospitalizations and deaths at a much lower level than in previous waves. Implicitly the strategy is to let Covid-19 wash over the population without worrying that the Health Service will be overwhelmed. My main worry now is what if another variant emerges after we have let our guard down?

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Particle Physics Masterclass at Maynooth

Posted in Covid-19, Maynooth, The Universe and Stuff on February 9, 2022 by telescoper

You may remember that we ran a very successful virtual Astrophysics & Cosmology Masterclass at Maynooth University last November. Now it’s time to announce the forthcoming International Masterclass on Particle Physics. This will take place on campus at Maynooth during the half-term break:

 

You can find more information, including instructions on how to book a place, here. The first such Masterclass at Maynooth took place in March 2012, so this year we will be celebrating the 10th anniversary.

These Masterclasses give secondary school students the opportunity to discover the world of quarks and leptons for themselves, by performing measurements on real data from CERN, meeting active particle physics researchers and linking up with like-minded students from other countries.  We will join thousands of other secondary school students at more than 100 universities and laboratories around Europe and worldwide in a programme stretching over four weeks.

Physics at the most fundamental level – the smallest and most basic building blocks of matter – is an exotic world.  But a few introductory talks and working with data from CERN will give the students insight into the fundamental particles of matter and the forces between them, as well as what went on during the Big Bang.

On Sunday afternoon, the students are introduced to particle physics, experiments and detectors in lectures given by active particle physics researchers.  On Monday, after a virtual visit to the ALICE detector at CERN, they work on their own with data from ALICE Afterwards they participate in a video conference with students from other countries and moderators at CERN, where they discuss and compare their results.

For more information on the Particle Physics Masterclasses, see the International Masterclasses web site.

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Leaving Certificate Matters

Posted in Covid-19, Education, Maynooth with tags on February 4, 2022 by telescoper

On the last day of a very busy first week of the new term I’ve finally cleared a backlog of things and thought I’d take a break for a quick comment about the arrangements for this year’s Leaving Certificate which has implications for this year’s University admissions (amongst many other things).

It has been decided that this year’s Leaving Certificate will revert to the pre-pandemic style of written examinations, but with the important proviso that the overall distribution of marks will be scaled to be no lower than the results last year (when accredited grades were taken into account). In addition the examinations will offer students more choice, so that they have to answer a smaller subset of the questions than in the good old days before Covid.

Last year’s Leaving Certificate results revealed a big increase in scores and consequent changes in offers for many courses. For example, the points required for our Theoretical Physics and Mathematics course (MH206) at Maynooth University went up by about 50 to around 550. Perhaps surprisingly this resulted in the admissions to this course going up by about a factor three. I won’t speculate on the reasons for this here.

The reason for scaling this year’s results is to ensure that students entering third-level education this year are not disadvantaged relative to those who left school last year and took a year out. Also, there is much less information on which to base accredited grades, because of pandemic interruptions.

My concern about the announcement is not so much about the return to formal examinations but on the matter of choice. Take Mathematics for instance. Instead of answering questions in each of 10 sections, students this year will only have to answer questions from six. That means that students can get very high grades despite knowing nothing about 40% of the syllabus. That matters most for subjects that require students to have certain skills and knowledge for entry into University.

In my own discipline (physics) we already have to get new students rapidly up to speed in, e.g., calculus – a difficulty exacerbated this year by the fact that the first Semester was shortened as a knock-on effect of delays in Leaving Certificate process – this is likely also to be a problem for next year’s entry. I can see we’re going to have to do a lot of thinking over the summer about how to deal with this.

Overall I prefer the Leaving Certificate over the UK system of A-levels, as the former gives the students a broader range of subjects than the latter (as does the International Baccalaureate), but I still have doubts about using a simple points count for determining entry into third-level education. Changing a system so deeply embedded is likely to prove difficult, though, so we for the foreseeable future we just have to make the best of what we’ve got.

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All Change for Semester Two!

Posted in Covid-19, Education, Maynooth with tags , , , on January 31, 2022 by telescoper

So here we are, then, at the start of Semester Two at Maynooth University. When I arrived in the Department of Theoretical Physics I noticed a few differences:

August 2020 versus January 2022

All the signage relating to physical distancing has been removed. We are no longer required to observe 2m spacing between individuals in labs or anywhere else. That solves my potential problem about constraints in the Computational Physics lab (to the left of the picture).

Our little kitchen is also now back in operation so we can share that space for lunch or coffee, sitting around the table which has now been put back in place. Staff meetings can be held in person, though the meeting of Academic Council I have to attend this afternoon will still be via Teams. I don’t actually start teaching until tomorrow and will be in the office most of the day so will have to wait until tomorrow until I find out how busy the campus seems; we expect there to be more students around than last term.

Students are still to wear face coverings in lectures etc but other than that all restrictions seem to have gone, including those on eating and social spaces on campus. Everyone seems to have decided that this pandemic is all over. Only time – and perhaps the next coronavirus variant – will tell whether they are right.

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Starting Back Again

Posted in Covid-19, Education, Maynooth on January 25, 2022 by telescoper

So. The Examination Period at Maynooth University is over and the students are having a bit of a break before we start teaching again next Monday, 31st January. In the meantime we have to finish the examination marking and prepare for the new term. I’ve actually been on campus for part of the last two days, as have a few of my colleagues though there aren’t many students around.

Yesterday we received the expected guidance on how teaching will proceed based on the Government’s decision on Friday to relax most Covid-19 related restrictions. The one big change that I really expected was that large lectures (to audiences of 250+ students) would resume on campus, but it seems that will not happen until half-term. Presumably that’s because many Departments had planned on the basis of these being online and were caught on the hop by the abrupt change. It was at half-term in 2020 that we entered the first lockdown so it will be two full years until we completely re-open (assuming there are no setbacks).

This makes no difference to Theoretical Physics however as we don’t have any classes with more than 250 students in them.

Another thing to have changed is the staggered start of lectures. In the Good Old Days all lectures at Maynooth started at five past the hour and ended at five to and were consequently 50 minutes long. Last term rooms were designated to have lectures starting at 10 past or 5 past and and lectures were reduced in length to 45 minutes so would finish either at 5-to or 10-to. This was to avoid having large numbers of students mingling in foyers and corridors at the start and end of lectures.

Semester 2 will have a full 12 weeks of teaching too, as we won’t miss the first week like we did last term. Hopefully that means Semester 2 will be a bit less rushed than Semester 1; for example in the first year there will be 36 lectures of 50 minutes’ duration (1800 minutes altogether) compared with 33 lectures of 55 minutes (1485 in total), which gives 315 extra minutes – five and a quarter hours – which is about 21%! It seems a lot when put like that. Perhaps we should adjust the weighting of Semester 1 v Semester 2 modules to reflect this?

My biggest worry was a capacity limit on our Computational Physics lab, but with no physical distancing requirement that worry has receded. I’ve decided however that I should still allow any students that want it to attend the lab remotely.

That brings me to the interesting issue. Although officially we are reopening to something near full capacity the question remains as to how many students are comfortable with the new arrangements. Little thought seems to have been given to vulnerable students with underlying health issues and we may find quite a lot of them opting not to return to campus just yet. It is incumbent on us to cater for these students in the best way possible but as yet we don’t know how many there will be in this situation.

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Restrictions Eased

Posted in Covid-19, Education, Maynooth, Politics on January 22, 2022 by telescoper

Last night the Taioseach Micheál Martin went on the telly to confirm, amid a flood of clichés, the news that had been leaking all day that most public health restrictions in Ireland were to be scrapped from 6am this morning. That means all capacity limits on pubs and restaurants, social distancing, vaccination certificates, household gatherings, etc, no longer apply from today. I wasn’t up at 6am to see anyone rushing to the nearest pub to celebrate but I suspect some might have done.

The scale of the loosening of restrictions has taken a lot of us by surprise, especially as case numbers, though falling, are still at very high levels. This was the situation yesterday:

The key thing is the orange line, which has remained steady and low despite the rising number of cases; the very successful vaccination booster programme and the apparently less lethal nature of the omicron variant have combined to keep hospitalizations well below hospital capacity, especially for intensive care and relatively stable.

Let me remark on the fatality figures. Ireland only reports Covid-19 related deaths once a week now, on Wednesdays. In the week up to 19th January, 52 deaths were reported. That compares with 1,865 over the same period in the UK (and that figure is obtained using an artificial 28-day cutoff, i.e. a Covid-19 related death is only counted as such if it occurs within 28 days of a positive test). The population of the UK is about 67 million, compared to Ireland’s 5 million, i.e. about 13 times larger. The number of Covid-19 related deaths however, even using the artificially reduced UK figure, is 36 times larger. That means the per capita death rate there in the UK is at least 2.7 times higher than here in Ireland. What are so many more people dying in the UK? The only reason I can think of is that the UK has significantly worse vaccination coverage.

Note also that although most restrictions are being removed, that does not mean all restrictions are being removed. People who test positive for Covid-19 will still have to isolate, as will close contacts. Face coverings will still be required in indoor settings such as shops and on public transport, for example. I for one would have carried on wearing a face covering in such places even if it were not required.

Obviously it is good that restrictions are being removed. Everyone I know is fed up and many businesses, especially in the hospitality sector, are struggling. I would however like to make two points.

First, give a thought to those people who are medically vulnerable. They will be very concerned at the removal of social distancing. I can imagine that many will have good reasons for not wanting to be in the crowded environments that are now allowed. I certainly think we should continue to make it possible for students in that situation, or those who have to isolate, to follow lectures remotely.

My second point is that almost everyone seems to be assuming that there’s no possibility at all of another, more lethal, variant coming along and putting us all back to square one. The greater the level of infection circulating, the greater the probability this will happen. Loosening restrictions will lead to a further increase in cases and a greater probability of further mutations in the coronavirus. For that reason alone I would have preferred a more gradual relaxation of the rules. In other words, I don’t agree with this front page in today’s Irish Times, which I think is highly irresponsible.

It crossed my mind last night that it was in mid-March 2020 that we entered our first lockdown. What’s the betting that we’ll have to reimpose restrictions about the same time in 2022 as a result of another surge?

We don’t know yet precisely what all this means for teaching at Maynooth University, which is due to resume a week on Monday. I’d guess that it means that all lectures, including very large ones, will be on campus. We’ll have to wait for official guidance on that, though I’m fairly confident there won’t be big changes for my Department compared with last Semester. My one concern was physical distancing in the Computational Physics lab, but that seems likely not to be an issue now.

There won’t be any big changes for me in a personal sense either. I don’t intend to suddenly start going out in crowded places and it will take me some time to feel confident enough to resume my concert-going, etc. When the Taoiseach announced the removal of all physical distancing requirements yesterday, to take place from early the next morning, it was as if we were all expected to turn overnight from fermions into bosons. I’ve never liked crowds and have become even more agoraphobic over the last two years of the pandemic. It will be some time before I get over that, if I ever do.

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A New Bank Holiday in Ireland

Posted in Covid-19, History, Maynooth on January 20, 2022 by telescoper

Yesterday the Irish Government announced that there would be an additional Bank Holiday this year, on 18th March (which is the day after the existing St Patrick’s Day holiday on March 17th) to recognize the efforts of the great many people (including volunteers) who have worked so hard to counter the Covid-19 pandemic and to commemorate those who lost their lives to the coronavirus. It’s a good idea and hopefully it will occur at a time when there are many fewer restrictions than currently, which should make it a memorable occasion.

Interestingly, though, the new Bank Holiday is not a one-off but will become a permanent addition to the calendar, though on a different date: it will happen on or around 1st February from 2023 onwards. This is interesting because it corrects an anomaly in the distribution of public holidays, which I will explain here.

In the Northern hemisphere, from an astronomical point of view, the solar year is defined by the two solstices (summer, around June 21st, and winter, around December 21st) and the equinoxes (spring, around March 21st, and Autumn, around September 21st). These four events divide the year into four roughly equal parts of about 13 weeks each.

If you divide each of these intervals in two you divide the year into eight pieces of six and a bit weeks each. The dates midway between the astronomical events mentioned above are (roughly) :

  • 1st February: Imbolc (Candlemas)
  • 1st May: Beltane (Mayday)
  • 1st August: Lughnasadh (Lammas)
  • 1st November: Samhain (All Saints Day)

The names I’ve added in italics are taken from the Celtic/neo-Pagan and, in parenthesis the Christian terms),for these cross-quarter days. These timings are rough because the dates of the equinoxes and solstices vary from year to year. Imbolc is often taken to be the 2nd of February (Groundhog Day) and Samhain is sometimes taken to be October 31st, Halloween. But hopefully you get the point.

The last three of these also coincide closely with Bank Holidays in Ireland, though these are always on Mondays so may happen a few days away. I find it intriguing that the academic year for universities here in Ireland is largely defined by the above dates dates.

The first semester of the academic year 2021/22 started on September 20th 2021 (the Autumnal Equinox was on September 22nd) and finishes on 17th December (the Winter Solstice is on December 21st ).  Halloween (31st October) was actually a Sunday this year so the related bank holiday was on Monday 25th October; half term (study week) always includes the Halloween Bank Holiday. The term was pushed forward a bit because it finished on a Friday and it would not be acceptable to end it on Christmas Eve!

After the break for Christmas, and a three-week mid-year exam period, Semester Two starts 31st January 2022. Half-term is then from 14th to 18th March (the Vernal Equinox; is on March 20th) and teaching ends on May 6th.  More exams and end of year business take us to the Summer Solstice and the (hypothetical) vacation.

The new bank holiday will correct the anomaly that there has not been such a holiday to mark the first cross-quarter day (Imbolc). In Ireland this often referred to as St Brigid’s Day (after St Brigid of Kildare) rather than Candlemas.

The slight issue is that, in Maynooth, Semester Two of teaching usually begins around 1st February so there will be a holiday within a week or so of the start of teaching but I don’t imagine many students or staff will complain about that!

P.S. Imbolc is also sometimes called “The Quickening of the Year”. It looks like this year it will correspond to the quickening of relaxation of Covid-19 restrictions, though we still wait full details of what precisely all this means for our teaching plans…

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Remote working stats

Posted in Covid-19, Education on January 19, 2022 by telescoper

Here are some very interesting – and perhaps surprising – statistics about working from home in Ireland. It’s a few months old, but still relevant. It would be interesting to see an attitudes survey of this type for staff and student in Third Level institutions. Even if staff have to deliver lectures in person, I can imagine university managers eyeing the immense savings they could make by depriving staff of offices and instead requiring them to prepare lectures, do their administrative work, and carry out their research, etc from home.

WorldbyStorm's avatarThe Cedar Lounge Revolution

Some fascinating statistics in relation to remote working in the Republic released by the CSO yesterday. Two particularly striking ones.

A new survey from the Central Statistics Office reveals that 90% of those aged between 35 and 44 years who could work remotely would like to do so when Covid-19 pandemic restrictions end.

The CSO’s ‘Our Lives Online Pulse Survey’ also shows that 80% of those in employment have worked remotely at some point since the start of the pandemic.

That last statistic is surprising to me. Are there that many jobs in the economy that allow up to 80% of workers to work remotely? I’d have thought it was fewer, but if even close to that 80% that’s an enormous number of people who have the facility to work in that context. I’m guessing, though I could well be wrong, that some of these would be companies who turned…

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Countdown to Semester 2

Posted in Covid-19, Education, Maynooth on January 17, 2022 by telescoper

In between correcting examination scripts and preparing for another examination I’ve been putting the finishing touches to the allocation of teaching to Semester 2 which starts a fortnight today, on Monday 31st January. You might think this is a bit late to be assigning lecturers to modules and it is, but we’ve had lots of staffing difficulties this year and there’s been a lot to manage.

We haven’t yet had any official information from on high about how precisely we will proceed next Semester, but I’m assuming that it will be roughly like last Semester, i.e. with most classes in person and only the very big ones online. The one headache is our Computational Physics class which is quite large this year so we will have to take care about physical distancing requirements for the laboratory sessions. I’m actually teaching that module.

As Maynooth colleague Professor Paul Moynagh has explained, it does look like the omicron wave has peaked in Ireland though I am very confused about how much of this is down to changes in testing strategy. The figures plotted above (7-day rolling averages) only show PCR tests; there are many thousands of positive antigen tests that would previously have been referred for PCR confirmation but which are now just being reported separately outside the official figures.

Anyway, the least we can say is that things do not seem to be getting dramatically worse so there’s no real motivation for imposing fresh restrictions. All the talk is now about relaxing things, actually. The existing rules haven’t been very effective at halting the propagation of the omicron variant so there’s no very good reason for keeping them as they are. I think we just need to ensure that unlocking is not done in such a way that another surge ensues.

We first went into lockdown about halfway through Semester 2 two years ago, which led to our first set of online assessments. Two years later on we look like we might actually have a return to on-campus examinations. Perhaps the set of online exams we’re marking now will be the last? Let’s see.

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