Dont bitch if your lucky to have a job. Journalists are very lucky to have a job considering a vast majority of them are useless
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At the height of it back in January the NPHET/HSE/government line was that restrictions were necessary to ease pressure on hospitals, in particular ICU capacity.
Currently there are just over 300 in hospital with Covid in the whole country, of whom just over 80 are in ICU. 95% reduction in healthcare staff testing positive since the vaccine rollout. Nursing home cases, particularly deaths, down significantly too.
Needless to say the goalposts have shifted again back to case numbers, 5 day averages, 7 day averages, the mythical âRâ rate, number of cars on the road and ATM usage.
Numbers in hospital and ICU only mentioned in passing now. There isnât a single journalist in a position of influence who has the guts or intelligence to press them on this. Itâs like being back in school, they donât want to upset Muinteoir Tony or Muinteoir Ronan.
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Have we flattened the curve yet?
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There are 2,000 following the Jedi religion in Ireland per the 2016 census.
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Have we any idea when weâll be allowed travel within Ireland legally? Like no more 5k?
No
So you think some slack jawed simpleton from West Limerick knows more about Pandemics than Health Professionals & Scientists?
Is the next review of the current measures in April? I think so. Maybe theyâll extend it up to travel within your county then.
We should be ready to roll may bank holiday ?
Have you listened to the health professionals and scientists?
They donât seem to be very good at solving or predicting what will happen.
No, Iâve been living my best life every single day.
Right.
Then maybe you shouldnât comment on health professionals and scientists if you donât know what theyâve been saying. Commenting on a position of ignorance is never a good look.
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@Raylan, could you do the honours please? Can only read the intro without a sub.
#JournalismMatters #PayForJournalism
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Wasnât Holohan an expert involved with the cervical check debacle and how did that turn out?
These scientists have been consistently wrong with their predictions - didnât they forecast thousands and thousands more deaths than we actually had? And likewise they predicted weâd be down to less than 200 cases a day by now also.
Youâre wasting your time talking to that establishment, under-the-bed gullible fool. Heâs actually who these NPHET loons are targeting quite successfully.
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Lift the Covid ban on sport and letâs get children playing again
Thursday March 18 2021, 12.01am GMT, The Times
As this weekâs unseasonably gentle weather wrapped itself around St Patrickâs Day, it was hard to escape the thought that this is the time of spring when gaggles of children in thousands of parishes across the country would normally be getting cajoled onto pitches by hero coaches to play ball. Instead there is nothing, just waiting and wondering and trying to make sense of why weâre still waiting.
It has been an underlying topic of conversation throughout this lockdown how such extended detachment from the real world will leave a mark on different groups of people, particularly children. That effect has become visible in the last few weeks. One little man in our house settled easily into his first term at school last September but spent the first weeks of his return this month in tears.
Three months of lockdown in the murkiness of winter has turned him away from the outside world. Getting him to leave the house for a trip to the supermarket became impossible. Even a walk up the road was torture. Speaking to teachers and parents across the country in the last few weeks, versions of the same anxiety are manifesting in homes and classrooms everywhere.
Without sport and other social outlets, the burden of easing children back into normal life has fallen unfairly on teachers and schools. It wouldnât have taken an ounce of political courage to reopen sport, in particular for children.
Science established last year that the threat of transmission between children was minimal. The numbers that followed showed, beyond any doubt, children could gather safely to play.
But children and sport have gotten ground up in the gears of the wider politics of lockdown. The post-Christmas wave that devastated the country swept away all that evidence and made any form of reopening politically unacceptable.
A report in the Sunday Times a couple of weeks ago confirmed no Covid-19 cases across professional soccer, rugby union and league and American football. The GAA the following week said it was unaware of any on-field transmissions either.
Splice it down to childrenâs sport only, and the arguments to keep them housed fade even more. Last year the GAA hosted 70,000 children in their CĂșl Camps. One single case was recorded and traced back to a family communion. From the millions of Covid-19 forms submitted by parents before training sessions, to the gallons of hand sanitiser on hand, the care and precautions taken by clubs were comprehensive and reassuring, and parents largely followed suit. Even with new variants of the virus to guard against, there is no reason to think it wouldnât work out the same this time.
The announcements in Northern Ireland this week that sport can resume from mid-April, coupled with the positive mood music around gaelic games down south resuming around the same time are welcome. But they are so long overdue they donât count as any kind of strong political leadership.
The frustration with how all this has been handled will be played out today at the High Court in Belfast, where a family of an eight-year-old boy from Magherafelt brings a landmark case against the continuing ban on play.
âI would have thought it was an injustice that kids werenât playing football,â Stephen Atherton, lawyer for the family, told the Irish News on Tuesday. âBut, call it luck or fate, when childrenâs sport was criminalised â because thatâs what it is â I knew instinctively that children have a right to play, they have a right for their voice to be heard.â
âIâll be calling for the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child to be incorporated into domestic law here, which will help protect children in the future. My lifeâs purpose after this, apart from my own children, is ensuring that the next generation of children never experience what this generation of children have experienced this past year. This can never happen again.â
It wouldnât have taken much evidence to the contrary for this case to get tossed on the fire with every other nonsense argument taken against Covid-19 regulations in the last year, but there is more than a germ of merit in this argument.
With vaccine rollouts at a much more advanced stage than the Republic, the debate around return to play this year has been more vigorous in Northern Ireland. Even before all that, Atherton himself had stepped down from his position on the IFA disciplinary board last November in protest at what he saw as the organisationâs failure to push for a return to play for children.
The GAA in Northern Ireland is also divided about the timing and optics around children returning to the field. Michael Kerr , the Tyrone GAA chairman, has supported a 32-county approach which was established by the GAA last year and he urged Ulster counties to wait on the south. Jack Devaney, the Down GAA chairman, has pushed for a resumption as soon as possible.
It doesnât seem the time to get bogged down in geopolitical arguments. The virus itself pays no heed to borders. Neither should those with a stake in the well being of their community. Science says itâs safe. Every known metric says itâs safe. Nothing about the children of Northern Ireland returning to play before the south will make a whit of difference to the GAAâs global identity. If there is a chance for any children anywhere to return to their games, let them.
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The loosening of restrictions will be limited enough in April, according to somebody with knowledge of the situation. Most of it is already being mooted. The 5km will be extended, but not to inter-county. Itâll move to 20km or county wide or something. Youâll have sport/training for children returning, possibly outdoor adult classes and training in pods, and activities like golf and tennis. Maybe some click/collect activity for ânon-essentialâ retail and limited construction reopening. I referred to it yesterday, but theyâre perturbed about the increase in cases lately and weâre not far enough along in the vaccination rollout to offset that.
Hereâs one for those missing the office
This sounds quite plausible
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