Itâs all based on them having public support though and that has changed and will continue to change in a big way.
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Theyâre ultra conservative, but that should surprise nobody, itâs reflected across the world in varying degrees.
The numbers continuing to fall and the mass vaccination taking effect will finish them as a big decision making machine,
The anti vaccine crew may throw a spanner in the works but I think they are such a tiny minority as to be irrelevant (I hope)
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Yeah weâll see. The pinch point will be next October/November if we see a rise in respiratory illness. Will there be a clamour for some lockdown then?
Honestly, no, thatâs completely wrong. Hospitals had to be kept from being overwhelmed with patients, if they were people canât be treated and so they die, in large numbers. After a year of this everyone should be familiar with this concept.
Weâre done with lockdowns, Iâd be happy to have a large bet with anybody on that,
What would be the cause of this spike in respiratory illness?
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Thereâs always an increase in winter. It puts pressure on health system - trollies etc.
I hope youâre right.
Did hospitals come close to this point of being overwhelmed? Last year we took over private hospitals at huge cost to avert this and I donât think they were required. Is there any concrete numbers to show how close we came to this happening in January? And how did this compare to previous years. Its an an awful pity more wasnât done last autumn to increase capacity in the hospitals. In hindsight there was billions available to throw at the problem.
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Capacity was increased but it seems apparent to most people that it would be impossible to grow capacity to a degree to match a virus that grows exponentially if left unchecked.
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Never have to have another lockdown again if we donât leave this one.
Indeed. You had that fucking charlatan Colm Henry yesterday having the audacity to actually come out with the statement âYou canât trust the dataâ or something to that effect regards outdoor sports, because it didnât suit the narrative. Fucking unbelievable
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I mentioned before, but a number of hospitals had plans in place to build specific respiratory A&E units adjoining existing units which would account for new beds and administration for hospitals. Costing under âŹ10m each to do Iâd say on average. They then paused doing these, if they had went ahead back then, theyâd be all finishing around now. Instead, they are now going to go out to tender on these and hopefully start building them towards the end of the summer/autumn. So theyâll be finished just into the early part of 2022. The delay to some extent made sense if they thought it wasnt required, however now doing it when it seems even more clear its not needed makes no sense about any of the decisions made by the HSE/government in terms of building these specific units. Like everything, they are reactionary than proactive, so they end up wasting a shit load of money then fixing a problem after the problem is solved.
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We just need to do a bit more
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Its probably 1% of the population that are in the dangerous cohort of anti vaxx as long as they arenât given a platform to spread lies itâll be grand. The damage to the mmr vaccine in the 90s can be seen with the mumps outbreaks across colleges in recent years
Hopefully we can look forward to a meaningful Halloween.
Are you sure. Doesnât seem they tried increase it by much. Or needed to. The virus was never going to continue to rise exponentially past the Christmas surge. I think most people accepted there would be a post Christmas surge as they were going to mix one way or the other and accepted there would be restrictions reintroduced in some form and people would alter behaviour. See icu capacity figures belowâŚ
From the journalâŚ
In September, when the HSEâs Winter Plan was unveiled, permanent capacity was at 280, with plans for an additional 17 ICU beds.
According to the HSE there are 287 fully-staffed public ICU beds .
I suppose I canât say for certain one way or the other. ICU beds are hard to track as they are increased or decreased as necessary in normal times, they are not maintained at the same level year round. It does seem like Ireland doesnât have many or enough ICU beds per head compared to other EU countries.
I think the thing that people forget about this virus is that the danger is in its spread more so than its lethality to individuals. If it gets out of control to the extent that health systems are overwhelmed, as in people canât get into hospital, then people will die in big numbers. We didnât actually see that here and so people seem to forget it is a real risk, itâs the most dangerous thing about covid, I think. We saw at Chritmas how fast it can spike if left unchecked and I think people do need to be aware that that risk is still there. Edit: the point I meant to make here is that no matter how much you increase capacity, you are not going to keep up with a virus that keeps doubling. (It doesnât mean you shouldnât increase capacity, it just means that it will never be the solution.)
I think Ireland needs to be a lot more ambitious in identifying areas of life where restrictions can be relaxed and I think weâve done a terrible job on that and have had too many restrictions for most of the year. But the danger is still there, even with vulnerable people vaccinated. Chile and Serbia are two countries with big numbers of people vaccinated that both had to reintroduce severe restrictions when they opened too fast and their hospitals filled up.
So Iâd like to see us facilitating a return to normal as much as possible, but I recognise itâs not possible to decide to just let rip.
Iâve rambled away from the original point a bit there I think.
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Explain rises in cases all across Europe post Xmas?
David McWilliams addressed this in his latest podcast. I think we have the lowest or second lowest in Europe (I cant remember exactly so open to correction) and we pay the fourth most on healthcare in Europe. Itâs almost like the system is being run terribly.
Your point about having no ambition is correct. NPHETâs approach is always just close everything, stay inside, do nothing. Thatâd be tolerable if lockdowns were short-term but for months of it on end, itâll just lead to more and more non-compliance.
A better approach, in my opinion, would be too allow, or dare I say, encourage things like hill-walking, tennis, golf etc. Give people an outlet. Make it at least appear like you give a shit about peopleâs lives rather than just about COVID.
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NPHET only use data that suits them. They discredit anything else.
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