Moved here for relevance.
Your framing is crudely reductionist here.
You would have to define who the âestablishmentâ are. There is no one âestablishmentâ as regards Covid. Itâs like saying âthe media are scumâ, which rejects the reality that the media is not a singular beast.
Those who are most correct on Covid are those outside the establishment on the side you don;t like. The Covid realists.
Those who are non-establishment on the other side are totally cuckoo.
If in an Irish context, you class the âestablishmentâ as the Government and NPHET, it appears to me they are currently wrong on the side you donât want to be wrong on, ie. they are underestimating the threat it poses this winter.
What is clear is that Covid is not going away, and we are in a for a bad winter.
Hospitalisations have gone from 42 in July to 459 now. Nobody can explain or even wants to confront the prospect of that figure continuing to go up. Nobody can explain how itâs going to go down.
Schools are beginning to close, hospitals are cancelling procedures, there are rumours of at least one big Covid outbreak in a hospital.
Things are bad, real bad.
How many ICU beds have we added in the two years?
2 and a half
Holohan will announce Level 5 today
I wouldnt mind Harvey norman was doing a sale on single beds earlier in the year too
We donât need no ventilation
We donât need no Covid control
A raging virus in the classroom
Teacher, you are on your own
Hey, Teacher, you are on your own!
All in all, theyâre just a bunch of pricks in the DĂĄil
All in all, theyâre just a bunch of pricks in the DĂĄil
Has anyone been consistently correct on COVID ? People keep chopping and changing , Figures have been way off âŚ
Those who have been most correct about Covid are those have continuously seen it as the existential threat to functioning society it is.
At a micro level the picture constantly changes - but at a macro level the above reality doesnât change.
That threat is looming very large again, and it is almost unbelievable how people cannot see it.
482 in hospital now. Thatâs a 12 fold increase since July.
If people want to delude themselves this isnât a problem, that is their choice, but it will mean we are destined to repeat the same mistakes of last year.
That Wexford CBS primary school outbreak and closure was referenced above. The changes to the rules about close/casual contacts are gas. One sibling heading into school while the other infected one stays at home and so on.
Separately, my life partner has twin nieces in the same primary school class in Monaghan. Theyâve been inseparable growing up so their mam thought it would be good for them to sit apart in school and asked the teacher to accommodate this. So anyway another pupil caught Covid and was sitting beside one of the girls so she had to stay home until she got the two clear tests but her sister was still allowed to attend school. Sheâd arrive home in the evening and play with her sister and then head back in the next day.
Apart from myself?
I think most people do see it but a lot are of the mindset , rightly or wrongly , that they are prepared to keep going and take the risk.
Romania fucked
A year ago when people were saying what have we done to increase ICU capacity I scoffed at it as a solution because the virus grows exponentially and I donât think ICU capacity can do that.
What is becoming clear though is that we need a bigger health service if we are going to live with covid, which is the only option really. Living with covid means a good load more people needing medical care than before and the additional burden on the health service of trying to separate out covid and non-covid areas (which is a massive burden). Not sure this has really been contemplated or swallowed in government yet.
I also donât know what weâre doing about ventilation. If living with covid is going to be permanent, which it is, then the capital cost of improving ventilation, especially in hospitality spaces, seems a no brainer to reduce future effects.
Why is the government not investing the relatively modest amount of money it would take to put proper air filtration systems into every school in the country?
Why did they not do this in the summer?
They have gaslit every parent in the country claiming schools are not a major site of spread.
Is that the case? Isnât there a labour shortage? Why is there a labour shortage?