Had 7 pints last night, just in case.
Question on the school in wexford, did they close against the current guildlines and the principal/BOM go on a solo run to make a LIDTF statement?
Tight arse looking to read article that the headline appears to agree with the narrative I subscribe to. Can someone throw it up
Head of vintners was getting his spake in today. Reckons weāve enough vaccinated. Be grand like. He had me convinced anyway.
I hear there was a blast of cases after a Big Gaa funeral back your way @Crutches
22 lads from the pub caught it I hear.
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Heard there is a lot of it locally alright, hadnāt heard anything about the link to funeral but could see it happening alright.
how many were killed?
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Weāll be back to the halcyon days of home shebeens set up in sheds and containers soon enough.
Itās like when they started blaming the public this time last year for rising cases when the majority of transmission was down to spread in healthcare settings.
zoom quizzes every Friday night
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We need to flip the concept of summer holidays.
Weāll just lockdown for December & January every year instead.
October 18 2021 02:30 AM
A pandemic inquiry will be explosive, and our Taoiseach knows it
āWhat would you do if you were stuck in one place, and every day was exactly the same, and nothing that you did mattered?ā asks TV weatherman Phil Connors in Groundhog Day .
Well, now we know. Covid cases are rising. Ronan Glynn is telling us to work from home. Philip Nolan says we are on a āknife edgeā. All the key indicators are going in the wrong direction. Nobody is really sure how weāre back at square one.
Weāve been offered explanations, but they donāt account for why other countries with much lower vaccination uptakes are now more successful at suppressing the virus. So, weāre blaming the Brits and Callum Robinson.
How weāve gloated here in Ireland over the past week as the UK called for a public inquiry to be brought forward. A cross-party group of MPs said the governmentās handling of the pandemic was one of the countryās worst ever public health failings. There will be an inquiry.
Weāre not having an inquiry. Those in power have decided that they donāt need to be interrogated by us plebs. Last month, our Taoiseach cheekily told us that while heās open to an āevaluationā of Irelandās handling of Covid-19, calling it an inquiry implies that people are to blame.
Speaking on RTĆās News at One , MicheĆ”l Martin said: āAnd the reason I use the word evaluate is that inquiry sometimes conveys a sense that weāre out to get people, that you almost have people held up and told you did wrong. In the future, when you have an emergency, you do want people to work nimbly, flexibly, and fast. We donāt want them hamstrung.ā
An āevaluationā is not the same as establishing an inquiry. The Taoiseach says now is not the time. But if not now, when? We all deserve a clear understanding of the context in which all the decisions around the pandemic occurred. What went wrong and what went right?
Weāve lived for 19 months under the greatest authoritarian moment in Irelandās history. Weāve sat impotently in front of our television screens wondering if that dayās announcement would mean our job was gone. That our husband would miss our babyās birth. That we couldnāt visit our parents. That our business would have to shut. That we couldnāt get married. That we couldnāt visit our sick aunt in hospital. That we couldnāt stray more than 2km from home. With a quote from a ā90s teen movie, five million peopleās lives were put on ice, their freedom to work, earn, live gone.
I know. It was all for the greater good. To flatten the curve. To slow the spread. Hold firm just a while longer, they told us. But when a government and an unelected body like Nphet has that kind of power, they need to be answerable.
After the harshest lockdown regime in the world and a staggeringly successful vaccine programme, itās time to figure out why weāre living groundhog day while the rest of Europe is up and running. Weāve got Europeās highest vaccine uptake yet other countries with comparable mitigation strategies have lower cases.
Covid-related deaths in nursing homes must be high on the agenda, as well as the length and effectiveness of our lockdowns that were perfectly calibrated to be a marathon of penitence and anxiety.
There were plenty of scandals in the Governmentās early handling of the pandemic that should have caused heads to roll. There was the failure to protect nursing homes during every wave. The rush by doctors to free up hospital beds that meant the frail were quickly discharged without a Covid test and so the virus inevitably spread with ferocity into nursing homes.
Nphet refused to sanction antigen testing of staff, visitors and residents of hospitals and nursing homes, even though it might have identified some of the outbreaks earlier. Antigen testing of healthcare staff might save lives this winter if we finally adopted it. But Nphet still says no.
Why the refusal to even contemplate a targeted lockdown approach that might have saved lives but cost the economy less?
With great power comes great responsibility. Those who now have unprecedented powers must be open to scrutiny. There are so many questions to be answered and lessons to be learned and we need to learn them while we are still fighting the pandemic ā not afterwards.
The longer we wait for an inquiry to begin, the more unlikely it is for the truth to emerge. It isnāt about creating scapegoats. However, those who were prevented from being at the bedside of loved ones in their final moments want answers.
As will the business owners who lost their livelihoods, the families whose parents passed away in nursing homes, and all of us who put our lives on hold.
A pandemic inquiry will be explosive, and our Taoiseach knows it. He canāt expect to ride off into the sunset without being answerable for so many of us losing loved ones, jobs, relationships, last chances.
Now is the time for a judge-led probe into Irelandās handling of the crisis, not at a time which is politically convenient for the Taoiseach.
Honesty and openness from the Government and Nphet ā these are the tools that will actually allow us to live with Covid.
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Theyāre ficked if even the indo are waking up to reality
Do you think thereāll be much talk of sweden? At least Micheal can claim never to have heard of it and most people will believe him
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Will they? Sounds plausible
Ah they will to be sure to be sure
Imagine if Ewan wrote that
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Thatās a very poorly written article.
Interestingly, a cross party Commons committee totally eviscerated the Johnson governmentās Covid response last week.
A āresponseā, ie. a let it rip abomination, that continues.
Barely a single word of reaction here, was there even one?
I suspect itās because most of the people who contribute to the Covid threads here secretly admire the utterly murderous, sociopathic approach of the Johnson government.
As, I suspect, does that writer.
Say what you want about the Irish governmentās response, and I do and will, but itās more than a small mercy we have them in charge rather than Johnson, Trump, Orban or the Swedish government etc.
Are we opening up or not?
They have to open up surely. Canāt ruin young peopleās lives anymore. Time to live with this.