Covid19 Part XV - 15,251 in ROI (610 deaths) 2,645 in NI (194 deaths) (19/04) Read OP

s1ippy wrote: »

I can only speak to my own experience but I have exercised an ABUNDANCE of caution. I was absent from my teaching job the week before school was shut down because I have asthma. This turned out to be the correct decision days after the school closed, as a parent whose child socialises with children in my class put on her Instagram that she was awaiting test results. Turned out to be positive and a week and a half after the schools shut, so my SNAs and the parents of children in my class were dealing with their special needs children having brought coronavirus into their homes. I felt incredibly guilty that I had protected myself and not warned them, but how could I really have been sure? I would have sounded "hysterical".

Now my work as a carer is only with one client because one died and I changed my schedule weeks ago. I'm their only help and none of the leave the house. I do shopping for them, I've been doing click and collect which is very nerve-wracking having to go into the shop... but they've freed up slots for carers and the elderly, so I do their shopping with the bits I get for my parents and I have a delivery on Tuesday which should cover three weeks, keeping some in sealed containers in our fridge until the following week which saves me having to do it weekly. I also bought a tonne of my own PPE so I'm using that as we're not allowed to use the agency's stuff when cleaning people's houses or feeding them, only for intimate personal care. Crazy.

The reason it looks like community transmission is dropping off is because we are not testing in the community.

I said it last night and I'll say it again, nine of the ten houses on my road have this infection, a total of around 30 people. The two of us living here are the only ones who aren't sick. Only five of these have a confirmed case. This morning as I was watering the plants, I heard choking from the elderly woman next door, who then collapsed in her garden. Her son rang the ambulance. Note that the son that called for the ambulance was in the house, but he isn't a member of her household. She lives with the youngest son and the daughter who is an air hostess who is a confirmed case. The air hostess is not self isolating and regularly goes out, the younger son (around 19) is also not at home this morning for some unknown reason.

My brother is a contact tracer. He says the scope of who they regard as close contacts is staggeringly limited. Remember the week of our first case, the woman who went from Dublin to Northern Ireland? Nobody who was actually proximal to her on her trip would have been flagged or called, they're not going checking security footage and tracing to discover people's identities. They might have called the bus company but it's up to them then to take further action and they might not.

The brother says he's literally just following a simple script with the confirmed infected person if they're conscious, "were you chatting with anyone during the week? Do you think you might have been closer to them than 2m?" not feckin CSI like some people think, they don't have the personnel or systems or efficiency within our system to actually do their due diligence.

My view is that the figures are not stable. We have suppressed the peak, but we're not by any stretch of the imagination over the hill. In a week from now, we'll start seeing the consequences of people going away for the Easter holidays and the numbers will be much less manageable.

Get comfortable anyway because there's absolutely no way things are going to be lifted in May.