Covid 19 Part XXIV-37,063 ROI (1,801 deaths) 12,886 NI (582 deaths) (02/10) Read OP

billybonkers wrote: »

https://twitter.com/EddieHoareFG/status/1310697801211351040

How do you police the likes of that, with the sheer amount of them.

That's just a glimpse of what is to come at Christmas time. There isn't a hope of containing a large portion of our population then, if we can't do it now.

Stick a number on a county all you want but in reality, compliance died during the summer.

caveat emptor wrote: »

Ronan Glynn giving a dose of reality. Don't watch if you are easily affected by "negative" news. Of course it can be dismissed as media training but I'd listen to the CMO over a random boards poster any day.

https://twitter.com/rtenews/status/1310637555285712896?s=20

He doesn't think we are doomed

That's nice. Is there anyone that actually does think we are doomed?

Lockdowns aren't to prevent deaths.

What your chance is of dying of this is of no relevance to whether we have lockdowns or not.

Even if Covid wasn't fatal to anyone, anywhere, ever, we would still have restrictions.

Why? Because of hospitalisations.

The hospitalisation rate of known infections is about 10%. That will drop as we continue to do mass testing and find lots of asymptomatic cases. But our capacity in hospitals remains our capacity.

The first lockdown in March/April was supposed to give us time to increase our capacity. As far as I can see, the HSE did this, but only increased capacity on a temporary basis, and only increased that capacity through closing other parts of the health system - again only something we can do on a temporary basis.

I can understand this.

At the time, they thought the surge was coming in 2/3 weeks. I don't work for the HSE but I assume permanently increasing capacity - which isn't just ordering a bed frame and mattress - takes months, if not years. Think about it. Say you want to increase capacity in ICU by 50. That means building a number of rooms, including family rooms and nurses stations, ordering and receiving specialised beds and loads of specialised equipment and PPE and crucially recruiting and/or training specialised doctors and nurses. And porters. And catering staff. It's not something that can be done in two months, and especially not when the world is in crisis, all of these things are in short supply and you can't just magic up 30 ICU trained nurses.

So the HSE begged borrowed and stole from other areas of the health system. Once infections lowered in late May & June, those resources were "stood down" and couldn't be easily borrowed again (only so long you can borrow a cancer ICU nurse).

Now, the pertinent questions are, what happened between June and August? As much as it was debatable whether a second wave would occur, I believe the health officials thought it was an inevitability. Did the HSE prepare for a second wave? Was there a plan in place to increase capacity on a more medium term basis? Or were they distracted with trying to reopen and catch up on all the procedures that were delayed for four months?

My personal view is that the HSE may have made some inroads into increasing capacity on a medium term basis, without having to borrow resources from other parts of the health system, but they know full well that at this time it won't be enough - and *especially* if flu season kicks off in its normal way.

That is why we continue to have rolling restrictions. Hospitalisations are going to continue to happen, the majority of whom are aged 35 to 80. Even if over 65s restricted their movements for the next six months, you could still have overwhelmed hospitals from the people aged 35-65, who are going about their daily business.

Plumbthedepths wrote: »

It can when we are familiar with the illness.

We may not be familiar with Covid, but say it causes Diabetes, we are familiar with that.

I'm not saying that this happens everybody, small minority despite what some posters put up here!

BringBackMick wrote: »

Claire Byrne running with time to close the off licenses now..

Having a huge amount of people go into hospital with alcohol withdrawal, is exactly the level of thinking I'd expect from the "SHUT EVERYTHING DOWN" crowd.

ranto_boy wrote: »

Having a huge amount of people go into hospital with alcohol withdrawal, is exactly the level of thinking I'd expect from the "SHUT EVERYTHING DOWN" crowd.

What?

petes wrote: »

What?

Close the offies. Ban the sale of drink. Hello a significant proportion of our population clogging the hospitals. You are aware how dangerous withdrawal from alcohol is for those people, right?

Close the offies? Ridiculous. A few beers at home is the only thing getting people through the last few months.

If young people refuse to follow the advice\rules the gardai should be properly empowered to enforce with fines as penalties. Couple of hundred quid that they have to ask daddy for wouldn't be long sorting them out.