Covid 19 Part XXXI-187,554 ROI (2,970 deaths) 100,319 NI (1,730 deaths)(24/01)Read OP

mandrake04 wrote: »

The “travel bans” is a moot point, if you have family overseas you can apply for an exemption if for their or your wellbeing it would be necessary to visit it will be granted.

Same for essential business.

You just can’t travel for no particular reason.

This person was denied permission to travel to her dying father

https://apnews.com/article/travel-virus-outbreak-pandemics-australia-germany-4f64b1e5dda462b01f98b945553f198d

Not the only case I've heard of. So I don't think it is a simple case of getting permission for a lot of people. Also, there is a waiting list of over 25,000 citizens and permanent residents waiting to get back. Some of them have also been denied permission to return.

ceadaoin. wrote: »

This person was denied permission to travel to her dying father

https://apnews.com/article/travel-virus-outbreak-pandemics-australia-germany-4f64b1e5dda462b01f98b945553f198d

Not the only case I've heard of. So I don't think it is a simple case of getting permission for a lot of people. Also, there is a waiting list of over 25,000 citizens and permanent residents waiting to get back. Some of them have also been denied permission to return.

I will try to simplify this for you and then maybe it will resonate. Which do you think is a more desirable outcome from a pandemic. 25,000 residents waiting to return to their homeland or 25,000 dead in a grave?

Sorry if this has already been mentioned - I only skimmed the last 20 pages.


Did we jump 10,000 cases today, for no obvious reason?

Carlowgirl wrote: »

I'm working in an office building.

Very hard to understand what you are a doing in an office that can't be done remotely? No way there should be anything other than skeleton staff in offices so even those in should be many meters from others who are in.

Gruffalux wrote: »

Nope, it more or less a year now maybe 13 months old.

I have never seen anything like the fear and paranoia in work today. Absolutely surreal experience. We work in hospital admin, not in a major Covid hospital and in the last 2 days a case or two have spiralled into a full outbreak. Fully compliant with all precautions but I am still a casual contact of one of them. The rest are bunched together and it seems some careless mask wearing has dragged them down. Hopefully we are over the worst of it and the rest will be negative including me but thankfully following procedure means I am only a casual contact if that so they are doing mine for peace of mind and because my partner is essential too. Unreal environment to work in. We are not vaccinated yet and rightly so as they haven't finished medical staff yet but hopefully they can get to us soon. Many of us are patient-facing and dealing constantly with doctors and nurses.

HSE operations report 15/1.

Covid cases hospitalised as of 8pm 1800 - increase from 1785

ICU confirmed Covid cases as of 6.30pm 185 - increase from 171
2 deaths in ICU 24 hours up to 8am.
Confirmed Covid cases ventilated 108 as of 6.30pm - increase from 101.

Available ICU beds 22 as of 6.30pm.
13 ICUs with no available beds.
Total open and staffed ICU beds 313.

majcos wrote: »

HSE operations report 15/1.

Covid cases hospitalised as of 8pm 1800 - increase from 1785

ICU confirmed Covid cases as of 6.30pm 185 - increase from 171
2 deaths in ICU 24 hours up to 8am.
Confirmed Covid cases ventilated 108 as of 6.30pm - increase from 101.

Available ICU beds 22 as of 6.30pm.
13 ICUs with no available beds.
Total open and staffed ICU beds 313.

Hospital increase seems to be slowing. Still early days. With the weekend coming and discharges not being as high over the weekend, it maybe early next week before we hopefully see some reductions.
I'm sure those working in hospitals need that little bit of respite with cases in hospital reducing. It has to be mentally draining leaving work that day with more cases that you started. Likewise the daunting start of your shift knowing there's more patients than the previous shift. Has to be very demoralising.

Jinglejangle69 wrote: »

190,000 vaccinated so far.

Don't let the anti government loud mouths get you down.

We haven't received that many vaccines so that's wrong.

pc7 wrote: »

If only we had tried a different way, along with Europe, Uk etc. if there had been any other way to approach this!!! Like fooking Australia, New Zealand did ten bloody months ago, this sh1tehow would not be where it is now. 10 months later getting with the program, hopefully we follow soon.
I’ve family in Oz, nieces and nephews went back to school (currently enjoying summer hols), seeing friends and same with parents.
I dont give a sh1te if they aren’t near countries like we are, it bloody worked. Yet now after almost a year countries wil finally wake up and do it. Would have worked out cheaper likely in the long run, let alone the health benefits for all.

While I agree things look good in Aus/NZ, I think there are a couple of things we need to consider first before the comparison is made again.

1.) The initial seeding of this disease here, purely from January alone, never-mind Cheltenham, was considerably greater than in Aus/NZ. We typically travel much more frequently and intermingle more than those in Aus/NZ purely due to our geographic proximity to other large populations, unlike the 8 hour flights required to Oz/NZ. The first community transmissions here were happening in early February, before we even knew of the situation developing in Italy. This disease was widely seeded here before we knew it.

2.) We never actually get rid of the disease from here, even in summer when all was back to pretty much normality, 8 cases a day etc, it was still there. If we had gotten it down to 0 for a fortnight or so, yes then absolutely the case for closing the borders and sealing us off would have been more reasonable, but we never actually did get rid of this disease out of the community, therefore sealing the borders wouldn't have made a difference as to this disease coming back, we never eliminated it.

3.) Sealing our boarders would be considerably more difficult than in Aus/NZ, where their imports mainly come by un-manned container vessels, ours primarily come through ro-ro ferries where each truck is driven by a human being, which could again have reseeded another wave.And for those that argue for testing at the ports, they may have only caught the COVID the day earlier, so it would not yet show up on even a PCR test for another day, yet we couldn't quarantine those drivers and their trucks for the 5 or so days necessary to test them and see if they had developed or there'd be little fresh fruit/veg or other time critical deliveries able to get into the country.

4.) The NI boarder, has been done to death, but unless we were able to convince them to shut their boarder with mainland UK, then we'd never have stood a chance to keep this disease out unless the UK also went along, got down to zero covid and sealed their boarders. Far too many people live and work across the boarder each day, this has been well established over the past 4 years of Brexit debates.

5.) There wasn't the appetite for it. If we had turned around in late May/Early June and said we're going to keep going with absolute lockdown/level 5+ until we get no community cases for two weeks straight, then the government would have been lynched. Even at that stage patients was waning and wearing thin, people were restless and people weren't willing to commit to longer lock downs to totally eliminate it, when that couldn't even have been promised.

So I just don't think we ever could have done what Aus/NZ have done unfortunately.

I do however agree there are things we could have done such as using spare testing capacity in meat factories to mass test back in July/August time and other industries where workers are in such close contact/sharing cramped living quarters to save money to send home etc.

We could have locked down sooner in October as well to reduce cases faster, though likely the appetitte wasn't really there given the scandal and Tony Holihan's initial level 5 suggestion being derided by a large number of the population, likely as we didn't have the hindsight we couldn't have brought enough on board.

All in all, I think we've done about as well and as badly as could have been expected of us, for a once in a century event with no prior experience or handbook on how to do this in the modern day.

Jinglejangle69 wrote: »

190,000 vaccinated so far.

Don't let the anti government loud mouths get you down.

runawaybishop wrote: »

77k here, 190k if you include NI

The Micky Michael Martin way of presenting figures.
It's a pandemic, it's every man/woman for themselves. The majority only care about Ireland's figures. (and without getting into an argument, I mean ROI)

I've yet to read a coherent argument against zero covid.

TonyMaloney wrote: »

I've yet to read a coherent argument against zero covid.

Northern Ireland

My other half now doesn't want to take the vaccine. She has a colleague at work that seems to be sending her videos and stuff. She sent me one on this evening, I took a look at it and it was some far right crackpot from America who was preaching against the vaccine and everything covid.

I'm trying to reason with her and told her to look at some stuff from verified websites and not social media - where she seems to be getting a lot of disinformation. I also suggested ringing her GP for advice.

I blame influencers and the far right. It's very frustrating though.

TonyMaloney wrote: »

It sounds like you've a big problem there beyond covid.
I've an in-law that has completely lost her ****. She believes mad stuff.

I've **** all advice other than solidarity though.

Cheers. Yeah she has a few people in her circle that are peddling that ****e so that's where this has come from.