Saturday with Katie Hannon

touts wrote: »

Katie better be careful here. Brophy is trying to encourage Killeen to spout some conspiracy theories that will land him and RTE in the high court.

You mean Colm & RTE ? The professor gave his opinion based on evidence, it was Brophy who accused the professor of saying NPHET misleading people, he certainly did not say that.

Dempo1 wrote: »

You mean Colm & RTE ? The professor gave his opinion based on evidence, it was Brophy who accused the professor of saying NPHET misleading people, he certainly did not say that.

Brophy was trying to bait Killeen into slandering other scientists and NPHET with some of conspiracy theories live on the RTE. Killeen had the cop on to be careful.

Dempo1 wrote: »

Very difficult to contradict the caller, the Roll out has been a shambles.

It has not. Apart from minor glitches, vaccines are being put in arms as soon as they arrive. From my own experience, its working well with a well organised GP but some GPs appear to be all over the place.

quartz1 wrote: »

There's much for the Public to be annoyed about and Mr Brophy doesn't do much to ease the annoyance. Be more helpful if he were concentrating on actually trying to solve issues rather than making excuses .

Are you suggesting he’s not trying to solve issues?

A Tyrant Named Miltiades! wrote: »

Next week is April.
We still haven't vaccinated very vulnerable elderly people (including, by the way, plenty of over 85s who are housebound); the over 70s wont be vaccinated until the end of May.
The UK has vaccinated over half of all adults.
This is a shambles. It's true that most of the blame lies with the EU, but we are doing nothing to mitigate their blundering. Other countries in Europe are buying additional vaccines beyond the EU program.

Yes agreed and there's the 5k in nursing homes still not fully vaccinated. I do appreciate the EU"s management has been utterly appalling and bizzare but I'm still adamant the HSE were poorly prepared, viewing their expertly put together (Spin) sorry press conferences, you'd swear they just brilliant and everything they do. I reiterate frontline staff have and continued to do an amazing jobs, it's the top echelons ineptitude that is just shocking.

Unknownability wrote: »

He very strongly implied it, he said the research he is reading and what NPHET are saying are contradictory and both can't be right.

He needs to provide the support to his statement that 1/30 children who get the new strain end up in hospital, I did find it contradictory that he is so concerned by these developments but is still on the fence about sending his own kids back to school.

Implying and saying are two very different things and as he stated, his views have come from evidence, some of which actually supplied via the HSE"s own reporting. The comment from Brophy was quite specific, I can't figure out, and I listened back what part of the Professors statement, contribution, mentioned or claimed NPHET was misleading the public.

A Tyrant Named Miltiades! wrote: »

The guy is an epidemiologist, not some conspiracy theorist, and the facts are in the public domain via NPHET.

770 children (aged 14 or younger) have tested positive for covid in the past 14 days, and 42 are in hospital. That's a hospitalization rate of 5.5%, approximately 1 in 20.

I'm not implying he is a conspiracy theorist but he does have an agenda, everyone has an agenda so that's not surprising.

Stating someone's occupation doesn't mean you should place heed in what they are saying. As Gerry implied about Philip Nolan, also would you listen to me quote Prof Dolores Cahill, because she is a professor?

For the last part of your comment that is an extremely simplistic equation and not one that would stand up to scrutiny, while they may be hospitalised Gerry has no knowledge of why they are there, of which NPHET do. To imply like Gerry did, that it was due to the strain of Covid they have was a dangerous thing to do.

A Tyrant Named Miltiades! wrote: »

NPHET's measure of hospitalizations does not count children as being hospitalised when children are already in hospital with pre existing conditions. So patients already in hospital are not counted. It counts a child as hospitalised when the child returns a positive covid test and is admitted to hospital.

There does seem to be an increase in child hospitalizations under the B117 variant. Prof Killeen is absolutely correct to point this out – most of us had no idea the figure was that high.

You're making my point, a child breaks his arm needs an operation and tests positive, they are counted as a hospitalisation.

NEPHT has the information as to why they are being hospitalised Gerry doesn't.

A Tyrant Named Miltiades! wrote: »

But we can look at the historic data and see that last september only 1.6% of under-14s with covid were hospitalised. Now it's 5.5%. Has there been a trebling of broken arms? Trampolines are very dangerous as the Minister for Health has told us, but something else is going on.

Why are you asking me?

That information should be coming from the person given a national platform to make the statements, he was trying to provoke a response with the sensational stats so should back them up.

The people with the full picture are NPHET, not Gerry.

Dollars for donuts his kids are back in school next week and I thought it was a great question to show up his faux concern.

The man with all this data pointing at unmanageable numbers of admissions hadn't decided not to send his children to school.

A Tyrant Named Miltiades! wrote: »

You call the statistics "sensational" and you earlier implied that they were wrong (when you said RTÉ should be fact-checking him), but your criticism seems based more on the fact that you dislike the message (or what you called the professor's "agenda").

NPHET figures show a trebling of the % of children admitted to hospital with Covid-19, now that the B117 variant is dominant. 1 in 20 positive kids being hospitalised is a genuine worry. Let's leave politics out of this.

That's very newsworthy, it deserves to be highlighted. That's all that Prof Killeen was doing imo.

Nice try at deflection, some leap to say people making claims on a national broadcaster should be fact checked prior to broadcasting to the Country.

The infamous presidential debate or the prime time investigate are two examples of what can happen when things are broadcast incorrectly.

Villa05 wrote: »

In fairness, when I've had the misfortune to visit a hospital I see more admin staff than medical staff.
When they know you have health insurance, they continually pester you to sign forms especially where kids are involved.
Of course I refuse to sign as kids are free, no point paying twice

I'm referring to senior admin staff, Finance, HR, etc, I'm not doubting any admin staff who deal directly with patients should be considered frontline.

Two angry Trots and a gormless Junior Minister for nothing yet again.

I think they are just playing episodes from 3 months ago at this point. Same thing week after week after week.