Relaxation of Restrictions, Part X *Read OP For Mod Warnings*

Deleted User wrote: »

I was listening to Lord Sumption on the Spiked podcast this week and he makes a similar point. Governments acted outside of existing pandemic planning a decade in the making because the public, frightened by videos out of China of people keeling over in the street and body bags piling up and mass graves being dug (for chickens, but whatever), and from Italy of full ICU wards and Italian people singing their haunting songs out the window in abandoned streets, tripped into "something must be done" mode and thus something was done.

It's an interesting listen if you have some busy work or driving to do for an hour. https://youtu.be/b5-GakxDVvc

Lord Sumption is still putting it down to governmental over-reaction and incompetence.

I'm sure he knows what's really behind all this.

bear1 wrote: »

Do you know what's mad? The protests against water charges and to this.. nothing.

I don't think we have seen anything like this in our lifetime, the unrelenting hysterical media cycle which more resembles propaganda than savy health policy...the purpose of propaganda is not to convince you of an argument but to convince you that you are in the minority....we never see alternate opinions on media....it's all hysterical predictions that have been spectacularly wrong from the start...then you have the shaming of the behaviour of our young people for doing what young people do, the effectiveness of the social pressure that social media brings.

The Health Service has pumped God knows how much money into media advertising and they have got their money's worth...the politicians basked in the positive light the initial lock down shone on them and were happy to outsource the big decisions to Houlihan, arguably the most incompetent and damaging Health Bureaucrat in this State's history...who is loved by the public!!!

Until the dust settles and the check arrives in all our lives!

Silentcorner wrote: »

I don't think we have seen anything like this in our lifetime, the unrelenting hysterical media cycle which more resembles propaganda than savy health policy...the purpose of propaganda is not to convince you of an argument but to convince you that you are in the minority....we never see alternate opinions on media....it's all hysterical predictions that have been spectacularly wrong from the start...then you have the shaming of the behaviour of our young people for doing what young people do, the effectiveness of the social pressure that social media brings.

The Health Service has pumped God knows how much money into media advertising and they have got their money's worth...the politicians basked in the positive light the initial lock down shone on them and were happy to outsource the big decisions to Houlihan, arguably the most incompetent and damaging Health Bureaucrat in this State's history...who is loved by the public!!!

Until the dust settles and the check arrives in all our lives!

But I'd like to know what is their next plan?
They have contradicted themselves over and over and hage essentially closed the country off and used every excuse possible to justify it.
You can't help but feel embarrassed by it.
Why aren't the levels beings dropped?
They have decimated the economy more than ****in covid did.
Bunch of twats the lot of them.

bear1 wrote: »

But I'd like to know what is their next plan?
They have contradicted themselves over and over and hage essentially closed the country off and used every excuse possible to justify it.
You can't help but feel embarrassed by it.
Why aren't the levels beings dropped?
They have decimated the economy more than ****in covid did.
Bunch of twats the lot of them.

Plan you say?....As Michael Martin himself would say, "Will you get real"...we had no vaccines when we entered lock down last year, our plan was just to keep the population locked down for as long as possible at all times...that is the plan.

I'm sure they will come up with a plan to address the massive surge in cancers and heart disease in the coming years, probably involve a lock down of some description.

mcsean2163 wrote: »

This is incredibly stupid. Other services stopped because of Covid19. My wife and her team are trying to get through their huge waiting lists which got bigger BECAUSE of COVID19.

Instead of seeing her normal patients she was assigned to work with covid19 patients during the crisis.

To put it in context, a typical flu patient is in hospital for a week, a typical covid19 patient is in hospital for 3-4 weeks. This is why it's so much worse for hospitals.

They are now desparately trying to get to their normal patients and have been working like animals the last year.

Fwiw, I lost my job last year when the schools closed and found a new one in q4 then lost it again when schools closed this year. It's been an absolute disaster for me but still it's incredibly frustrating to hear people spouting nonsense.

My 73 year old mother is terrified of COVID thanks to RTE etc. Now yes, it is dangerous to her, I'm not going to deny that.


But she has been diagnosed by her GP with likely Parkinsons and needs treatment. Due to all this, we got a referral to a neurologist.



We got a date for a first consultation.


In November 2021.


And this is private.


Lord knows what it would be in the public. She'll be wheelchair bound by then

mcsean2163 wrote: »

My wife is part of a 4 person hospital team that has been reduced to a 2 person team. She works all the hours and is exhausted. We have the lowest proportion of our population over 65 in the EU, this is only going to increase.

We need more doctors,more nurses and more hospital bed. It sounds like a LOT more backend efficiencies need to be introduced and that budget spent on frontline staff.

It's not nphets fault that our hospital system is absolutely appalling. Blaming nphet is like blaming the father Peter mcvery trust for homelessness. Frontline staff live on a different planet, an exhausting planet, it's hard for them to care too much about gyms when they are shattered everyday.

If people are angry, they should contact their local politicians and ask why there is no ICU capacity, even now after spending nearly 5 billion more than we took in, in Q1 2021. Why is nobody held accountable for cost overruns, e.g. Children hospital.? IMHO, the public sector is a poorly resourced inefficient mess that needs to be sorted by our elected leaders, not nphet.

Money.

The Clinical Nurse Manager syndrome....take a senior Nurse,working in a hands-on role....Manufacture a "New,Important Administrative Function" witn attractive salary & conditions package.
Promote the working Senior Nurse to the New Admin Role.......the rest follows on naturally until there's nobody who can empty a bedpan.

https://www.irishtimes.com/news/health/hse-chief-paul-reid-s-salary-increases-to-420-103-1.4506164

The pay and pension package for the chief executive of the Health Service Executive Paul Reid last year increased to €420,103

.

The numbers of HSE non-medical staff earning more than €100,000 increased by 27 per cent or 144 from 534 in 2019 to 678 last year due to public sector pay rises.

...and so on,and so forth.

Your wife is probably more than aware of the score ?

Government now switching to 'variants of concern' rather than a countries incidence rates when adding to MHQ. So even less data to be able to judge their decisions on.

Stormyteacup wrote: »

Yes strange time, and those that defend the government don’t even facilitate debate, the goal seems to be to dismiss any dissenting opinion and shutdown discussion. Weird indeed. Wherever your opinion on current government, they can’t be right all of the time Shirley?

Shirley ...

Except it would seem that those actually engaging in debate and discussion get accused of "shutdown discussion". How that work?

But more importantly who is saying current goverment is "right all the time"?

Or is it a case of posting much the same repeated platitudes which don't bother addressing anything which was actually said?

its getting so desperate that we could actually badly do with the antics in the north to try and move the mejja away from covid fearmongering. maybe a good old war in europe might finsh this madness. anything to break NYPHET mystical hold on the government , Tony H. is begining to have shades of Rasputinesque hold over Martin

ypres5 wrote: »

It's such a chronic waste of money, think of all the infrastructural work that could've been done with all of it. We could have had our motorway from cork to limerick that would've been a game changer for cork and the Midwests economies.

Dublin could have gotten a sorely needed metro, I think it's one of the largest cities in europe not to have one and a whole assortment of other projects. It's just a shame

That’s a huge problem regarding the recovery process in Ireland

It has the highest debt level in the EU due to Covid

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.irishtimes.com/business/economy/ireland-to-have-highest-debt-per-head-in-europe-this-year-1.4503652%3fmode=amp

Ireland is forecast to have the highest government debt per head of population in Europe this year, as the impact of Covid-19-related borrowings pushes the burden on each individual in the State up by almost €4,000 in 2021.

It has nothing to show for that level of debt whatsoever

It has one of the worst infrastructures

Where is it going to end up I wonder

Dan O’Brien (economist) was very vocal during Summer 2020 in his warnings about Ireland’s spiral into Covid debt.

We’ve had 2 lockdowns since and he’s not been heard from

In fact, no economists are given air time I notice

ypres5 wrote: »

Pascal donohue has got to be the quietest minister of finance in decades. He's arguably the third or fourth most important person in government and yet he seems to spend his days hiding under his desk.

Like most of them he's probably just going to sit out his term until the next election or the Government collapses (whichever happens first), and then retire with the pension plan that we will be funding while we pay for the bill of all this.

FF did the same thing in 2011. They and FG won't want to preside over the fallout of the covid "crisis". They'll be more than happy to let SF sweep the board next time out I reckon.

They can then heckle from the sidelines over the response to a mess they caused.

ypres5 wrote: »

Pascal donohue has got to be the quietest minister of finance in decades. He's arguably the third or fourth most important person in government and yet he seems to spend his days hiding under his desk.

I mean, he quietly took us from a recession to a budget surplus before covid hit, but yeah he should tweet more.....