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

I am going to 'The Stunning' and has already been resheduled 5 times! I thought this would be it though

The devil's in the detail here.

Because there aren't just 11 ICU beds available in the whole country. As of last night there were 13 ICU beds staffed and open. That is, ready and waiting to take a patient.

This is not abnormal, ICU beds tend to operate on a logistical basis. After all, if we had 100 ICU beds sitting open and staffed but unused, there'd be widespread wailing about wastage.

If you go back and review the HSE dashboard from previous surges, you can see the full picture. The baseline capacity in ICU is about 300 beds. As of last night, about 8 of them were closed for whatever reason, and there were 13 sitting unused.

So the number of available beds is about 21. And that's just the "right now" capacity. There is surge capacity available that can provide another ~70 ICU beds within a couple of hours.

Yes, there are 74 covid patients in beds that can't now be used for other things, but at this time of the year there's a good chance they'd be mostly 'flu or other respiratory disease patients anyway. There is no 'flu at the moment.

The hospitals are not bursting at the seams any more than they would typically be. "Precarious" may be an appropriate term, but we're a very long way from "struggling to cope".

NPHET are advising caution on the basis that we will consume that surge capacity in the next ~6 weeks, but ICU numbers basically haven't changed at all in the last ten days. They'd nearly want to be praying for that to change or they're going to look ridiculous.

My local Super Valu has them now, 5.99 for a single test. Also have seen them in large Applegreens.

Yeah, have tickets for standing for that gig as well, nothing on the Olympia website, or ticketmaster as to whether its cancelled, i presume it is.

For those asking questions about the nightclubs they basically laughed and said "of course you will be able to dance in a nightclub" but gave no other details about obviously the face there won't be bar service there and said specific info will follow.

I assume this means the full capacity standing concerts that are scheduled this weekend are now off.

I see many saying they don't mind table service forever in pubs - i don't mind the act of actually being served rather than getting my pint at the bar, it's more the spontaneous pint going in somewhere for a match or something in town and sitting where I want rather than this big song and dance of you going in and then putting you at some 6 seater table like an eejit instead of the bar counter etc. My brother tried to go into a live music bar last weekend with just 2 of them and they were refused as they didn't want to waste a 4 seater table on them and said come back if they've 4.

Do wedding guests have to have a Covid cert?

France are more restrictive than here, they have a huge problem getting people vaccinated

I was thinking of that 90s disco thing in 3arena on saturday which i imagine is usual all standing apart from up on the tiers there. They probably have about 10 acts announced for it with flighs/accomodation booked so i'd say they are going mad.

When i was in France a month ago i had to show my vaccine cert to eat outside.

Bar up by me has set up an outdoor venue in their carpark, it looks great to be fair and they have some "paid" events on and the minimum tickets for a pod is 4 so that means i can't just go to a random event with my OH, spur of the moment thing unless we buy 4 tickets!!

I have yet to meet anyone who is liking restrictions or want them to continue tbh

No more vacc certs in most of Spain thanks to very high vaccination uptake rate of 75%.

Its like the vaccines are not that super duper as predicted