Covid 19 Part XXXV-956,720 ROI (5,952 deaths) 452,946 NI (3,002 deaths) (08/01) Read OP

Never waste a good crisis

I wonder will Tony allow normal opening hours for bars in future

Us Irish ain’t the brightest bunch in Europe

its going to take decades to instil the confidence for many to return to normal

Page 3 of the report gives a breakdown by variant from Dec 30th 2020 to August 7th 2021.

73.4% of cases analysed in that time were Alpha variant, 19.3% were Delta.

@iamwhoiam wrote:

I thought the same, but it's just not true. Between April and December last year we increased our number of permanent ICU beds by 10%. Which is a pretty good number in itself, but especially good when you consider that it was completely unprepared for.

Since then there was a commitment to increase capacity by a further 14%, but so far this year they've added 4%. As one would expect though, there's likely a long lead time on these projects, and hopefully the other 10% will be delivered before the end of the year.

But overall since the start of pandemic our permanent ICU capacity has been increased by 14% (255 -> 291), which one cannot call "insignificant".

Your point after that is correct - our capacity is still well below where it should be, and realistically we should be adding 30 beds every single year for the next decade to get to where we need to be.

But then you get into the nuts and bolts of it. To bring our ICU capacity up to this level would require an additional €300m per year in the HSE budget as well as at least €1bn in capital costs over the next decade. That's assuming it's just a matter of adding new beds. As with everything, it's rarely as simple as "just add more beds". Much of our hospital infrastructure is not capable of taking more beds. So you need new hospitals. Look at the resistance there is in Ireland to spending money on health, the complaints about the cost of the childrens' hospital.

Select 20 hospitals, add a new wing into each capable on average of taking 15 ICU beds + 200 normal beds. Cost of each wing, easily €1bn. That's €20bn capital expenditure. And the rest. It's what we need to do, but the epic meltdowns over it will always stand in the way.

There's always a gap between the right thing to do, and the thing that people will let you do.

We pissed away billions upon billions of euros in covid mitigation compensations, so money really isn’t an object

Money has literally been no issue since March 2020, no mitigation measures required justification

I struggle to see where the resistance to spending money on health is

Strong decline on swabs continuing now, potentially even accelerating. 1,812 positive swabs. Last two Wednesdays 1,980 & 2,106. 7-day average dropping for the 5th day in a row.

4.50 Guinness 4.70 Heineken.

That has nothing really to do with it.. Covid has done a lot of damage to the indoor pub sector. I was talking to a fella publician yesterday and he has a bigger pub and he stated that it's shockingly quiet. One pub was open during the reopening (outdoor) and made a killing and gained a lot of customers from the three closed pubs. Now some haven't come back at all(older crowd) but it's worrying if you dont get the regulars back or even the young crowd(not fully vaccinated).

1812 positive swabs, 7.84% positivity on 23,098 tests. 7 day test positivity is 8.9%. - Wednesday, September 1st 2021

Now yer swabbin'

The Government has received the go ahead for a Covid-19 vaccine booster campaign for immunosuppressed people, Taoiseach Micheál Martin has said, with third doses also likely to be given to nursing homes residents and the over 70s “subject to advice”. No indication of when just yet, but waiting for NIAC advice.

And only last week NPHET were saying cases would peak in Sept,so plenty of nonsense from the so called experts as well

Exactly, it was actually "could be mid September, late September, middle of October or maybe earlier or later depending how things go". Would be far better off telling the truth and say we are not sure at the moment.