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

You need to remember that for many covid is a religion, and absolutely anything is justified in the service of your god.

You'd like to think that no sensible government would impose this on their people. We need to find a balance and shutting everything for any period of time isn't it. Everything needs to remain functioning and open with guidelines helping people to stay safe. After 19months of this we know it's not going away. Having anymore lockdowns will only push the inevitable down the line. We know the vaccines and the boosters aren't as effective as we had hoped so based on that we can't lockdown or impose restrictions everytime we have an increase in cases.

Oddly, ICU is also unchanged from yesterday at 118.

People are so early triggered.

Yes hospitals are bad. We can't just order 200 ICU beds (staff included) off Amazon for next day delivery.

We (the public) have a chance to keep hospitals getting worse. If the HSE could magic up staff by clicking their fingers, I'm sure they would. There's very little they can do during a surge, so maybe he's saying the hospitals are struggling and I'm gonna wager he also said for people to be cautious, limit contacts, don't go out and about with symptoms.... All the stuff that people can do day to day that will have a benefit.

The fact that's lots of people, maybe that's why it's kept being repeated over and over again.

I do find this incredibly frustrating. Surely with all the HSE staff and admin available they could peddle out a spokesperson instead of the CEO every day! Could you imagine if the CEO of a private sector company was spending every day on radio/TV/Press conferences!! The mind boggles.

Short of a time machine, there's **** all that can be done today. Play the blame game, but maybe after we get out of this pandemic. It just comes across as, Paul Reid explains hospitals are under strain, explains why elective surgery is being cancelled, asks people to be more responsible, limit cants ya etc... And people just stick their hands up saying it's all his fault and we're not gonna follow simple guidelines out of spite.

I mean nobody has suggested buying them off Amazon. However what people are saying is that we have had nearly two years at this stage to get our capacity issues in order and we are still being caught out. That is on Reids and the Governments shoulders at this stage. it's just not good enough.

In fairness, it's not all his fault. There is a long list of people over the years you can attribute blame to.

However, the public aren't at fault for any of the HSE's failings and anyone falling for that notion is a complete arse!

"Hey, we've pissed away billions on the health service but have actually done nothing to improve it in decades and it's on it's knees because of our incompetence but hey, guess what? It's all your fault because you hung out with a friend/family member at during the week"

"The unvaccinated are the problem" - Leo Varadker.

Leo Varadker, who is currently in Saudi Arabia, having dinner and cosying up with people who persecute and kill people who are gay, said that and people lap it up despite the fact the population of Gibraltar say otherwise. I am not anti vax, I have my vaccine, probably will get a booster etc but, ffs...

🙄 Depressing ****.

• This latest CSO report https://www.cso.ie/en/releasesandpublications/br/b-cdc/covid-19deathsandcasesseries36/ has one stark fact. Around 28% of those who contracted COVID-19 in September and October and admitted to an ICU were not born in Ireland, and 90% of those reported being un-vaccinated. We must do more to counteract the nonsensical antivax stuff these people are getting from their own countries. I heard a Lithuanian the other day saying "I've done my own research". That phrase really grates with me. It translates as "I've read a cospiracy theory on the web and I believe it. I don't believe what real scientists are saying".
• I'm not engaged in blaming. I just want to see something done to get these pople vaccinated.

More ICU beds alone will not fix everything. Nor will mask wearing alone, or vaccines alone, etc We need many things to get on top of this. One of those things we need is a significant increase in ICU capacity.

Increasing ICU capacity is a massive part of the solution here. The reason why we are imposing restrictions and talking about ludicrous measures such as mandatory vaccines is because of the stress and strain on the hospitals. There is no getting away from that. We can't be giving the HSE or the Government a free pass on it either.