The whole thing has been disaster after disaster, a massive call for people to be on call for Ireland attracted 70k people and as of 6 days ago only about 50 yes fifty have been given something to do, there's 2000 people gone through contact tracing tracing and there's only 40 doing it. 115 million per month to rent private hospitals which currently lie empty, great if they are empty it means there's not as many sick as predicted but to rent them at 3 times the cost that the UK government spent doing the same thing is tribunal worthy. Utter farce as I've said before the only thing that stopped us being the worst in the world is low population density and that has nothing to do with the government.
Local News from Dublin with Independent.ie. Get local Sport, Entertainment, Business & Lifestyle news for Dublin City, North and South Dublin.
m.herald.ie
Good news story in my opinion, like the nightingale situation in the UK we haven't needed the overflow as the worst case scenario clinically hasn't been seen - would it have been remiss for the government not to plan for it - i think so personally. There is a danger of thinking this wont be needed going on, we are just at the end of the beginning of this barely beyond 10% of what the time line is likely to be. Then you have to plan for secondary mortality and the private hospitals are going to be vital in this even if they are never used for Covid, heat attacks, Strokes, Cancer care etc. We need a fluid health system at them moment.The cost will be backed by borrowing from the Eu at historic low rates - if we can borrow to bail out the worlds banks im more then happy to borrow and take on any burden to save the general public lives.
Id also have a different opinion and experience, on recruiting of Volunteers, i can tell you i know more then 100 volunteers who have been put to work in contact tracing, putting together tests, stewarding and in call centers - we have at least 4 times that in our place and we are one hospital, it is tricky and there has to be a vetting process with volunteers for a few reasons, 1) To protect them, you have responsibility to keep them safe and 2) some people are swept up by good will, but they have to have a resilience and skills to deal with the type of work required. 3) Protect the people they will be working with.
We have also really improved our testing, i was tested toward the end of last week, as were all the patients in our place, 20-48 hour turn around - we had problems not in testing - but in processing initially - we have hugely improved since March. we were massively quick of the mark implementing community testing and contact tracing within days of this crisis and built our infrastructure from there - some countries haven't even managed this yet.
On Bruce's Graphs they are a bit misleading, particularity in Ireland, Leinster has over 5 times more the population then Connacht, so it doesn't really take into account population distribution. There is a danger of looking at the graphs through a UK prism, not every country is like the UK. Like Ireland has huge swaths of rural unpopulated areas out side the cities and less of an urban sprawl distribution then the UK, this will mean numbers are less spread out and more concentrated in geographical areas in distribution and concentrated in high population densities.
We've mad mistakes - the nursing homes in particular, but its been far from how you describe in my lived experience.
