But fear not, our intrepid minister for health, Captain Hindsight, has NOW announced funding to protect our most vulnerable in nursing homes.

Dublin has nearly 57% covid 19 which is very disturbing considering Dublin has less than 25%of the population .from end of February alarms ringing all over the place about covid 19…in Dublin we massive scene parties in temple bar/Italian rugby supporters arriving into dublin city /Cheltenham /skiing holidays in northern Italy /back and forward flights to covid 19 hot spots /.. and now Irish people are reaping the whirled wind! this virus sneak on to island of Ireland when we all worry about who was going to form next government!

So the British Health Secretary just threatened to ban exercise if people don’t stop ignoring the outdoor rules imposed, apparently people are out sunbathing in public places due to the warm weather in places over the weekend. Can you imagine how hard this lockdown will become if we get a mini heatwave anytime soon….:(

50 clusters? How many nursing homes are there in Ireland? Is 50 a large or small number?

These clusters are on the rise daily. Very worrying situation

The obvious is that contact tracing doesn’t work you see a statement as follows : “It is not known how nearly 30% of cases were transmitted in Ireland.”

If a carrier is in close proximity in a public transport/pub/coffee shop/restaurant/post office/bank/supermarket et al it can spread. If I was a carrier sat on a bus/train two week’s ago how many could I give it too? Then how many could they give it too?

We squandered our strategic advantage over most of Europe in being an island nation by not setting up quarantine and isolation of visitor’s and returnee’s by airport/ferry port. The incompetent’s in charge are still allowing potential virus spreader’s into the country with a big Céad Míle Fáilte!

@NotMyIreland: Exactly this. I recall Simon Coveney being implored to train 4000 contact tracers on TV about 3 weeks ago by 2 highly qualified medical personnel (urging him to train them that week) and then again when schools were closed as it was a perfect opportunity to utilise teachers very useful communication skills for this task. He responded on the programme with “we signed off on a massive budget and are taking advice from experts”. When some of those experts specifically asked him if contact tracing was provided for in that extra budget he didnt know. I dont expect ministers to be masters of detail for every brief but I expect them to apply common sense and prudence and ask questions on our behalf. Testing, contact tracing and Isolation were the 3 key repeated messages from the WHO. I dont think its unreasonable to expect the government to ask some specifics about these from their experts before signing off on a huge monetary allocation considering they should have been forming a very significant part of our initial plan in order to understand the scale of the problem we were facing and ensure adequate provision was accounted for in the budget backed up with a roll out plan. This is basic governance. So either they asked and were happy with the plan around contact tracing or they didnt ask for specific details. Its fair to acknowledge that in terms of testing there is a worldwide shortage and they are doing the best they can but in terms of contact tracing all we needed were people and phones and laptops and a small amount of training easily executed on line. This is easy stuff. Fankly, I would also much rather our Taoiseach was spending those 8 hours a week referred to in another article doing the work he should be doing as I would imagine that right now there arent enough hours in the day for all the material coming across his desk. That’s not a criticism of his willingness to help but an observation on his prioritisation. I see commentary here about the job he is doing in comparison to other world leaders. He is on a par with most other European leaders as far as I can see with one exception, a lot of those leaders have much larger countries and more interconnected travel hubs which makes their task a lot harder. I realise my comments will be met with responses ranging from “it’s no time to criticise” to “what are you doing to help” to the classic “SF Bot” but peoples lives depend on the foresight of and decisions being made by this government and their ability to turn those decisions into cohesive plans. We are less than 18 months after yet another seemingly forgotten scandal in our health service that gave us a glimpse into the massive mis-management of it with women having to drag them to court to get recognition or answers. This on top of years of widely recognised depletion in the standard of healthcare in this country. I think people are absolutely entitled to ask questions. Crisis management needs very specific skill sets none of which were readily apparent in our governments performance in recent years. The attitude of the vast majority of the public to this crisis is a real source for optimism and the response of our frontline healthcare staff (present and retired) should have all our gratitude (particularly when we are asking then to perform miracles with the most limited of resources and at personal risk) but any reasonable questioning of government policy and decision making seems to be frowned upon. Well 50 hot spots into the locations of our most vulnerable and frail (only weeks after our minister for health mildly chastising some homes for preemptively restricting access) seems a reasonable time to ask questions to me. In fact I would really think that considering the numbers of elderly that are hospitalised and die of flu or related complications each year that it would be standard pratice not to allow the free circulation of agency staff through nursing homes. It’s an accident waiting to happen. At a time like this it seems inconceivable that this wasn’t enacted immediately at the same time we shut down schools but we do seem to prefer to let private businesses look after their own governance as much as possible even in matters of healthcare and protection of our elderly.

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