81 thoughts on “Wednesday’s Papers

  1. ReproBertie

    Wow, that Cummings and goings thing blew over in no time. That’ll show the Twitteratti that Twitter is not real life.

    1. Who am I now

      He is entitled to safety while in custody. Unless you are some kind of thug yourself?

    1. Formerly known as @ireland.com

      Almost worth buying for the mask. Good to see that nasty person get found out.

      1. Cú Chulainn

        Well done the Star.. right on.. though I must confess that I’m concerned they know something about the seagulls they’re not telling us..

        1. scottser

          it’s the picture of stevie wonder driving. i never thought a lack of class could be so class.

          1. SOQ

            Well it does get the point across- if you are prescribed certain medications and subsequently pulled over for erratic driving, the law states that you must be sure you are in a state fit to drive before doing so. That does not mean drive sixty miles to check if you are fit, it means- if in doubt, do not drive.

            Ether way- lets hope his driving is better than his dress sense.

  2. Rob_G

    The newspapers are vultures – imagine going through the trauma of your daughter being murdered, and trying to put the pieces of your life back together afterwards, never knowing when you are going to walk past a newsagent only to be broadsided with an unexpected picture of your dead daughter, occasioned by the shytebag that murdered her doing some new shytebag thing in prison?

    1. Ringsend Incinerator

      +1 agreed.

      You have to also wonder how that story got into the paper and the mentality behind wanting it published ….

    2. GiggidyGoo

      Journalism doesn’t exist anymore in this country. To sell newspapers (best value in ireland is their byline) they resort to that kind of hurtful article including the image of someone’s loved one.

  3. Kate

    Tadhg Daly, CEO of Nursing Homes Ireland , would appear to have done his level best from early March to protect the elderly . It’s tragic his insightful urgent suggestions on critical issues were not heeded by HSE & DOH civil servants, HPHET.
    Hundreds of lives lost that was entirely preventable. Shameful.

    1. SOQ

      Paddy Cosgrave is doing the ‘I told you so’ line on twitter at the minute. In fairness he deserves at least some credit because he was one of the few who was shouting about this issue when MSM were silent. He even arranged an order of PPE if memory serves me.

    1. f_lawless

      Also

      For those who are/were dismissing the Swedish approach by comparing that of their neighbours, it might be interesting to note that the head of the Norwegian Institute of Public Health, Camille Stoltenberg, has recently said that according to their latest analysis, she now believes that Norway could have brought the coronavirus pandemic under control without a lockdown, and called for the country to avoid such far-reaching measures if hit by a second wave

      https://www.thelocal.no/20200522/norway-could-have-controlled-infection-without-lockdown-health-chief

      1. Cian

        This suggests that the fast-acting countries like Australia and New Zealand that quickly closed their borders haven’t had their first wave – and once they reopen they will have to go through the whole reporting deaths each day.

      2. Donnchadh

        I’m sure Stoltenberg’s comments will be read as vindicating the Swedish approach, but imo we would need more information before we could conclude that. The key claim she made is that R0 in Norway was at 1.1 before the lockdown – this is why she suggests that the lockdown wasn’t needed. The obvious question is what was R0 in Sweden. If it was at 1.1 or thereabouts, would that be enough to explain why the death rate per million in Sweden is close to ten times that in Norway? Or, put another way, if Norway had gone with the Swedish approach, would they not have experienced multiply greater deaths?

        That said, if a second wave does hit, you would hope that governments can manage it with more targeted measures and avoid very severe lockdowns. Going through the first wave has hopefully provided the data needed to make more informed decisions.

      3. Formerly known as @ireland.com

        Stoltenberg said:
        “This suggests that it would not have required heavy-handed measures such as school closures to bring it below 1 and so push the number of infected people in the country into a gradual decline. ”

        Until you have a lot of testing, you can’t be sure what your R0 is. So, you close down your country and prepare for the worst.

        If countries have enough capacity they should not need to lockdown again. That is the plan for Australia. The lockdown in Australia wasn’t as severe as in Ireland but because it key actions happened earlier, the total deaths is 103, cases 7142, for a country of 25 million. Ireland needed to act far quicker than it did.

    2. SOQ

      WHO’s bluff has been called- the US is opening up and it won’t be closing down again.

      I read recently that because the demographic most at risk have already been exposed- apart from those self quarantining obviously- that even if there was a second wave, it would be nowhere near as serious. It is fairly obvious that this thing is highly infectious so the two core questions now are- how many people have antibodies and how many are naturally immune?

      1. Cian

        True – the difficulty is knowing what those rates are in – especially in the high-risk group (the elderly).

        In Irieland if half of the elderly have been exposed (and are either naturally immune or have antibodies) then the second wave will “kill” another 1,500. On the other hand, if only 10% have been exposed, then another 15,000 will die. Since a lot of the elderly have been cocooning their exposure rate is probably lower than the rest of us.

        1. SOQ

          I think there is so many variables at play it is hard to make any sort of accurate prediction. Near all of Italy’s fatalities were comorbidities so who knows. How did Japan handle it?

          As I said before, the main difference- apart from governments getting spooked with bad modelling projections- was and is the media fear porn. Apparently we had a bad flu in 2018? I don’t even remember that.

          1. Cian

            “there is so many variables at play it is hard to make any sort of accurate prediction. “
            and
            “governments getting spooked with bad modelling projections”

            unfortunately the governments had to make decisions – even if the data was incomplete and the projections were bad. They couldn’t sit on their hands dong nothing.

      2. Enn

        I’m personally excited about the antibody testing. I am one of a few people in my life (ages 21-46) who suspect we contracted covid in December/January: at the time this manifested as appalling ‘chest infections’ with high fever and non-productive coughs, and doctors advising that we were only in danger if it become pneumonia, which it did for one person (21yo, recovered fine) .

        Because there was little to no covid awareness none of us made the connection. We weathered it out. I felt at the time it was viral and that I’d never had a virus so bad, but the symptoms didn’t make me fear for my life or anything. I ended up quarantining for a few days by accident because I was too ill to leave my flat. However, I did go out and about with symptoms.

        I didn’t infect, it seems, anyone close to me. Or did I? It’s an odd one, but I’d really love to be tested for antibodies and know. I may be one of a lot of people theoretically recovered from it now.

        1. SOQ

          There was quite a number of people who had a bad dose of something around that period and as flu seasons go it was being touted as a bad one but then all of a sudden nobody had flu and everyone had CoVid-19, which really doesn’t make sense. Although if that is the case then why the extra fatalities happened later is a mystery.

          You’ll never know if you infected anyone or not but if it turns out that across the population this has the same level of severity as flu, which is looking increasingly likely- why would you beat yourself up about one and not the other?

          One thing I do see happening is that in workplaces, people will become much less tolerant of sickness. The idea of soldiering on will be frowned upon because nobody is indispensable and you have a responsibility to try and prevent infecting others, no matter what the bug is.

          1. Cian

            “but if it turns out that across the population this has the same level of severity as flu, which is looking increasingly ”
            If this is just like flu – how come there has been a spike in deaths that way above average and is greater than any year in the last 10 across many countries in the world?

          2. Donnchadh

            SOQ, ‘this has the same level of severity as flu’ – do you mean the IFR is the same as that of the flu? I wouldn’t say that looks particularly likely, for two reasons. First, the IFR of the flu may not be as high as is often suggested: https://mobile.twitter.com/AdamJKucharski/status/1243466394991239170

            Second, the results of serosurveys are pretty varied, but some of the big ones from Europe are suggesting IFR significantly higher than the 0.1% often cited for flu, e.g. Geneva 0.5%, Spain 1.2%.

          3. SOQ

            I don’t know Cian- but one thing is for certain, it never cured the flu so you are looking at two potentially deadly diseases in circulation rather than just one- so fatality rates are bound to higher.

            I did read somewhere that on the island of Ireland, every fatality is being tested so I expect the true picture of infection at time of death will emerge in due course, but again- that only confirms with not from.

            Its just raw data at this point so until they analysis the results, it is as you say, just a marked increase in overall fatalities.

          4. SOQ

            @ Donnchadh

            Surely Adam Kucharski’s comparison is not comparing like with like? He has a reasonable estimate of what 100% flu rate is but at this point, no real way of knowing what CoVid-19 is.

            Right now, even the accuracy of some of those anti body tests is being questioned. The British government has advised retailers not to sell anymore and for anyone who has received results to ignore them.

          5. Donnchadh

            SOQ, you’re right that it’s very hard to come up with a precise figure of total Covid infections. But surely the same problem applies claims that the fatality rate of C19 is comparable to that of the flu?

          6. SOQ

            Time will tell Donnchadh but I prefer to think of the average case scenario rather than worse because right from the start, this thing has been over hyped and over estimated.

            Its a corona virus and so far it has behaved like a corona virus so until and when it starts behaving differently- let’s not assume the worse- there has been way to much of that already.

            The real fatality rate will out in due course.

          7. SOQ

            Oh and one other point Donnchadh- the people who were sick presented to hospital or perhaps just to a testing center- they are known and counted.

            The people who are asymptomatic, immune or just felt a bit crook are the silent majority. Once an accurate anti body test is rolled out, the only way the fatality rate can go- is down.

          8. Donnchadh

            SOQ,
            Thanks for the posts. Those might be reasons for optimism, but imo they fall a long way short of strong evidence to think that C19’s IFR is around that of the flu.

            BTW the serology studies are not just tests of people who are sick or who presented at hospitals or to be tested – they are (when conducted properly) representative samples of whole populations. And while they might not be accurate, it would be a mistake to assume that the only way they could be wrong is by systematically under-representing the total number of people infected.

          9. SOQ

            I am not aware of any serology testing done which set out to capture a representative cross section myself- I may be wrong of course. But even that is fraught because a cross section on somewhere like NYC is going to give a totally different reading to even New York state- let alone elsewhere.

            I think we have to be cautiously optimistic at this stage and assume there is at least some sort of seasonal element to it because it appears to be on the wane. And, also have faith in our own immune systems because they are our guardian angels in action.

          10. Cian

            @SOQ
            “The people who are asymptomatic, immune or just felt a bit crook are the silent majority.”

            I’m curious, when they calculate the IFR for the ‘flu: are these three taken into account too? Or is the ‘flu IFR only based on those who have presented to medics with symptoms?

          11. SOQ

            I don’t know again Cian but as I see it- commodities aside- there would be three types of sick people presenting.

            1. Flu Symptoms
            2. CoVid-19 Symptoms
            3. Flu and CoVid-19 Symptoms

            How you would separate what is what without quick and accurate tests for each is anyone’s guess. I think perhaps the mistake we have been making is assuming that the increased fatality rate is an ‘or’ situation when in fact it is two viruses doing their own thing concurrently- so maybe near twice the numbers?

            It is certainly likely to be an element as I doubt if it is just coincidence that infections and fatalities are dropping so fast- just after flu season has ended.

          12. Donnchadh

            SOQ, I don’t know how many serology studies manage to test a truly representative sample. I do know that the Spanish survey tested 60,000-plus people right across Spain, so they were hoping to test a geographically representative sample at any rate, including regions which were very badly hit and those comparatively unscathed.

            As it happens, I share some of your cautious optimism. But imo comparing C19 with the flu goes beyond cautious ootinusm or any clear evidence we have at present, and threatens to minimise the danger it poses. By all means look for reasons to be optimistic – but there are lots of reasons to think this is very different to a bad flu season.

          13. SOQ

            I did not say it was just a bad flu season Donnchadh- I am suggesting that it is on top of a bad flu season which is being borne out by the emerging seasonal pattern?

        2. Who am I now

          Agreed, I think I might have had in December also, went through London Heathrow and long distance trip at the time.

    1. SOQ

      Big-time- Johnson actually has a negative rating at the moment and over half the Tories want him gone. A huge blow to Brexit if he does but the British public are very angry right now and this seems to be the lightening rod.

      1. GiggidyGoo

        Boris will brazen it out. It would take some swing within his party to dump him. The longer he holds onto Concannon….sorry…..Cummings the better.

        1. Otis Blue

          For Brexit the planned summit at the end of June is key. If the Brits do not seek an extension (which they have insisted they won’t) it’s very hard to see how a deal can be achieved.

          Job done then.

      2. Fintan Frobisher

        Who are these ” half of Tories” who want Boris gone ?
        The level of intelligence on this forum is worrying.

    2. Who am I now

      I heart the English Tories. They make ours almost seem cuddle bunnies by comparison.

  4. Fintan Frobisher

    Well done Kate.
    You’ve identified the most scandalous story on all the front pages that the nodding dogs on here should really be angry about.
    Perhaps it’s because it’s a British newspaper that’s doing the proper reporting.
    Nursing home staff using painters overalls and a dressmaker’s facemask as PPE is an utter outrage and one that should shame the HSE and Varadkar.
    Ireland’s death rate in nursing homes is one of the worst in the world yet the usual suspects on here are more concerned about having a pop at the Tories.
    And the plebs wonder why the Irish media holds them in such contempt.

      1. Fintan Frobisher

        It’s Barnard Castle.
        That’s what happens when you rely on the Daily Star for your news.

  5. Fintan Frobisher

    The funniest thing of all are those who complain every morning on here about the Irish Daily Mail not having any Irish news.
    Yet when it does have a damning Irish story that should make them genuinely angry they prefer the Daily Star’s coverage of Dominic Cummings.
    That’s why taking the public for granted is such a picnic for Leo and the rest of the gang in Leinster House.

    1. scottser

      why are you on about the irish when your own country is going down the tubes, seonín?

    2. Nigel

      You see this, Salmon? This is Ireland. That country over there? Is the UK.

      Maybe you should drive around a bit until your eyesight clears up.

  6. Johnny

    After living in NY for a while,I have developed a certain grove for how I spend my weekends,one the more enjoyable reads in the NYT besides Modern Love,is ‘Sunday Routine’.

    On Sundays in spring I often frequent the museums,galleries and cafes on the Upper East Side,with Arader Galleries on Madison one my fav’s,they specialize in The Birds of America by Audubon and Sporting Art.

    Race in America is becoming one the defining issues in the upcoming election between two tired old white men.

    This is an overview of just one racially charged incident in NY,its a powder keg here with people broke,sirens wailing,kids and people are hungry,off-license and liquor sales are through the roof, folks are angry,scared and all fired up.The Bronx and Brooklyn could easily go off this summer,thankfully the Mayor is doing and saying all the right things so far,but even he may not be able contain it.

    In the evenings,often late and stoned I often go out for out for long walks or bike rides, parts of Brooklyn,BedStuy and Bushwick have way more edge lately, maybe its everyone in a bandana and face masks or I’m smoking great weed,but man this lockdown and all the extreme racist violence.The lower income neighborhoods in NY have been hit way harder than Manhattan.

    Everything feels a lot more sketchy,places have been closed and dark lately with it seems violent racial incidents as a backdrop,magnified and amplified by social media and two tired old white guys with no answers.At night there has been no other sound, except loud nerve shattering sirens in the lower income hoods,I live close to a major hospital with refrigerator trucks lined up on a side street.

    This incident occurred in The Ramble,in Central Park about midway between Strawberry Fields and the Met.

    Is it cabin fever, lockdown or is America inherently racist,this is New York,it happened in Central Park on the upper east side, the guy could have been shot and killed by a Karen.

    I frequently pass Spike Lee’s production offices for 40 Acres and a Mule in Fort Green,NY has a certain tension in the air, similar to what he depicted so masterfully in Do The Right Thing.

    This followed some very over zealous enforcement of masks/social distancing rules by white cops in black neighborhoods,the NYPD has now stoped enforcing any.

    Karen is a term for middle aged white women with entitlement, selfishness, a desire to complain.

    This is yet another ‘Karen’ story, she has now lost her job, been doxed, we know who she took her prom..

    “Black Americans often face terrible daily dangers in outdoor spaces, where they are subjected to unwarranted suspicion, confrontation, and violence,” said Audubon SVP”

    From Post-the video has been viral for like 48 hours.

    “The Central Park dog-walker, investment banker Amy Cooper, was caught on the footage threatening to call the cops on Christian, to which he replied, “Please call the cops.”

    Amy screamed back, “I’m going to tell them there’s an African American man threatening my life!” — a claim that has drawn widespread outrage for what critics, including Mayor Bill de Blasio, call its blatant racist undertone”

    Biden has pick to Stacey Abrams as she connects in Georgia and Florida,in a way Kamala doesn’t.

      1. Johnny

        Thanks,I don’t just obsess over DOB all the time,I don’t no really I don’t …no no

        -the bronx is burning up..

        “They should make things available to us, but they didn’t,” she said. “The white community, they had everything that they needed. They had access to things.’’

        “I’m scared but I can’t afford to get sick,” said Ms. Lopez, showing rashes on her hands from the disinfectant.
        “We’re the black sheep put in the corner,” she said. “The city, the government, they have forgotten us.”

        https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/26/nyregion/bronx-coronavirus-outbreak.html

        1. SOQ

          I seen that Karen video and what stuck me was that she was acting quite strange, from the start she was very agitated or confused- she nearly strangled that poor dog. She was also wearing a mask which would have restricted her oxygen intake, while exercising. Not that I am excusing what she said of course.

          I suspect what you are witnessing in NYC Johnny is a sign of things to come in most urban centers. There is a lot of pent up frustration and fear out there which is going to project itself onto other underlying issues- there will be a LOT of healing to be done after this.

        1. Johnny

          Oh for FFS he’s a gay bird watcher-not a gang banger decked out in crips colors.

          As an avid runner,unleashed dogs in the park are a nuisance,numerous times I have had stop, smile politely and go oh yeah lovely dog but please can you put a leash on it and have it not chase after me…barking its head off.

          I recently had words with a neighbor who had covid-he drove to a beach near where I run and let his dogs out for their ‘run’,while quarantining in his car,their run included following me while barking like crazy.

          He ended up on front page Post as “Mask Hole” :)

          https://www.easthamptonstar.com/grind/2020421/after-ny-post-cover-george-stephanopoulos-clears-air

        2. Ghost of Yep

          Gay bird watcher or not he could still hurt someone. If he said what he said he said then there is a reason she nearly choked the dog to death and reacted the way she did. Didn’t deserve to lose her job.

          1. SOQ

            He only watches gay birds? Now that is finely tuned gaydar- way above my pay grade for sure.

    1. V'ness

      In fairness, Derek (Donoghue) on the Telly last Thursday said Racism would be the thing to watch out for this week in ‘Merica

      as well as war with China

      The most scalding and telling thing about the US now, from that video
      well, after seeing the way she was handling her dog making me want to drag her by a collar meself, was;
      “I’m going to tell them there’s an African American man threatening my life
      the sheer ease she went there with – knowing that it was something that might be available to her

      Try blaming that fact on the Deep State lads

      ‘Merica is fú**ed

      1. bisted

        …apparently, if they have to abort (sorry Justine) they will come down close to the Skelligs…an area well acquainted with space travel…

        1. Johnny

          It supposed cross over Irish air space around 10 pm-just grab a pair binoculars like your man the voyeur with the pics of people in their bedrooms:)

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