From top: Copper Face Jack’s last Friday; Professor Ruairi Brugha, Head of the Department of Public Health, Royal College of Surgeons
This morning.
Prof Ruairi Brugha, of the Royal College of Surgeons, in the The Irish Times, writes::
‘…as a society, we have yet to have a debate in relation to the contending rights of those who feel they have the right to infect others through unvaccinated socialising, arguing along with some venue owners for right of entry to pubs and nightclubs for the unvaccinated, and the rights of those who wish to stay Covid-free and to be able to access health services when they need them….
Understandably, many hoped that 92 per cent vaccination coverage in adults would make us safe. However, Covid-19 vaccines only promised protection against serious disease, and not for everyone; and now that protection is waning….
…if we know that full vaccination, masks and social distancing – taken as a package – reduce the risk, what can we do to ensure everyone in high-risk settings complies? We must legislate for these measures to be mandatory.
We must enable staff and other customers to put pressure on customers who do not comply. We must enforce sanctions on venues that do not demand to see a Covid certificate and do not enforce compliance with preventive measures, enforcement that if necessary could involve ejecting customers. Yes, that will require consultation with gardaí and could require more fundamental legislative changes.
Those who sell alcohol and their advocates must take responsibility for preventing the excessive intake of alcohol on their premises, which is the single biggest factor leading to the breakdown of mask-wearing and social distancing.
There have been 30 or more revisions of the Government’s reopening guidelines for pubs in 16 months, and still no inclusion of guidance for pubs to prevent excessive alcohol consumption or eject those who are drunk.
New guidelines for nightclubs also ignore the elephant in the room – drunken customers who refuse to comply with staff requests to use preventive measures.
….Last winter, 18-35-year-olds contracted Covid-19 in pubs, and at work and home parties, and transmitted the infection to older relatives, many of whom died….
…as we enter another winter, some of those who grab the opportunity to stand in crowded queues in pubs and nightclubs will bring the virus home to younger siblings, many of whom are unvaccinated, who will seed schools with infections.
Between now and Christmas, and beyond, class and school closures will become more common, with huge impacts on parents. Too many of us have been there before. Do we have to go there again?
Good grief.
Ireland is on the cusp of yet another Covid-related disaster (Prof Ruairi Brugha, Irish Times)
RollingNews/RCSI
Copperfasten Jacks.
Hehehehehe
“However, Covid-19 vaccines only promised protection against serious disease, and not for everyone; and now that protection is waning….”
“…if we know that full vaccination, masks and social distancing – taken as a package – reduce the risk, what can we do to ensure everyone in high-risk settings complies? We must legislate for these measures to be mandatory.”
We must force groups not at risk from covid to get vaccinated to reduce their risk of serious disease in order to protect others who are at risk??
“Given that Ireland has the highest vaccine uptake in Europe, and now according to the latest from the ECDC Ireland has the highest disease prevalence; we should not be asking if the vaccine is working,
We SHOULD be asking: IS IT MAKING THINGS WORSE?”
https://twitter.com/indepdubnrth/status/1453631069836689409
+1, SOQ
Marcus talking through his hole again.
Ireland is 9th highest 14-day case per 100,000
– Latvia 1,640.58
– Estonia 1,353.45
– Lithuania 1,320.25
– Romania 1,060.5
– Slovenia 905.16
– Bulgaria 688.08
– Slovakia 656.41
– Croatia 654.21
– Ireland 548.48
– Austria 442.45
https://www.ecdc.europa.eu/en/cases-2019-ncov-eueea
protect the vulnerable, look ’em in their rooms so we can go on the rip… FREEDOM FIGHTERS… UNITE FOR YOUR RIGHT, TO PARTY…
Dem paper masks dat wud have fixed it
The elderly and vulnerable are all vaccinated now. That’s as good as it gets for them unfortunately as the virus is here for good and will continue to be in circulation for the foreseeable future. Therefore, no matter what measures are taken, there will always be a risk to those people from the virus, including from fully vaccinated people. There is no path that leads to these people not facing some risk going forward, save for totally isolating themselves, which is up to themselves. Such vulnerable and elderly would each year also to be vulnerable to many viruses, including the annual flu. Providing a fully safe environment for them simply isn’t possible. It never has been.
We’re now locking 350-450k people out of societies for no clear benefit. We’re now talking about vaccinating kids against a virus that poses no threat to them to stop them infecting their grandparents, except even vaccinated they’d still be able to infect and be infected by their grandparents.
What conditions would have to exist for you to think it time we open up and get on with life as normal?
In answer to your question:
The return of calling things by their proper names like the flu and pneumonia.
And, while I’m at it, the reclassification of the words ‘vaccine’ and ‘pandemic’ by the CDC and the WHO, respectively, should surely ring alarm bells in the minds of the most neutral of observers.
is he looking for a two pint rule per head on a night out, sure you could add it into the app, show how many you have had on yet phone ( ball and chain ) before computer says no more…won’t stop the predrinks …
THANK GOD you didn’t call them ‘prinks’.
Hate that word. Sounds like something Australian do on April fools day.
I didn’t even know that word …jaysus
People who used that word are known as cants in Oz.
”I waz goin da dunny and some cant pulled a prink on me and I ended op wazzin all over mesel for gaaawd saak.”
James Robinson, Ramsey Street, Erinsborough, Melbourne.
:) !
Ruairi is clearly someone who creams his pants at the thought of authoritarian solutions
Much the same as the other professor, Luke O’Neill who spewed trailer loads of lies over the past year. Both vying for position in the ‘Professor of Record’ stakes.
Yes, certainly a bit Dr Strangelove, I was waiting for him to lose it towards the end & start ranting about the Fatherland. Yes, basically, I’m saying Prof. Brugha is an unreconstructed Authoritarian. He definitely would’ve said something about trains running on time in Fascist Italy.
what about the vaccinated who infect people, fifty lashes aught to do it
Unless they are into that sort of thing, in which case a stern talking too instead.
One of the most soft-spoken and unassuming voices in Irish Medicine over forty years but one of the best informed and most qualified to give an opinion on our current situation. Ruairi is no alarmist. be afraid, be very afraid.
Just noticed. from the comments posted which I can see, mine appears to be the only readily identifiable name among them. Such shyness.
That’s because you’re a self-publicist.
Your name could be Boaty McBoatface, for all we know.
No rhyme or reason
21st century poet.
Lauded, even.
Its always the quiet ones you need to watch
The timing of it and the newspaper publication, too.
More propaganda.
So not one to make a Brugha-haha about it?
Sorry, I’ll retrieve my coat from the cloak, em, coat room of shame.
“However, Covid-19 vaccines only promised protection against serious disease, and not for everyone; and now that protection is waning….”
Not according to the sales pitch we were given by the manufacturers which was then unequivocally endorsed by the media, the usual talking heads and many public health officials. It was -get the vaccine and we can go back to normal, 100% protection against hospitalisations etc.- with no qualifications added. I mean they are still inferring that the vaccine prevents transmission. Doing a bait and switch now and pretending that this things were never said isn’t helping public confidence.
Yes, that’s as i recall it too.
Usual lack of transparency and accountability since.
Cloud, waffle and obfuscate. Where have all the straight-talkers gone?
This time last month we were on the pig’s back, now we’re all rolling around in the mud with nere a turnip in the swill bucket.
+1 don’t forget the “zero covid” head the balls.
People like myself were trying to tell everyone about this from the beginning of the vaccine roll out but were were ignored and labelled antivaxxers.
The companies never said their vaccines would give immunity or stop transmission. The ARR was published as less than 1% but the media and government sold it to you as the RRR at 95%.
Even calling these injections “vaccines” was a con. Normal inoculation is hugely effective, because it closely mimics normal exposure to a pathogen, with the control being exercised by killing or attenuating the virus, beforehand. These injections are a whole different ball-game, I still don’t think people realise just how different, although the disappointing results do point to that.
Beware of the freewheeling youth fuelled by booze, hectic music and intimate relationships back at someone’s flat.
Not a single mention in the article of our woefully undercapacity hospital system, and how we desperately need to expand ICU capacity ASAP?
Because thats the only long term solution here. Vaccines clearly aren’t getting rid of covid. Lockdowns aren’t getting rid of covid. Nightlife restrictions aren’t getting rid of covid.
… through the looking-glass…
http://www.thejournal.ie/covid-19-icu-bed-capacity-ireland-5585869-Oct2021/
“it’s not really true…”
The absolute doublespeak in that article is insane….HSE hasn’t had to halt elective care across the board during the current surge of Covid-19 infections…BUT said several individual hospitals across the country have had to do so…right so, HSE management is willfully ignorant to the needs of hospitals around the country or they consider it an issue for them. What kind of nonsense is this.
+1
Orwell must be spinning like a top…
That article is insane. Someone making statements like that is either an idiot or lying to the public. Both of which should be grounds for removal from his powerful position.
A representative of one of the major vested interests in our health service complaining that our hospitals are reaching capacity. Their scope to gouge the private insurance jackpot has rapidly diminished. No one commentating or directly earning a crust in our health system is coming out of this shambles untarnished.
…snouts in the trough…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TBHEfWkevvw
bon appetit…!
From the comment section of that piece-
“The man who gets payed half a million to manage one of the worst healthcare systems annually, deflecting & blaming Covid & other virus for this crisis.
Reality check Reid, this should have been forseen, people were hardly going to congregate outdoors in a very wet/windy/stormy country so the virus were always coming back with a bang.
Covid is his excuse”
+1
he’s incapable, or worse, unwilling, to answer simple questions clearly, concisely and coherently.
Just another medical professional who chose to play it safe when the moment of truth came in 2020 – easier just to protect one’s privilege and ride along with the wave of politicised Covid pseudoscience that was consuming the medical establishment.
Now that it’s apparent the promised holy grail of Covid vaccines is failing to deliver, He’s reduced to doubling down on the pseudoscience and scapegoating young people.
Talk about doing irrevocable damage to people’s faith in the medical establishment.
The scenes he’s describing could easily be labelled “Normality”, so he’s basically admitting the injections have failed to bring us back to normality, as have the other quack medicine solutions like facerags, distancing & quarantining the healthy.
To all intents & purposes, he’s admitting defeat but he doesn’t realise it & his only solution is a non-runner, because people, especially the youth, can only put up with this nonsense & incompetence for a certain amount of time & that ran out a while ago.
17,000 hospital beds in Ireland in 1981,12,000 in 2021 & the world’s highest occupancy rate. That just might be part of the problem? Also, last week there were 39 of the ICU beds occupied by people who were not intubated & ventilated, just on oxygen masks or canulas. I assume they were in ICU to quarantine them.
From the IT article:
Brugha: “Masks are effective at protecting children from the full range of respiratory infections that will hit them in the coming months. ”
Children getting exposed to “the full range of respiratory infections”.. Isn’t that a key part of how children have maintained robust immune systems since the dawn of time?
Also:
Brugha “Hiqa has reported the evidence that masks cause little difficulty, even for quite young children”
This appears to be a false statement. The most recent HIQA report I could find from Sept 2021
(https://www.hiqa.ie/sites/default/files/2021-09/Advice-to-NPHET-Facemasks.pdf) references a few studies on the potential harms to children:
Quote: “the evidence was variable and inconclusive, and that more research is needed to assess potential negative impacts of mask wearing in children, especially for longer-term use of masks”
Quote: “paediatricians had reported fog on glasses, breathing discomfort, skin rashes”
The report definitely didn’t conclude the evidence is “that masks cause little difficulty, even for quite young children”.
There was an earlier HIQA report from April (https://www.hiqa.ie/sites/default/files/2021-04/Advice-to-NPHET-on-face-mask-use-in-children-8-April-21.pdf) which says
“there is little documented evidence of harms associated with face mask use in the setting of COVID-19, particularly for cloth face mask use among children” (emphasis mine).
Of course that’s not the same thing as saying that the evidence doesn’t exist – just that adequate studies have yet to be carried out on the matter. Is that what Brugha is basing his misleading statement on?
The April report references “two small studies published in March 2021” one of which is described as saying:
“The inclusion of face masks was found to reduce the ability of the children to perceive the faces and alter the manner in which children processed the faces. The authors speculated that this may have implications for
children’s social interactions”
So if I have had one vaccine does but developed Myocarditis Professor Ruairi Brugha states I should be ejected.
He missed his vocation, he should have been born in Germany around 1900. He’d look good in a Hugo Boss uniform.
Ireland is in the state it’s in because we have fucking morons like Brugha teaching in the Royal College of Surgeons. Unvaccinated socialising? Has this muppet pulled his head out of his own entitled ass long enough to see that fully vaccinated people are contracting and transmitting Covid? E.g. Israel & Wales? This clown would easily have every human being locked in their houses with masks on just so he could say I told you so. He’s a bigger virus than Covid.