Ah.

Here.

Last night.

Claire Byrne Live on RTE One.

Claire Byrne, host of what is fast becoming the strangest programme on terrestrial television, ‘receives’ a drive-by flu vaccine injection from former Fine Gael TD and pharmacist Kate O’Connell.

Anyone?

Also: name that jammer, anyone?

Watch in full here

Behold: the 1954 Jaguar XK120 – something of a unicorn, it was found in a barn in Cleveland Ohio.

Details of its past life are sparse but the US-market model was apparently driven as the manufacturer intended, taking part in rallies and sports event up to the late 1960s.

Fully intact with its original motor, interior and Jaguar verified 1954 paintwork, it goes to auction later this month, unrestored and wearing its 66 year old patina with pride.

uncrate

Taoiseach Micheál Martin is to move the entire country to level three restrictions for the next three weeks, rather than the Level 5 requested by chief medical officer Dr Tony Holohan

So Martin has gone on TV
To move us all to level three
But there is no way
He’ll do what the docs say
As five’s not where he wants to be

John Moynes

Julien Behel Photography/RollingNews

Dr Tony Holohan, Chief Medical Officer, Department of Health

This evening.

Some reaction to the decision to discard NPHET advice on bringing the country to Level 5…

Via RTÉ

A senior Government source said we are “in a very dangerous place” as decision is being represented as “politicians versus doctors” when it “never ever should have been allowed to get to this point of showdown”.

The source added that there are “serious questions and [a] major fallout”.

RTÉ also understands that while ministers took NPHET’s concern about the exponential growth of the virus “very seriously”, there was “resistance” to moving to Level 5 “at this time.”

Now Cabinet is set to decide on a proposal to put the entire country on Level 3, with additional enforcement.

A real fallout?

Or bait and switch?

We may never know.

Govt set to veto NPHET advice, adopt Level 3 nationwide (RTÉ)

Earlier: ‘You Were Elected To Lead’

RollingNews

A UK funeral service under Covid social distancing restrictions.

Earlier: Hi Five

The votes are in.

Last week, with a ‘Big Huge Slab of Mixed Cans’ from Dublin brewers Whiplash (who now deliver) on offer, we asked you to explain why you might deserve a big huge slab of cans.

As the slab contains 12x 330ml cans each of Body Riddle Pale Ale (4.5%) and Rollover Session Ale (3.8%), the competition was intense.

But there could be only one winner.

Chosen by Whiplash…

Well done, Frank, and thank you all.

Hic.

Whiplash

Last week: Whiplash Giveaway

Thanks Leah Kilcullen

Behold:  the glowing gas of the Orion nebula as it envelopes hot young stars at the edge of an immense interstellar molecular cloud. Like the Oscars in space or something. To wit:

Many of the filamentary structures visible in the featured image are actually shock waves – fronts where fast moving material encounters slow moving gas. The Orion Nebula spans about 40 light years and is located about 1500 light years away in the same spiral arm of our Galaxy as the Sun. The Great Nebula in Orion can be found with the unaided eye just below and to the left of the easily identifiable belt of three stars in the popular constellation Orion. The image shows the nebula in three colors specifically emitted by hydrogen, oxygen, and sulfur gas. The whole Orion Nebula cloud complex, which includes the Horsehead Nebula, will slowly disperse over the next 100,000 years.

(Image: César Blanco González)

apod

Top from left: Tanaiste and Minister for Enterprise Leo Varadkar, Taoiseach Micheal Martin and Minister for Climate Action, Communications Networks and Transport Eamon Ryan; Senator Michael McDowell

This afternoon.

Further to the possibility of a Level 5 lockdown for the entire country….

….Senator Michael McDowell, a former Minister for Justice, has released the following statement

‘I am appealing to the three coalition party leaders to reject the NPHET advice that the country should go to Level 5 in its entirety.

I am also appealing to the three leaders to refuse to be manipulated into a cynical (and perhaps intended) “compromise” with NPHET that we should move to Level 4.

Futile

Moving to either level will create untold misery, additional deaths, huge psychiatric and psychological damage, irreparable economic and social harm, and will be futile.

There is absolutely no reason to believe that the situation in three or four weeks’ time will be significantly different if we now go into a lockdown or quasi-lockdown. None whatever.

There is no reason to believe that infection rates or community transmission rates would not resume at or climb almost immediately to current rates if Level 5 or Level 4 restrictions were imposed nationally and if they were relaxed in coming weeks and months.

The reported NPHET advice will, if accepted, turn out to be semi-permanent lasting for many months.

Lockdown’s Consequences

Accepting NPHET advice will have entirely predictable consequences:

Increased mortality from cancer, heart disease and other conditions due to continued dislocation of the health services

Untold suffering for those continuing to be deprived of vital social services for the mentally and physically disabled and their families

Severe psychiatric and psychological damage to vulnerable people

Greatly increased domestic abuse

Loneliness and isolation for the elderly

Catastrophic consequences for economic life hitting especially the indigenous SME sectors

Collapse of many enterprises due to insolvency and foreclosures

Massively increased unemployment and resultant poverty and misery.

These consequences, among others, are not to be chosen by default out of weakness now.

Unacceptable

We simply cannot go back into lockdown. We have got to learn to live with Covid infection and with significant risk of community transmission. Epidemiology and mathematical modelling is only one part of the story.

We know that further lockdown will have inevitable mortality and health consequences that lie outside simple epidemiology. The reported NPHET advice is replete with existential threats to the “common good” more widely understood.

Hospitalisation rates, intensive care admission rates and genuine Covid mortality rates are certainly significant issues for government.

Recent evidence concerning the categorisation of Covid related deaths suggests that the figure of approximately 1800 may be inflated. Likewise the evidence given to the Dáil Covid committee’s final meeting that the median age of Covid related death was “in the high eighties” requires us to put purely epidemiological advice into a real perspective when confronted with the clearly known and inevitable consequences of accepting NPHET’s reported advice.

Living With Community Transmission

The younger cohorts of the population (including nearly everyone of working age) are entitled to live their lives as normally as circumstances can permit. It is not a question of pitching their interests into a conflict with those of the older or more vulnerable cohorts in our population. Keeping schools and creches open goes nowhere near what is now demanded.

Entire swathes of our society and of social and economic activity simply cannot be put into suspended animation in pursuit of unattainable epidemiological goals or entirely temporary effects.

The cohesion that we have witnessed up to this point was based on a number of suppositions.

These include the supposition that our health authorities would address as a matter of extreme emergency shortfalls in ICU capacity. Little or nothing was done.

The supposition also was that we would establish a really effective test, track and trace system as a matter of extreme emergency. This does not appear to have happened either.

I am appealing to the leaders of the coalition and to their parties to reject the NPHET advice and to articulate with conviction, courage and honesty a different course for Irish society over the next number of weeks and months. The NPHET path is neither necessary nor sustainable – politically, socially, or economically.

You were elected to lead – not to be led.’

Senator Michael McDowell calls on coalition to reject NPHET Level 5 advice (Senator ichael McDowell)

Earlier: Hi Five

Update:

Broadsheet.ie