Archive for the ‘CoronaVirus’ Category
Prince Charles of Britain Has a Pox
Mike Finn Sympathises
Ciúin House Carrick-on-Shannon, County Leitrim – Gombeen State Racism in Ireland
Donal O’Kelly’s article should be circulated far and wide – Action is Necessary.
Ciúin is a word I love. It’s the Irish word for quiet. It has a peaceful, secure and sleepy feel to it, ideal for a lullabye. Suantraí. Ciúin, ciúin, a stór .. as baby closes her eyes .
Last May I used my facebook page to highlight the fact that Ciúin House Carrick-on-Shannon, the then newly-opened emergency accommodation centre for asylum seekers, had just received 38 male international protection applicants who’d been transferred from Hatch Hall Direct Provision centre in Dublin. Hatch Hall was being converted into a luxury hotel. Ciúin House was accommodating these people on a general basis of two per room. It had a sign and a book in the reception hall that everyone had to sign. The sign said that all residents had to be in their rooms by 10pm nightly.
I met three of the residents on their second evening in Carrick-on-Shannon. I know about the curfew because the men, all in their thirties or thereabouts, wanted to get back to Ciúin House in case there was an unknown penalty for not observing the curfew. I dropped them back at 10pm sharp.
After the facebook post drew a lot of public attention, the curfew was dropped. The owners at first said it was a language misunderstanding, then that the note only referred to not using the washing machine after 10pm. It was neither of those things. It was a curfew. And the owners obviously considered they had a right to impose it.
Read the rest of this entry »
A view from Madrid during the crisis
From the Cedar Lounge Revolution Site : Jason O’Toole, well known in this parish, has a piece in the Mirror about the situation in Madrid where he’s currently based. Troubling is the word … Madrid is eerily like a ghost town since being put on a near-total lockdown nine days ago.
But the deafening silence has been broken every single night by Madrilenos – as locals are called – taking to their balconies at 8pm to applaud the doctors and nurses on the front lines saving lives.
It provides only light relief to Spain’s 47-million population is only allowed to leave home for work, buy food or visit the pharmacy.
A view from Madrid during the crisis
The story is dark. We also learn that every evening Madrilenos emerge from their homes to sing and chant, supporting each other and health workers battling the CoronaVirus. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-spain-balcony-sing/amid-coronavirus-blues-balcony-singer-helps-madrilenos-to-party-on-idUSKBN21723W
Another story from the Spanish State is very grim reading, and we should prepare ourselves for similar events in Ireland
“Spanish Military Finds Dead Bodies And Seniors ‘Completely Abandoned’ In Care Homes” https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2020/03/24/820711855/spanish-military-finds-dead-bodies-and-seniors-completely-abandoned-in-care-home
With more than 39,000 confirmed cases of COVID-19 and 2,800 deaths as of Tuesday, Spain is the second hardest-hit country in Europe
Last week, one privately owned home in Madrid reported 20 deaths and 75 infections, claiming it didn’t have adequate material to take care of the sick residents and dead bodies.
Manu Fernandez/AP
“Keep Calm & Carry On” Johnson Tells Room Full Of Corpses – Waterford Whispers News
Close to British CoronaVirus Reality
EVOKING the daring-do of the great generation that survived World War II, but won’t survive him, Britain’s PM Boris Johnson delivered an impassioned speech to a room of corpses which contracted and subsequently died from Covid-19.
“Keep calm and carry on, ” Johnson bellowed, delighted with how the markets have ‘rallied’ and the pound has ‘jumped up’ in response to his government’s prioritising of profit over people these past two weeks.
Despite the cold and stark surroundings of a near capacity morgue, Johnson, encouraged by the lack of dissenting voices among his captive audience, continued his speech full of vim and vigour.
“We shall socialise on the beaches, we shall congregate en masse on the landing grounds, we shall get pissed in the fields and in the streets, we shall lie to the hilt; we shall never surrender to logic and the haunting pleas from kindhearted nations begging us to save our own people and not make the same mistakes they did.”
— Read on waterfordwhispersnews.com/2020/03/20/keep-calm-carry-on-johnson-tells-room-full-of-corpses/
Pandemic posts, propaganda and positions: political and proletarian, never 'populist'.
We should never allow the left to be to be smeared as ‘populist’ ever again.
The Irish left has maintained a huge degree of unity and agreement during this crisis so far.
As well as demands for social and public health provision, testing and recruitment, release of resources and protection of workers’ incomes, the left has agreed with, and led on, all necessary constraining measures to beat the virus: the strictest social distance, the close down of venues, events, institutions, workplaces, gatherings; calling for closure of inessential production.
The left has at no time raised pseudo democratic demands for rights to assemble and protest. It was ahead in calling off scores of events and demonstrations it had organised.
Far from ‘stirring it up’ or basing itself on the most disruptive, delinquent or irresponsibly ‘rebellious’ in society, the left has been to the fore in calling out not just the crazy Trumps and Johnson’s, not just the underlying ecological apocalypse, not just the run down of the health service, not just the Cheltenham chumps, but those in the general public, among the young, the ‘broad masses’, who have been stupid and selfish enough to party on and congregate on, as if they and their fellow citizens were invulnerable. The left is calling out, drawing attention to and exposing as crazy, those who ignore the simple demand to keep their distance and stay at home as much as possible.
Socialists are being social-ist. Please note, all those high and low who have contributed to or who contribute to the advance of the pandemic. Please note, you panelists and pundits, for future discourse.
Des Derwin, 22nd March 2020.
The Coronavirus Manifesto by Gene Kerrigan, 'Sunday Independent', 22nd March 2020.
“IMAGINE the chaos if the nurses went on strike right now, for higher pay and better conditions. They won’t do it, of course, but if they put their personal interests above all else, now would be the time to pull the plug.
Instantly, their every demand would be met.
Of course, in human and social terms, it would be disastrous — not to mention selfish and immoral.
Which is why the nurses won’t do it.
In fact, in the face of the Covid-19 assault on our lives, the opposite is happening. Retired medics are lining up by the tens of thousands to re-register and put their skills to use in the common good.
They and the existing workforce step without hesitation into the frontline.
And our gratitude is huge and transparently genuine.
This is the politics of community.
So, tell me this: why, in normal times, do we force medics and other essential workers to fight for every extra cent in pay, and every piddling improvement in conditions?
A range of other undervalued workers have kept us afloat in recent days.
The shop workers and transport workers, the pharmacists, the cleaners, the armies of those who produce and distribute. Read the rest of this entry »
Stormont Health Minister Robin Swann Offers CoronaVirus Unnecessary Deaths in Ireland – North, South, East and West
Professor Gabriel Scally came to the attention of many people in Ireland because of his no-holds-barred examination of a Cervical Smear Scandal in the Irish Health Service. https://www.thejournal.ie/scally-review-outsourcing-labs-4677380-Jun2019/
Scally assesses the behaviour of Stormont Government Health Minister Robin Swann (recent leader of the Ulster Unionist Party)
Professor Gabriel Scally writes :
Ridiculous assertion on BBC from N Ireland minister @RobinSwannMoH
“the RoI has worse #corvid19 position than N Ireland.”
The South has more cases. But that’s because they have 32 community based testing stations. The North has ZERO and stopped testing in communities last week https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1240923430318456832
Here is A Sharp Comment
Siubhán O’Connor@siubhanoc·Replying to @GabrielScally and @RobinSwannMoHSwann is so utterly blinded by his bias…ppl in the South with NO SYMPTOMS are getting tested where they are deemed ‘at risk’. Our maintenance man has COPD & has been referred for test. 2 day wait. NI is in serious trouble
The Irish Examiner Reports “Public health specialist Dr Gabriel Scally, Honorary Professor of Public Health in Bristol University, has described the UK’s policy on Covid-19 as “way out of line” with the rest of Europe and advice from the World Health Organisation.
“I think it’s dangerous. Their view really is let this fire burn and they will try and damp it down where they can and spread it out over a period of time.
“But we know from elsewhere in the world that if countries and communities act fast, this can be kept under control and knocked back.”
The UK approach is similar to the old adage: “Everyone is out of step with our Johnny”, he said.
“If the UK has got it right, then the rest of the world has got it wrong. And I don’t think that’s likely.
“I think it’s displayed by some of their appalling science that they’re talking about, using herd immunity.
They are reliant on mathematical modelling but this is not a mathematical modelling issue.
Dr Scally said that if there was one threat to how things are being handled in the Republic of Ireland, it is the UK’s position.
People in Northern Ireland need to be demanding better from their leaders and they themselves need to do a better job.
“They’re following along blindly this notion that somehow all of the wisdom is emanating from Number 10 Downing Street and we know that to be wrong.
“Even the United States is taking a more proactive approach than the UK.” https://www.irishexaminer.com/breakingnews/ireland/closing-borders-would-make-things-worse-says-disease-prevention-and-control-expert-988199.html
Readers should also note from the Irish Examiner report that Public Health Experts Oppose the Closing of Borders
“Dr Agoritsa Baka said that given there is already community transmission of the virus in European countries, “we need to collaborate to make sure everyone can deal with the virus in a coordinated way.”
Closing borders would make things worse, she said and would negatively affect the function of healthcare systems, as was seen during the Ebola outbreak in 2014.
Dr Baka said that if, for example, Germany closed its border “everything, like food supplies, personal protection equipment cannot move around Europe, and it would be a disaster.”
Let’s Get Real – Swann Must Go! The Stormont Health Minister has already guaranteed unnecessary death and illness in the North of Ireland – and, because so many people travel daily across the Irish Border in both directions, Swann has guaranteed unnecessary death and illness in the South East and West of Ireland.
CoronaVirus Kills Orange Marches
There is a Silver Lining in Every Cloud
Nursing home staff spread coronavirus to other facilities, CDC investigation finds – Los Angeles Times
This is a scary factual report about the spread of the CoVid-19 illness in an American Nursing Home based in Seattle, Washington State.
A key cause of the crisis was :
low wages in nursing homes and assisted-living centers force many staffers to work in multiple facilities. Certified nursing assistants often make no more than minimum wage, and nurses typically receive less than they do in hospitals.
In addition, a sense of duty and financial stress may tempt employees to come to work sick, endangering elderly residents who have underlying health conditions.
Could this happen in Ireland? The answer has to be Yes.
Of the deaths linked to the nursing home, one was a visitor and the rest were patients.
The advanced age of many long-term care facility residents, their underlying health conditions and their proximity to one another put them at risk for sickness and death, the report said.
Life Care residents infected by the virus ranged from 54 to 100 years old, with a median age of 81.
“Substantial morbidity and mortality might be averted if all long-term care facilities take steps now to prevent exposure of their residents to COVID-19,” the report said.
Infected Life Care workers ranged from 22 to 79 years old.
A spokesman for the nursing home said Wednesday that managers welcomed the CDC report, because it could alert other facilities and lead to new guidelines.
“For us this is all positive, even if there are things they found that we could have done better,” said Timothy Killian, a crisis communications specialist, on behalf of Life Care.
He said that two or three days after the outbreak was discovered, staff members were banned from working at other facilities.
“As soon as we had an idea that this was something that shouldn’t be done, we stopped,” he said.
Killian said that “it’s a relatively common practice” for nurses to work in multiple long-term care facilities.
Dr. Michael Wasserman, president of the California Assn. of Long Term Care Medicine, said that low wages in nursing homes and assisted-living centers force many staffers to work in multiple facilities. Certified nursing assistants often make no more than minimum wage, and nurses typically receive less than they do in hospitals.
In addition, a sense of duty and financial stress may tempt employees to come to work sick, endangering elderly residents who have underlying health conditions.
— Read on www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2020-03-18/coronavirus-spread-nursing-homes
Tomás Ó Flatharta 