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There is no escape. The Covid-19 rage on Wednesday followed a familiar pattern.
Who knew what and when, and why they weren’t told, and how this happened and whose fault it was and where do we go from here and they would look at the latest figures and with the clocks turning back and everyone in a terrible state. Do you think we will ever get a vaccine?
One more day in the Dáil.
The latest twist came courtesy of The Irish Times, with TNT’s explosive revelation that the country’s much-vaunted test-and-trace system collapsed when the expected second wave unexpectedly arrived.
A test case and no trace making Jack and God know who else, a very sick child.
Overwhelmed by the increase in infection rates, the HSE was forced to ask more than 2,000 people who tested positive over the weekend to conduct their own contact tracing exercise and contact people to tell them that they could have infected them with the coronavirus.
Assuming, as Labor’s Alan Kelly pointed out, all the people who tested positive are still well enough to do the HSE work.
Close encounters of the Covid type, running in a continuous loop in everyone’s head. And nobody knows the end.
When the Taoiseach addressed the nation Monday night to deliver his government’s two-day warning of a six-week blockade, it seemed shattered. At noon on Wednesday, when opposition leaders were rightly looking for explanations for the latest setback, tension was reflected on Micheál Martin’s face. He looked pale, with dark circles under his eyes as he detailed figures and worked out possible post-closing scenarios.
The collapse of the weekend
No one told him about the collapse of the HSE’s tracking operation over the weekend. He only found out when someone (non-HSE, he noted) showed him a text from The Irish Times story on Tuesday night.
Kelly wondered if the situation would have ever come to light if it weren’t for the work of the journalists. Nothing “secret” about that, the Taoiseach replied. How could it be when a couple thousand people would get text messages about it?
But finding out from the media that the responsibility for identifying people in the community who were carriers of the infection fell to untrained members of the public was embarrassing for Martin. Even more embarrassing for his Minister of Health, who apparently also did not know about the collapse of HSE TNT, although a question to Kelly’s Taoiseach on when Stephen Donnelly became aware of the problem remained unanswered.
Catherine Murphy of the Social Democrats was “absolutely shocked” that Micheál had to find out by text message. Why didn’t people tell him they were supposed to let him know these things?
Asking people to conduct their own “DIY contact tracing,” he said incredulously. “It’s not good enough.”
Sinn Féin’s Mary Lou McDonald warned that we lose control of the virus when the test and trace system is not up to scratch.
The Taoiseach could not ignore the facts. “I am not happy and disappointed,” he said, acknowledging that the system had been overwhelmed “by the extraordinary demand.”
It seems that he has barely had a sleepy wink and someone has majestically armed himself by leaving him out of the TNT circuit and leaving him open to attack in the Dáil and then, just to compound his plight, Micheál also had to deal with compassionate words. from Kelly.
“I also have a certain degree of sympathy and regret for you and in particular for the minister, MP Donnelly, because it is obvious that he was not aware of this until very recently,” said the Labor leader, generously, recalling the Taoiseach. that he came out in public and in the Dáil giving everyone great confidence in the system. Just for this to happen.
AK47 sympathy and forgiveness? Thoughts and prayers for the Taoiseach.
Independent Cathal Berry, a physician and former army officer, was the last to speak at this depressingly intense Q&A from Covid leaders.
The representative of the Group of Regional Independents gave some consolation to Micheál, declaring himself “in general support” for the change to the Level 5 blockade which he considered “a sensible and prudent thing” under the circumstances.
Welcome fun
“However, I want to focus on something that is more hopeful,” he added, in a welcome departure from the darkness that pervades him. The Kildare TD wanted to know what the Taoiseach knows about the possible discovery of a vaccine.
Meanwhile, Fianna Fáil’s Niamh Smyth was on the panel for RTÉ’s live leader question show, taking the clubs on behalf of her boss. Monaghan TD was not impressed to learn that people could test positive and that his contacts would not be immediately notified. And, following Catherine Murphy’s descriptions of the complicated tracer hiring process, it seemed “as if the bureaucracy had run amok.”
He had no doubt that “clearly a ball has been dropped somewhere along the line and I have no doubt that the Taoiseach and the Minister will investigate and question why they were not given that information. . . I mean, that’s not enough if the Taoiseach could learn that from a text message from a newspaper article, certainly not in the middle of a pandemic. “
And when it comes to that pandemic, Richard Boyd Barrett of People Before Profit still reminded people that his party was the only one explicit in favor of the shutdown when it was first proposed two weeks ago. Not because he wants lockdowns, but because it is the only way to properly pursue an “elimination strategy.”
He gave an excellent and exciting summary of what he means by this.
“The elimination strategy is to get rid of community transmission [which we almost had done in June] and then have a tracking regimen that can pounce like a fire department in a fire. Zero-Covid is like zero fire. It doesn’t mean you never have a fire, but the intention is never to have a wildfire and then you have a fire brigade that can jump on a strange outbreak. That’s what the Zero-Covid strategy is all about. . . Now, that is an award worth pursuing, in my opinion, as an alternative to having closings for next year. It must be taken seriously throughout Ireland. “
But this is not a runner for the Taoiseach.
“We are aware that we are in two jurisdictions,” he replied, adding that he did not believe it would be possible to seal the border. Also, “we are not New Zealand.”
Close encounters of the Covid type.
Unfortunately, we are not alone.
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