Ireland resists lockdown call, tightens COVID-19 curbs instead

By Padraic Halpin

 

FILE PHOTO: The shadow of a woman running is cast on a 2 metre social distancing marker on a footpath, amid the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic, in Galway, Ireland, September 25, 2020. REUTERS/Clodagh Kilcoyne/File Photo

 

DUBLIN (Reuters) - Ireland must act now to prevent a damaging return to lockdown, Prime Minister Micheal Martin said on Monday after rejecting a surprise recommendation by his health chiefs to shut down the economy immediately and opting instead to tighten COVID-19 restrictions.

 

The National Public Health Emergency Team called late on Sunday for a leap to the highest level of coronavirus curbs, Level 5, having told the government as recently as Thursday the current Level 2 status for most of the country was appropriate.

 

Ministers faced sharp political and business resistance to what would have amounted to Europe's first major second-wave national lockdown and chose to move the whole country to Level 3, going against their health chiefs' advice for the first time.

 

"What happens next is in our own hands," Martin said in a televised address, saying some businesses may not be able to recover from a disproportionate reimposition of more severe restrictions.

 

"It's about protecting lives and livelihoods. ... If we all act now, we can stop the need to introduce Level 4 and 5 restrictions."

 

Deputy Prime Minister Leo Varadkar, Ireland's prime minister during the first lockdown, went further and said the advice was not thought through, would have amounted to an "experiment" not tried elsewhere in Europe and that the body in charge of Ireland's hospitals disagreed with the health chiefs' capacity concerns.

 

"Three very good reasons to say not yet," Varadkar told RTE, the national broadcaster.

 

Under Level 5, people would have been asked to stay at home, except to exercise within 5 km (3 miles), with only essential retailers allowed to stay open - broadly similar to the initial seven-week lockdown that was among the longest imposed in Europe.

 

All indoor restaurant dining is banned under Level 3, which has applied in the capital, Dublin, and the northwest county of Donegal for the past two weeks.

 

Pubs can serve a limited number of customers outdoors with the exception of Dublin, where bars that only serve drinks have yet to be allowed to reopen.

 

Those tighter local restrictions have kept the unemployment rate just below 15%.

 

While Ireland reported the highest number of daily cases since late April on Saturday and a similar number on Monday, its 14-day cumulative case total of 104 per 100,000 people is only the 14th highest infection rate among 31 European countries monitored by the European Centre for Disease Control.

 

But a health official who advised a lockdown said that with one of the lowest intensive-care unit (ICU) capacities among the advanced economies of the OECD, Ireland may run out of ICU beds in a month on the current trajectory.

 

(Reporting by Padraic Halpin; Editing by Mark Heinrich and Peter Cooney)

 

-- © Copyright Reuters 2020-10-06

 

- Whatever you're going through, the Samaritans are here for you

- Follow Thaivisa on LINE for breaking COVID-19 updates

3 hours ago, webfact said:

"What happens next is in our own hands,"

Now there is a leader, someone who makes up his own mind.

 

3 hours ago, webfact said:

But a health official who advised a lockdown said that with one of the lowest intensive-care unit (ICU) capacities among the advanced economies of the OECD, Ireland may run out of ICU beds in a month on the current trajectory.

So when they can't convince the PM to go it there way, they tout fear, sore losers.

 

Sweden set the classic example, but no one looks at that model, do they.

Edited October 6, 20205 yr by 4MyEgo

4 hours ago, webfact said:

Ireland must act now to prevent a damaging return to lockdown, Prime Minister Micheal Martin said on Monday after rejecting a surprise recommendation by his health chiefs to shut down the economy immediately and opting instead to tighten COVID-19 restrictions.

Saw the light, apparently.

Perhaps he talked to someone in Sweden.

Curious that all that gets published are infections.  What about the number of deaths?  Too low to stoke fear is my guess.

The whole thing is theatre. Ireland's Covid-19 deaths per million have been roughly the same as Thailand's traffic deaths per million, and were almost all in the first couple of months. Over the past 3 days, one person has died. What is prompting this stand-off between the government and the health advisors is the increase in infections, but the deaths remain low.

 

I don't listen to the conspiracy nuts but, even so, the reactions of Western governments have made no sense. Not by the logic we started out with (flatten the curve) and not by the supposed logic today. It might be possible to attribute early mistakes to simply not understanding the threat they were facing but surely, by now, it should be obvious that we have massively overreacted and deployed our resources in the wrong places.

I grew up believing that, ultimately, economic interests would prevail in every situation but, to my amazement, we have flushed our economies down the toilet for no good reason at all.

A minority were at risk of dying from this virus. From Day One, we should have commandeered the hotels and placed each vulnerable person or couple in proper, comfortable isolation, with free exercise bikes and iPads so they could Skype to their families. We should have focused our resources on actually protecting the vulnerable while allowing the rest of society to continue with their educations and jobs so that we can pay for everything.

The half-assed, pretend quarantines we've actually had have bankrupted us, destroyed families, shattered mental health, delayed health checks, discredited the police, halted careers, and increased suicides, all while providing true protection to no one.

Perhaps this slight pushback from the Irish government, along with the recent, unexpected, positive comments about Sweden on the previously hostile BBC, indicate that some sections of the elites are starting to wake up from whatever hypnotic spell they have been under.
 

 

Edited October 6, 20205 yr by donnacha

16 hours ago, thaibeachlovers said:

Saw the light, apparently.

Perhaps he talked to someone in Sweden.

Or someone in Washington DC who has experience with women from Sweden.

9 hours ago, donnacha said:

The whole thing is theatre. Ireland's Covid-19 deaths per million have been roughly the same as Thailand's traffic deaths per million, and were almost all in the first couple of months. Over the past 3 days, one person has died. What is prompting this stand-off between the government and the health advisors is the increase in infections, but the deaths remain low.

 

I don't listen to the conspiracy nuts but, even so, the reactions of Western governments have made no sense. Not by the logic we started out with (flatten the curve) and not by the supposed logic today. It might be possible to attribute early mistakes to simply not understanding the threat they were facing but surely, by now, it should be obvious that we have massively overreacted and deployed our resources in the wrong places.

I grew up believing that, ultimately, economic interests would prevail in every situation but, to my amazement, we have flushed our economies down the toilet for no good reason at all.

A minority were at risk of dying from this virus. From Day One, we should have commandeered the hotels and placed each vulnerable person or couple in proper, comfortable isolation, with free exercise bikes and iPads so they could Skype to their families. We should have focused our resources on actually protecting the vulnerable while allowing the rest of society to continue with their educations and jobs so that we can pay for everything.

The half-assed, pretend quarantines we've actually had have bankrupted us, destroyed families, shattered mental health, delayed health checks, discredited the police, halted careers, and increased suicides, all while providing true protection to no one.

Perhaps this slight pushback from the Irish government, along with the recent, unexpected, positive comments about Sweden on the previously hostile BBC, indicate that some sections of the elites are starting to wake up from whatever hypnotic spell they have been under.
 

 

You speak sense IMO, but sadly it will probably be ignored. To admit they were wrong and destroyed economies by mistake might be too far a step for many politicians.

Edited October 7, 20205 yr by thaibeachlovers