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HEALTH OFFICIALS HAVE said they believe Ireland’s approach to the Covid-19 outbreak has achieved what it was designed to do and stressed that it is too early to make a fair comparison with different policies in other countries.
At this evening’s press briefing at the Department of Health Professor Philip Nolan, who chairs the modelling advisory group, explained why Ireland did not take the same approach as Sweden, which still has schools open and has not implemented any strict measures.
The country’s government has banned visits to nursing homes and gatherings of more than 50 people, but the general approach as been to urge people to take responsibility and follow basic social distancing recommendations.
Nolan said it is important to “distinguish the headline of what’s going on in a country from how the population is actually behaving”.
“So yes, schools and so on, but the reality is that in Sweden there’s a huge amount of social distancing going on,” he said.
“As the population goes about their business they’re observing very very strong hygiene and social distancing behaviours.”
He rejected the suggested that the approach here was the wrong one.
“With many of these things you make a judgement based on the data that you have, short-term outcomes show you something and you have to wait a long time before you can say ‘would Strategy A have been better than Strategy B?’
“What we know is that the strategy we adopted here did the thing it was required to do – stop the spread of the disease in its tracks there and then, because we could not have coped with further spread of the disease, beyond where we were.”
Nolan said looking at the bend in the curve of cases, numbers in hospitals and numbers in intensive care, the data shows that “the intervention had an enormous effect”.
“If you’re in a position where you have a substantial amount of the disease ceded in the population, however it got there, and it’s spreading very rapidly, simple social distancing measures will not mitigate that,” he said.
“It’s quite clear that in the run up to taking those strong social distancing measures the disease was accelerating very rapidly and as soon as those measures were taken the acceleration of the disease was stopped – and that’s good news for us as a society because it means that we know that that works, when and if we’re required to do it.”
Nolan said the strategies in different countries may be appropriate to their own context and Sweden had a “significantly smaller epidemic than we were dealing with back then”.
“We will have to wait and see what happens in Sweden over the coming weeks, just as we’re watching and seeing what will happen in Denmark, in Austria, what will happen in Germany,” he said.
The Swedish government has said it believes more than 70,000 people in the country have been infected with the coronavirus.
Sweden currently has a higher number of deaths per million than the US and has significantly higher numbers of deaths than other Scandinavian countries that implemented strict restrictions.
There have been more than 2,000 deaths in the country since health officials began recording numbers and there have been 16,755 confirmed cases.
Chief Medical Officer Dr Tony Holohan said this evening that it is too early to conclude based on any current data which strategies were right and which ones were wrong.
“On a continuing basis we have to learn but we’re not in a situation where we could conclude what has been done in Sweden has worked or what has been done in other countries hasn’t worked.”
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A Kerry Priest Fr. Malachi Martin was involved in deciphering them.
@Paddy Flynn: It says “don’t repeal the 8th”
@George O Neill: After the Bible was put together, many works that the Bible left out were destroyed and lost from the old and new testaments. The problem was some were written to counteract Christianity, not all works were for Christ but also to destroy the spread of Christianity. Many works create Christian based religions that the Catholic church went around and slaughtered them for.
I would love to know if the Vatican library have any of these books that don’t exist anyewhere else as they have translaters who translate books between 3 sects the Jusuits, trappists and the Franciscans in 3 seperate parts, so no one knows what the book is about.
Each Apostle wrote a gospel but where are they?
Stressed spells backwards Desserts.
@Stephen Maher: Sesrtesd slepls bwckarads Dresests, some are easier to read than others while others can surprise you?
Why is it considered erotic to use a feather, but kinky to use the whole chicken?
They might say “now if you believe all the junk in the last set of scrolls the you’ll believe anything”
Do you think if the scrolls have a message something like “God said no Israel for the Jews after all” then they will start demolishing walls and settlements??
The removal of cultural artefacts or destruction of historical or cultural sites in occupied land contravenes the Geneva Conventions. Anything derived from these sites is the property of the nation of Palestine. Those involved in this are criminals subject to international law and should end up in the Hague
There is no nation of Palestine, never has been.
‘The fellaheen (peasantry) [of Palestine] are none but those ancient Jews who were forced to convert to the religion of Arab Beduin [or the “pure Arabs” as he prefers to call them], who had conquered the land in the seventh century,” writes Ben-Gurion in his intriguing essay on The Origins of the Fellaheen. Interestingly enough, and to defend his not-so-eccentric theory, the same Ben-Gurion would go on defending Islam on strictly theological terms. For it is thanks to the relative tolerance of Islam, affirms Ben-Gurion, that those Hebrew fellaheen were eventually tempted into conversion. After countering previous claims that the fellaheen were the descendants of the ancient Canaanites (or the Romans, or the Greeks), Ben-Gurion comes to the following conclusion: The fellaheen, being the descendants of the ancient Hebrew people, were the true natives of the land, and thus represented an ideal nativist model for Jewish newcomers in Palestine. In other words, the younger Ben-Gurion was interested in a form of reverse assimilation: to become a true Jew is to become a true Palestinian’. Even the first prime minister of Israel admits that ZIionism is a racist lie. However that does not refute my basic point. These artefacts were taken from occupied land. They belong to the native people, the Palestinians. To remove them from Palestinian land and use them as propagandist fodder for the colonial Zionist regime is a crime under international law. Now do one, sunshine and I’ll see you in the Hague!
I suppose the Poles better not dig up anything in what as German territory until 1945, , similarly the Russians in formally Finish or Japanese territory and countless other people dig /build on what as once territory occupied by someone else. Interestingly I don’t see you growing about many eastern Europeans who now occupy formally Jewish property all we hear about today is Jews building on territory which was formally “owned” by the Ottoman Turks then Jordan (who like the Germans, Finn’s, Japanese and countless others lost it it battle ) I also certain, had the Jews lost in 48,67, or 73 we wouldn’t be having this discussion as there wouldn’t be any Jews left in the Middle East (there’s is almost none anyway )
@Paul Devlin: Didnt stpo finna fail destroying the worlds largest viking seetlement to build their offices did it?
@George O Neill…you now officially hold the record for the longest comment ever on the Journal! Are you promoting a book or something??
@George O Neill: does sound though that you enjoy Ancient Aliens.
THE BIBLE! Best piece of fiction I’ve ever read
@Adrian: You need to read more books then. Its an incredibly dull work of fiction.
I stand corrected (excellent
It is pants in fairness. The irony is that Bible study in school made me question God. Needs to make a more believable sequel.
@Adrian: Many would disagree with you there…
@Aaron Gibson: Bad teacher, many like Chuck Missler as he makes it interesting?
Is this the Judean peoples front?
Many were destroyed as fire kindling by the mother of the boy who discovered the cave, what a mess…
have your say