The UAFC

big mervyn wrote: ↑Thu Apr 30, 2020 11:28 pm

Gerald the Mole wrote: ↑Thu Apr 30, 2020 10:13 pm

Quick question, is it each health boards responsibility to purchase what they needed in regards to gloves, masks etc , and if so has bad management and preparation for such an event as Covid19 been shifted to the government rather than the inept management at health board level. NHS did do a action plan for a potential virus outbreak, their main response was that they “could cope and adapt”

No it is not the responsibility of individual health boards.

There is a central body, the Procurement and Logistics Service, which is the sole provider of professional procurement and logistics services to all public Health and Social Care organisations in Northern Ireland.

Yes they may procure it, but surely someone at each board orders what they need from Pals so, who is at fault then, if fault exists , for hospitals etc not having the right equipment, the blame cannot lay with government

I do hope OUR Big Mervyn is in good health.

Setanta wrote: ↑Fri May 01, 2020 8:58 am I do hope OUR Big Mervyn is in good health.

Tip top. Thanks for asking. 99% certain I've been exposed to Covid, courtesy of Mrs BM, but I was totally non symptomatic.

The Republic of Ireland has a population of over 2.5 times the population of Northern Ireland (4.9m versus 1.9m).

Yet I read today that ROI has only 16% more Covid patients in hospital than NI. We have 987 today and you have 848.
Why is your hospitalisation rate so high, over twice as high, compared to ours?

It seems very strange to me. No obvious answer. We temporarily nationalised the private hospitals down here expecting the public system to be overrun but we are nowhere near capacity in the public hospitals.

Dublin4 wrote: ↑Fri May 01, 2020 5:03 pm The Republic of Ireland has a population of over 2.5 times the population of Northern Ireland (4.9m versus 1.9m).

Yet I read today that ROI has only 16% more Covid patients in hospital than NI. We have 987 today and you have 848.
Why is your hospitalisation rate so high, over twice as high, compared to ours?

It seems very strange to me. No obvious answer. We temporarily nationalised the private hospitals down here expecting the public system to be overrun but we are nowhere near capacity in the public hospitals.

Are you sure about those figures? The ICU occupancy here is about 40% and the death rate in NI is under 200 per million which is comfortably the lowest of the 5 home nations.

They are the published figures. Death rates may be a bit different and certainly the ROI deaths are much lower than in Great Britain per capita.
The hospitalisation figures for NI seem very high.

Dublin4 wrote: ↑Fri May 01, 2020 10:41 pm They are the published figures. Death rates may be a bit different and certainly the ROI deaths are much lower than in Great Britain per capita.
The hospitalisation figures for NI seem very high.

Maybe a different approach to managing the non critical cases?

If you look at ICU bed occupancy, ROI is about 3 times higher than NI.

NI and ROI are tracking very similarly and have not been hit as hard as across the water.

A joined up, North-South approach is needed to getting out of this.

I always thought Brexit was going to provide an existential flip to this little Island. I believe Coronavirus will dwarf it in it's effects.

We in Northern Ireland have fewer international flights arriving at aldergrove compared to Dublin

My information is that at the beginning those who ended up in Hospital the large number were Taxi drivers doing the Airport run .

It’s a disease that had to be brought into the country .

The disproportionate numbers may be due to the fact that towns in Northern Ireland tend to bigger than those of the South of Ireland were about 1/3 of the population lives in the greater Dublin Area .

Another factor could be the numbers in Care homes Ni may have a larger proportion of over 70 s in care homes whereas in RoI more may be cared for and share the family home.

The fact is that the type of society may have more influence on outcomes than government action.

Another statistic this morning:
3 million people in ROI under the age of 45 and 14 Covid deaths in that age group.
The same number may have died, or more even, in that age group in road accidents in the last six weeks.
Yet their economy is closed down and their future is very uncertain.

Younger people are going to rebel against this.

I favoured the lockdown but proportionality has to come into it. The easing will have to accelerate all over Ireland.

D4

The problem is that while younger people may have a less severe form of the disease they can quickly spread it to the elderly who get a much more sever and life threatening version which if the numbers are large swamp the Health service
consider grand parents with grand children -- many act as child minders while the parents go to work there ends your social distancing.

Witness the spread of the disease in care homes -- those that closed their doors to visitors early -- some before the lockdown was imposed are disease free yet those were visiting continued the disease went rampant. putting both the patients and staff at risk.

There is the tendency to consider the everybody who got the disease was hospitalised it possibly more correct to to say that only a % and maybe only a small % ended up in hospital.

Only when there is a reliable test for those had the disease will it be possible to get a reasonable estimate of the spread of the disease .

The other factor is are immune to the disease are those who have had it and how long will immunity last and will it provide immunity as the disease evolves .

It is not certain that children and the non-symptomatic are a serious infection risk.

The Swedish experiment would suggest that they are probably not.

Chances are a vaccine will provide immunity for a finite length of time. Then you'll need a booster. Idea may be like Smallpox, roll out a vaccine worldwide and wipe the fecker out.

Jackie Brown wrote: ↑Sat May 02, 2020 5:20 pm Chances are a vaccine will provide immunity for a finite length of time. Then you'll need a booster. Idea may be like Smallpox, roll out a vaccine worldwide and wipe the fecker out.

Is that your medical opinion ?

SARS 2003: Still no vaccine. MERS 2012: Still no vaccine. Herd immunity is the way out but the public don’t want to hear it.

And why is there no vaccine for them?