A stupendous success, says Stephen Donnelly: Mandatory hotel quarantining has worked effectively Health Minister Stephen Donnelly says. He tells the Seanad that 4,616 people have entered hotel quarantine here, 178 tested positive for Covid-19 and 59 cases associated with variants of concern were detected. — Mícheál Lehane (@MichealLehane) May 31, 2021 178 cases of Covid, […]
Look at the headline on this RTE News story from yesterday: RTE’s headline claims that Professor Luke O’Neill has said that it “might be time to slow down the re-opening”. There is only one problem, and that is as follows: O’Neill said nothing of the sort. What did he say? Well, you have to dig […]
Spinning, a fitness class that had taken the gym industry by storm, may just be on its death bed due to Covid-19 regulations. And thank God for that. Why am I happy with the potential decline of Spinning classes in gyms? Spinning, or more importantly cycling is not an adequate foundation of fitness due to […]
Statistics released this morning by the Central Statistics Office show that the number of registered deaths in the state in 2020 was 31,765. That represents an increase of 631 or just over 2% year on year. The number of deaths with Covid as an “underlying cause” was 1,672, the CSO said. The number of registered deaths […]
Tipperary TD, Mattie McGrath has said that Dr Tony Holohan told him “we are dealing with a pandemic, we will do the lockdown and do the science later,” when he challenged the Chief Medical Officer on the science behind the continued closure of churches in the lockdown. Deputy McGrath said that there had been “no […]
Tim wrote yesterday about the wider media hypocrisy around the lab-leak story (the idea that the Coronavirus was accidentally released from a science laboratory in Wuhan, China, rather than occurring naturally in a wet market) but this particular element of the global about-face on the idea is worth some dedicated discussion: “Facebook will no longer […]
Verona Murphy TD tore into the government on Wednesday for extending the emergency covid-19 powers for a further 6 months. “As the Covid-19 situation was developing, I voted to give the Government these special emergency powers,” the ex-Fine Gael Wexford independent said. Verona Murphy, Independent, explains her opposition to the often nonsensical and contradictory restrictions […]
Unbelievable. And yet, entirely in character: Soc Dems @RoisinShortall says she has “serious concerns” about Govt’s proposed extension of emergency Covid powers and says extension should only be six weeks. pic.twitter.com/jZzsbYepg5 — David Murphy (@davidmurphyRTE) May 25, 2021 As of today, the Social Democrats will vote against any extension of the lockdown powers. On one […]
“Caution must be the watchword here”, we heard on RTE Radio One yesterday morning, as the nation’s beleaguered leader took to the airwaves with RTE’s own Claire Byrne to discuss, amongst other things, the great national re-opening plan. Reading that opening paragraph, you might think that it was the Taoiseach who told Claire Byrne that […]
About three weeks ago, we reported on a lengthy report and investigation by US Science writer Nicholas Wade, which suggested that the preponderance of the evidence suggests that Covid 19 did not, as scientists have suggested for nearly two years, transmit naturally from bat to human being. Instead, his work suggested, the evidence seems stronger […]
Michael McNamara TD says that continued lockdown made Shannon a “cold place” for aviation, leading to Aer Lingus job losses. #grip
Lockdowns are conferring little benefit, but causing colossal damage, a Economics professor has concluded, using a cost benefit analysis to calculate that strict Covid restrictions caused 282 times the loss of years of life, that it saved. Economics Professor Douglas W. Allen, from Simon Fraser University in Canada looked at the effect of loss of employment, loss […]