Vaccine is doing its job so lets all do ours & get it as unvaccinated driving latest Covid wave
I WAS convinced I’d never have to talk of it again. Yet here we are consumed with anxiety once more just as the gates of liberty are within reach.
The ugly Do Not Enter sign is about to be erected and we’re being dragged, against our desire, back into the pandemic quagmire.
“On the wrong side of the knife edge,” was how NPHET’s Prof Philip Nolan yesterday described the abrupt upward surge in cases.
An average of 17,000 people are coming forward to be tested every day. Countrywide, the positivity rate is topping ten per cent. Case numbers are growing by two per cent every 24 hours. Hospital admissions are up by 2.4 per cent a day.
The certainty we held like a cherished flower in our hands just a week ago has turned into doubt, the wilting blossom.
Everything is up in the air again. Where the pieces fall cannot be determined yet. And so we wait with bated breath to see if the rise in infection rates is a blip, or a pattern concerning enough to postpone the full reopening this day week.
UNVACCIATED DRIVING COVID
Public Health officials have taken to the airwaves all week to outline in stark terms the reality of what is going on. And they have pointed out that the cause of much of the renewed misery we now face is the fact that some 300,000 adults are still unvaccinated.
That this cohort is the driving force behind this, the fifth wave of the disease, is now undeniable.
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The decision of so many adults to remain unvaccinated is their right, of course. But every time someone chooses not to avail of a vaccine it affects the well-being, physical and emotional, of all of us. The common good is suffering because the unjabbed remain so adamantly opposed to the very thing that could save us all from illness, death and another lockdown — a vaccine.
The HSE’s Chief of Operations Anne O’Connor revealed yesterday two startling facts. Firstly, half of hospital admissions are being driven by the ten per cent of the population who remain unconvinced of the need to be jabbed. And secondly, more than two-thirds of those fighting for their lives in ICU with Covid aren’t inoculated.
Which should convince even the most sceptical among us that it’s better to be jabbed than not.
VACCINES DOING THEIR JOB
The vaccines are doing the job they are designed to do. They help to prevent infection. Even if breakthrough transmission does occur, serious illness is rare, unless there are underlying health conditions and your body is frail.
We all have it in our power to do everything to convince as many of the vaccine sceptical as possible to step up to the mark and do their duty for the nation.
If you are vaccine hesitant, you are not only putting yourself at risk of becoming gravely ill and dying from Covid, you are also gambling with the health of the vulnerable among us who are fully vaccinated. Is that worth your freedom of choice?
Well, if it is, consequences must necessarily follow for you as the Government ponders what to do about the full reopening next Friday.
Why should the nine in ten of us who did the right thing suffer because a minority, startlingly large at 300,000, chose a different, more perilous path?
In civilised lands with rights come responsibilities. So logic dictates that the actions of the few must not be allowed to interfere with the hopes and expectations of the many.
DAY OF FREEDOM
Next Friday’s day of freedom must not be derailed.
It should proceed. But only on the condition that indoor venues — nightclubs, theatres, cinemas, gig venues — all rigorously enforce the Covid vaccine passport. Pubs and restaurants have been doing it since August, and it’s worked well at keeping us safe.
If you’re fully jabbed you get in, if not adios. You made your bed, now go home and lie in it.
The vaccine reluctant will complain about their freedoms being taken away. But they took their liberties from themselves when they chose not to get vaccinated. Want to join the party with the rest of us when the reopening happens? You know what to do.
It’s not fully justified to lay all the blame for our current pandemic predicament at the dark door of the unjabbed (Sounds like the name of a horror movie, doesn’t it?) Prof Nolan said that the current rise in infections is also attributable to some people, both vaccinated and unvaccinated, who continue their normal lives despite having Covid symptoms.
If you have a cold, presume it is Covid, Nolan says. He’s right. If you’ve got the sniffles don’t go to the pub for a few, or hop on the packed bus to work, or sit down for a steak with your mates. Get a test and stay at home until you get a negative result. Do your bit for Ireland too.
GET OFF HAMSTER WHEEL IF YOU CAN
I LEFT Ireland in 1987. Had no other choice. The place was a kip. No jobs. No opportunities. No nothing.
Well, that’s not true. There was plenty of housing. And it was cheapish. Life was tough for most, but at least people had a roof over their heads.
They say it’s better now. Loads of jobs, a booming economy, forever on the up, a great place for investment.
That is all true. In theory, Ireland is the greatest place to live in the world. In practice, it’s not.
You may have a job earning €60,000 gross a year with Google, but after paying up to €2,000 a month just for the privilege of a place to call home, you haven’t a pot to piss in.
There’s more to life than jobs and money.
GO AND DON'T LOOK BACK
If I were young again, I’d be gone again. Unless you want to spend your life on a hamster wheel, chasing your tail to make ends meet? Demand will outstrip supply for a decade to come, at least, because we don’t have the infrastructure to make life liveable.
This and all previous governments hadn’t the wit to build what’s needed. They’ve been putting sticking plasters on gaping wounds since the State’s foundation.
This will continue until someone grabs the reins and does it differently.
So if you’re young, go and don’t look back.
BUDGET’S ANOTHER NON-LIFE CHANGER
PASCHAL Donohoe’s Budget this week had all the drama of solitary confinement. Our lives won’t change much as a result — do they ever.
One thing’s inevitable and that’s the end of it all. Sooner the better.
If you work, you’ll pocket between €2 and €8 extra a week.
At the lower end, it’s enough for a packet of crisps and a Freddo. At the upper end, you’ll just about buy a pint and a half of Guinness.
If you don’t like chocolate, crisps or beer the extra pittance might allow you to put enough fuel in your car to drive 40km on our choked roads.
Or pay for a couple of bus journeys on your Leap card.
You can now afford two extra sliced pans or a bag of spuds, maybe a couple of own-brand family toilet roll packs.
Ten smokes, if you’re super rich. Three 99s with hundreds and thousands for the kids.
If you’re unfortunate enough to be unemployed, they’ve lobbed an extra fiver your way.
Whoopdedoo!
You could buy a jumper from Penneys to try and keep yourself warm this winter, I suppose. Failing that, you’ll be able to buy a bale and a half of briquettes or half a bag of coal or get about two hours’ worth of gas.
Twenty years in a dark box provides better relief.
LET THIS SEARCH END THE AGONY
THE Garda search for missing women Deirdre Jacob and JoJo Dullard in remote woodland on the Kildare-Wicklow border must be torture for their families.
More than 20 years have passed since both women vanished, yet the pain of not knowing what happened to them is no doubt as visceral now as it was when they first realised their loved-ones were not coming home.
I met and interviewed Deirdre’s parents Michael and Bernadette in the immediate aftermath of their girl’s disappearance. A more beautiful couple you will not meet. They have hope, the strongest life-affirming emotion.
New, significant information has led gardai to mount this recent hunt.
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Officers expect the forensic examination of ground at the 33-acre site will last for at least three weeks.
All our thoughts must be with the Jacob and Dullard families at this difficult time. May they finally achieve the thing they’ve wanted most all these years, closure.
THE BULLSONARO FROM THIS IDIOT
BRAZIL’S ‘President’, Jair Bolsonaro is a dangerous moron.
The 66-year-old — who said earlier this year that the Pfizer vaccine turns people into crocodiles — announced, in trademark comic style, that he will be the “last man” in Brazil to be jabbed.
He added: “I’ve decided not to get vaccinated. I’m looking at new studies, I already have the highest immunisation, why would I get vaccinated? It would be the same as betting ten reals on the lottery to win two. It doesn’t make sense.”
Well, he’s being shunned as a result. This week, he was refused entry to see football side Santos play — because they only admit the fully jabbed.
Last month he travelled to New York for the UN General Assembly and had to eat pizza in the street because no restaurant would let him in. Clown.
Under his leadership, 600,000 Brazilians have died from Covid. Enough said.
SEPERATED AT BIRTH
SHE’S one of Hollywood’s best actors who excels in portraying strong female characters in all her movies, because in real life she’s probably just as robust.
Frances McDormand is best known for her performance as the police chief in the Coen brothers’ classic Fargo.
Nomadland, where she plays a drifter who finds friendship among the dispossessed in America’s west, is her best film. She looks like actor Willem Dafoe too.