Government must make up for its schools blunder as Covid-19 runs rampant in children after test and trace abandoned
I’VE been assiduously back-pocketing the issue for weeks, fearful of the waterfall of indignation that would inevitably cascade in my direction should I broach it.
But it’s beyond time the elephant in the room was not only addressed, but poked hard.
The stubbornly high spread of Covid among our unvaccinated kids aged five to 12 has happened because, among other things, the Government abandoned testing and tracing in schools seven weeks ago.
Kids that age have accounted for more than one in six of all cases since schools reopened (if they hadn’t stopped testing and tracing it would be much higher).
It’s an undeniable truth that lays waste to the Government and NPHET’s nauseous contention that school children don’t transmit the virus as efficiently as adults.
They do. And numerous scientific studies, including several by America’s Centre for Disease Control, prove it.
It’s why they have mask mandates throughout the States for young kids.
VACCINES FOR KIDS
It’s also why they quickly rolled out the Pfizer vaccine for that cohort two weeks ago.
US Infection rates in young kids are tumbling.
The truth about childhood transmission also cuts the feet from under the spindly legs on which wobbles the political mannequins parroting over and over again the mantra that schools are safe environments.
Health Minister Stephen Donnelly was at it again yesterday, claiming - without providing any evidence - that schools remain safe places.
Irish children must be a special breed, unique in the world at being unable to transmit or get Covid in the classroom."
Damien Lane
Irish children must be a special breed, unique in the world at being unable to transmit or get Covid in the classroom.
I suppose if you say something often enough, true or not, you’ll end up believing it.
NPHET chief, Dr Tony Holohan recently wrote to Education Minister Norma Foley (she’s been as quiet as a mouse for weeks, I hope she’s alright) to reassure her that ‘schools have not been identified as significant Covid-19 amplification settings.’
Dr Tony and his colleague Dr Ronan Glynn have also repeatedly asserted that kids don’t contract Covid in school.
Instead, they claim the kids pick it up in the community.
So, if your kid gets Covid, blame the family home, the next door neighbour, the local playground, the chipper, the sweet shop, anywhere but the school.
Safe as houses they are.
But I keep asking myself, how could NPHET and the Government possibly know this?
I’m at a loss to understand how they can interpret anything about transmission in schools since the Government abandoned testing and tracing in the classroom on September 27 last.
What information are they ‘poring over’ that makes them so confident?
And if it’s so conclusive, why not share it with us? It’d shut me up.
'BEACON OF SENSE'
Professor Kingston Mills, immunologist at Trinity College Dublin - a beacon of sense - summed it up perfectly in the aftermath of the monumentally naive decision to abandon test and trace in schools when he said: “The more contact testing and tracing you do, the less likely you’re going to have transmission.”
The opposite is also true. Like anything in life, the less you do, the more your problems mount.
Just as the more you close your eyes to reality, the greater reality becomes once you open them again.
For every action, there’s a reaction.
And abandoning testing and tracing in primary schools resulted, inevitably, in an increase in cases among unvaccinated school children.
To say otherwise flies in the face of truth.
Let’s face it. It was a disastrous mistake.
History will show it to be probably the greatest error of leadership, ranking as high in terms of its ineptitude as the decision to relax restrictions so we could have a ‘meaningful Christmas’ last year.
The only way out of the mess the Government has created is three fold.
MASK MANDATE
Firstly, and it’s deeply unpopular, but it works - mask mandates for primary school kids, until a vaccine is approved for them.
Secondly, proper mitigation in the classroom - ventilation stops the spread of Covid, not hand sanitiser.
And thirdly, boosters for all adults as soon as possible.
Anything else is piffle, fighting a raging forest fire with a watering can.
I had a good look at the figures for transmission among five to 12 year-olds and compared them before and after the ending of testing and tracing in schools.
COUNTER-INTUITIVE
It may seem counter-intuitive, but cases dropped from an average of 22 per cent of ALL infections before September 27 (the day testing and tracing was ended) to an average of 16 per cent of all cases post September 27.
A third less, which, while disingenuous because the drop is clearly because testing and tracing ended, neatly fits the Government and NPHET narrative that schools are safe.
Dr Holohan and the State are right on one front, kids need school to develop both intellectually and emotionally.
That argument is at the heart of their reasoning to keep schools open.
MAKE IT SAFE
But if you’re going to plough on regardless, make them safe too, for kids and teachers alike.
As cases mount the Government has been forced into a feeble retreat, of sorts.
It has mooted introducing testing and tracing again, without any firm commitment.
It has also talked out the side of its mouth about antigen testing (but in a limited way). Blancmange.
He is lost who fails to see the error of his ways.
If I were a teacher I’d be tempted to do what my exasperated Geography muinteoir famously did back in 1982 when he picked up the clár dubh and flung it at one poor lad who’d nodded off in his class, hitting him square in the eyes, before roaring: “Get the hell out of my class.”
And he did, without a fuss. Learned his lesson too. Never fell asleep again and ended up getting an A.
You can’t do that anymore, unfortunately.
The Government won’t admit its Covid schools policy is an unmitigated disaster, so if you’re a teacher all you have is the loneliness of your classroom at the end of your long day and the blackboard to bang your head off in chagrin.
I’m with you, banging my head against the wall and screaming into the abyss. It’s all we have in the face of obstinacy.
'You had one jab NIAC ... get it done'
I’M not leaving the house until I get a booster shot.
And if like me you’re one of the 250,000 souls who got the Johnson & Johnson vaccine you’d be wise to do the same.
The one-shot J&J jab has been shown in countless studies over the past few months to be the least efficacious of the approved vaccines.
Its ability to fight Covid drops off a cliff after about two months, American CDC studies show.
So much so that the latest research reveals its efficacy after six months dwindles to just 13 per cent.
The same study, printed this week in the journal Science, shows that the durability of Pfizer drops to 43 per cent and Moderna, the best of them all, to 58 per centafter six months.
The Americans have been boosting the 14million citizens who got the J&J jab for months now.
The Italians rolled out a booster for their J&J recipients beginning on November 2.
What are we doing here to protect those who got a jab that is no longer doing its job? Nada, nichts, niente, rien.
Waiting on NIAC to give the green light to anything urgent is like trying to build a sandcastle in a raging storm.
We’ll still be waiting at Christmas, I fear.
So, until I get a booster, I’m staying camped in my bedroom.
THE public transport on offer in my neck of the woods, Celbridge in Co Kildare, is set to be transformed beyond recognition come Sunday, November 28.
That’s when the second phase of the BusConnects network upgrade is rolled out.
The so-called C-Spine will link Celbridge, Maynooth, Leixlip and Lucan with Ringsend on the east side of Dublin city.
Four high-frequency C-routes will serve the four towns in west Dublin and north Kildare.
Six new Local routes will also begin operations, linking the four towns - some for the first time ever.
You’ll be able to get from Confey and Louisa Bridge train stations in Leixlip to Celbridge village and Hazelhatch train station on two services that will tic-tac to operate every 15 minutes all day, seven days a week.
More importantly, there will be four new all-night services. Lucan and Maynooth will have a 24-hour, seven-days-a-week service every 30 minutes.
Leixlip and Celbridge will also have night services on new C5 and C6 routes, every hour of the night from midnight to 5am in the morning.
It is no exaggeration to say it will revolutionise the way more than 250,000 people will get around, and will help make the car a luxury rather than a necessity.
Lukastinko has to be removed
ALEXANDER Lukashenko, Europe’s last dictator, is evil personified.
The Belarusian tyrant has been flying in migrants from Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan to the capital Minsk in their thousands.
From there his police goons shepherd the unfortunates to the borders of Poland, Lithuania and Latvia to be used as human pawns in his battle with Brussels, who imposed harsh sanctions on him and his cronies in the wake of his fraudulent re-election last year.
His goal, to ferment unrest in the EU. It’s not working, though.
The EU stood shoulder to shoulder with Poland this week after it reinforced its border to stop migrants crossing.
To use the poorest on the earth, desperate men, women and children, to score a political point is disgusting.
The sooner Lukashenko, a relic of the Soviet past, is deposed the better.
But as long as his paymaster Vladimir Putin is in power that won’t happen.
He must be the first domino to fall.
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I’M glad I’m not a Villa fan. The appointment of Steven Gerrard as manager has supporters I know up in arms.
Rightly so. The way the board sacked former boss Dean Smith — himself a lifelong Villan — left a sour taste in the mouth.
He should have been given until the end of the season to turn it round.
How Stevie G is going to transform Villa’s fortunes on the pitch is anyone’s guess.
He’s untried at the top level.
Managing Rangers in a league where you only have one team to worry about is one thing.
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Trying to keep Villa up in a league where every team around you is as equally strong is quite another.
I fear for the Villa.
Seperated at Birth
AS movies go, Wolf Of Wall Street is right up there. Leonardo DiCaprio gives a monumental performance as Jordan Belfort.
The scene in which he takes too many Quaaludes, crawls to his car and drives home at 5mph is one of cinema’s greatest.
Leo steals the screen, which is why he’s one of Hollywood’s enduring golden boys.
Recently, someone unearthed his doppelganger working for the Russian police. Fatter, but the same. Aren’t we all?