Life can be so fleeting
It’s been a terrible week for one family and several communities in North Cork.
That poor woman’s life will be never be the same and she must be so devastated.
The tragic events of Monday morning are almost unfathomable for most of us. It’s hard to even imagine how she will start to put her life back together.
None of us are in her shoes and we wish her the very best as she comes to terms with a truly horrific tragedy.
There’s been a lot of debate about the decision to go to Level 5 of the Government’s Roadmap for Living with Covid last week. Should we have gone into Level 5 a fortnight previously when NPHET recommended it?
NPHET first recommended Level 5 on 4 October, when it was a huge shock as a few days earlier NPHET deemed it unnecessary to go to Level 3 nationwide. We thought we didn’t need to go that far; after all Cork and most of the country was at Level 2. It seemed unpalatable at the time.
On 16 October, NPHET recommended Ireland enter a six-week Level 5 Covid-19 lockdown.
Had we gone straight to Level 5 back when NPHET first suggested it, there’s no doubt we could have shortened the amount of time we will have to spend at Level 5 this time. We are set to be at Level 5 for another five weeks.
However as positive cases of Covid-19 skyrocketed over the weeks following NPHET’s original recommendation of Level 5, it became clear that the virus was getting out of control here.
For people who claim that we are allowing a virus that hasn’t killed that many more people than the annual average and that relatively few people are in intensive care units and that we shouldn’t all be affected quite so much when most of us will probably not be killed by this new disease, you cannot let this virus spread unchecked.
The Netherlands are airlifting Covid cases to Germany for hospitalisation. Ambulances are circling in one Dutch city as the hospitals are full and they cannot discharge their patients. Belgium is in a terrible state with cases skyrocketing. Spanish doctors are set to stage their first national walkout in 25 years in protest over poor working conditions and the state of the public health system.
The good news for us is that we may be in one of the better positions in Europe. Things may be turning for the better.
This week seven day cases and deaths continue to drop. Hospitalisations are still rising but hopefully the measures taken will lead to a continued drop in cases and a drop in hospitalisations in about two weeks.
Highlighting how serious things have gotten in October is the fact that there have been 79 coronavirus-related deaths so far this month. There were 35 deaths in September and five deaths in August. Speaking on Tuesday night, Chief Medical Officer Dr Tony Holohan was cautious. He said that “we are not at a stage that we can draw any conclusion that there is a trend from the fewer number of cases”.
But things are going in the right direction - let’s keep it up.