France extends Covid-19 health emergency until July 24

Coronavirus
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I think your friends are wrong, Roger or else in some obscure part of the Country.

I’m no fan of politicians but Varadkar has done a good job as has the health minster Harris, who was considered a bit of a write off before this shemozzle. The Irish Chief medical officer, Dr. Tony Holohan has also performed well, maybe because he’s in touch with and following the advice his countryman, Michael Ryan, the WHO’s health emergencies programme director.

The one criticism I would have is that, in common with the rest of Europe, they underestimated the impact on care homes.

Ireland locked down after France but before the UK and their PM recognised the seriousness of the problem way before Bojo. That may be because he’s a doctor and Bojo is a blustering tabloid columnist, who knows? Bojo’s defense against the virus, rousing speeches and frantic arm waving, doesn’t seem to have worked.

As for business as usual, the police have had road checks there since the lockdown and there has been impressive compliance. Maybe in the depths of Kerry or Donegal people haven’t been adhering o the 2K rule but they’re stuck in middle of nowhere so doesn’t matter too much.

There has been a issue with Northern Ireland people coming over the border and flouting the rules. This maybe why the border counties, Cavan in particular, seem to have been disproportionally hit.

The important thing from my perspective is that Varadkar and Harris have told it like it is from the beginning. In stark contrast to the whole UK Cabinet who have lied and spun every inch of the way and continue to do so. Hancock lied again to the Nation about testing only a few days ago. Many doctors across the UK are now buying their own PPE after we were told weeks and weeks ago it was just a logistics problem. Conversely there have been no hospital PPE or ventilator issues in Ireland to the best of my knowledge.

Have a gander at Leo’s plan, it’s a bit too complicated to my eye but that’s better than the zero output from number 10. And even here were struggling to understand the difference between red and green zones and what’s actually allowed in each.

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John i am not going to enter in a long winded discussion. I lived there for 4 1/2 years and was totally disgusted with the government. Leo would go to the opening on an envelope if there were cameras present. Harris is a wast of space and has done nothing for the folks living there. I lived in Cork so not exactly rural. How can a government be proud that they have a tally of patients (upto 10K) on trollies in hospitals waiting treatment etc because they have not enough beds. Sorry John but i do nt agree in anyway with your defence of the irish government under Leo (2 socks) Varadker. The hospitals is just the tip of the iceberg in Ireland.

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The fact that you lived there and ‘was totally disgusted’ has zero relevance to the current situation and initiatives being undertaken.

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Hi Peter,
You are joking, right?

I suspect people thus protesting probably don’t have passports. I think there is an inverse correlation between number/machismo level of guns owned and the education level of their owners, too.

For all his greediness and lies (both of which exist in abundance) at core, what Trump wants is for people to worship him and give him free rein to manipulate the US economy to advance his personal wealth. He’s not interested in going to war unless it provides a distraction from his own legal problems.

These armed people demonstrating are not numerous, but they are flashy. And while the deranged occupant of the White House freely encourages them to create chaos in thee US, they are not going to show up in Europe. Chances are they will all be giving each other Covid19 at Trump rallies. Xenophobic, they want their gas-guzzling cars, their color TVs, a job (aka solvency), church and American football. They are not interested in education and are suspicious of those who are educated.

Besides, they would never get through security. Like you, I hope (and vote!) to restore sanity to the US. There is an odd collusion at present between utterly ignorant people who are in fact among those most harmed by Trump’s policies and the Republican Party that has lost even the appearance of paying tribute to virtue while pursuing vice.

Remember Trump won election on a technicality of the Electoral College system, but he lost the popular vote (that means the actually people voting: 1 person 1 vote) by 2,868,686. Of the popular vote he received only 46.09% to Hillary’s 48.19%.

Americans overall are allies with Europe. What we have is a problem with the current leadership and a minority cohort of misguided people who are acting out of superstition and fear. Receiving media coverage encourages them. The blood of many of his own supporters will be on Trump’s hands for the way in which he’s shirked his responsibilities to the nation and to sane environmental, health and safety regulations, gutted the state department, shirked his duty to align the US with longstanding treaties, etc.

best regards,
Pamela

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Actually Catherine it does, at least to the point John was mentioning. My friends live in Fermoy and if the y say life is as normal then i can only quote that.

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Pamela, thank you for your detailed and hugely reassuring reply. At times I am a reassurance junkie, a pale whimpering egg-custard. I am a huge fan of your calm up-lifting and illuminating posts!

Trump scares me, because all seem to fawn on him, cringe before him, become mealy-mouthed. I understand their dilemma: either they humour him and hope to influence him or at least steer him away from mass murder at a whim, or they face the chop. Like the crazed emperor Caligula.

I have great admiration for the United States. Some of my best ideas have been borrowed from pioneering and precociously far-sighted or deeply intuitive sources, including nurses and doctors.

In fact, I am a bit of diasporic flotsam from a great flotilla of far-flung State-side Gobles, and possibly the first war-time WW2 little boy to have incredible Chiclets gum to share at school, and a baseball bat to wave about, though I never learned to strike! My Dad’s first cousin was Uncle Al Goble from Lyndhurst, NJ.

To sum up, I take your points with gratitude and a virtual sunny West-coast hug. :hugs:

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You have reminded me of a moment in my childhood. An American soldier gave me some chocolate, but he called it candy. I was later to understand that although Americans use the same words as us, they don’t always mean the same thing.
That was a good moment in a time of shortages and rationing. It is only in old age that I have wondered what became of that kindly young man on the beaches of Normandy.

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And we learned to ask Yanks in uniform (rather nervously as we were bought up to be very polite to grown-ups and to say “Sir” to gentlemen) “Got any gum chum?”.

My memory-gland brought the taste of cinnamon to my mouth. That was my favorite Chiclet gum flavour. They came as smooth white sugar- coated lozenges, in packets of ten, I think. :keycap_ten::stuck_out_tongue:

All good 75th VE-day anniversary stuff for us oldies, eh? Maybe a new whiskery moth-ball scented thread, Mike? :joy:

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Well Roger, I don’t want to get into “a mine’s bigger then yours debate” :slightly_smiling_face: but I’ve spent half my life in Ireland and still spend three or four months there a year. I understand the political scene very well, far better than anybody could ever pick up from a mere four and a half years there, particularly in Cork :joy: No body pays any attention the them- they think they should be the Capital for goodness.

I’ve some (as in dozens) very old friends there that I swap emails and/Whatsapp group messages with every day (two are married to doctors BTW). My daughter trained there as a doctor and she’s still in touch with her old colleagues via Emails, Whatsapp, Skype and Zoom. She and I talk regularly and she gives me the low down on the ground. There’s loads of other points I could make to further emphasis my credentials but unless you insist I won’t bother.

Sure Leo has his faults but he also has courage and integrity, atributes that nobody, not one, in the current UK cabinet have. I also think that having emerged from its priest ridden past having a gay, half Indian PM, (even if he does enjoy the limelight a bit - but don’t all politicians) is something the Irish should be proud of. IMO it shows how far the nation has come in forty years.

In my post I stated that Harris, the health minister, had not performed well up to the crisis but he has performed superbly since. Particularly if one compares hime to that snivelling, sycophantic liar, Hancock.

You will note in my post I did not praise the organisation running the public health service in Ireland, the Health Services Executive (HSE). They are the ones responsible for the trollies and and excessive waiting lists. The HSE was formed in 2004 (by a Minister of Health from Cork ironically) by amalgamating the regional health boards to streamlne the provision of healthcare in Ireland. It has been an unmitigated disaster. I won’t waste your time with the many reasons for this but let me tell you it will take decades to sort it out. To blame current politicians who have only recenlty come to power for the problems is a mistake. I have long been a critic of the HSE and if you care to take it offline we can discuss it ad ad nauseam :slightly_smiling_face:

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John, Fair enough.

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hey do have a penchant for calling things by familiar names, don’t they.
I (part) owned a Piper Cherokee airplane the model of which was fitted with what was described as the “hershey” wing.
Well, the heyshey wing is shaped like the American bar of chocolate (candy) which gives it’s name to the design.
image
and the aircraft:
image
It wasn’t until I went to the States and bought a bar from a vending machine at the airfield that I realised the actual similarity…
The more modern variant of the PA28 (the Archer) has a laminar flow wing.

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When working with American children one of the first things you are told is it’s OK to use the word fanny but a rubber is an eraser.

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When i was stationed in the states, there were guys in the unit who literally lived on the damn things :pleading_face:

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I had trouble learning the difference between “Right now” and “Just now” but then I realized that Brits misuse the word “Presently.”
But I do like the way they assume that if a letter is there it has to be pronounced. Which accounts for all those X-a-viers and Why-vonneys and of course, never forgetting the immortal Dionne War-wick! :laughing:

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In South Africa right now and just now could be anytime in the future. Only “now now” actually means now :slightly_smiling_face: Took me a (frustrated) while to learn that.

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Mark can sort that out. With a classic Carte Gris too :slight_smile:

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I notice how several areas are pleading with the government to relax their colour status to green, stating that they misreported their statuses…(typographical error, computer error…)

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irresistible urge to fiddle the numbers :slightly_smiling_face:

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But at least they are wearing masks.

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us grown ups should begin to think for ourselves and deserve the right to ask sensible questions.
This american puts it very well :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=19&v=gyJhA5Zp-qc&feature=emb_logo

(however, the last time I said something which challenged the establishment dogma, it was taken down from this site even quicker than youtube removed David Icke’s interview)