Health – Page 7 – Slugger O'Toole

Perspectives on Covid, Part 2: Contemporary…

Robert Campbell on January 21, 2021, 10:42 am

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Public Health medicine is the speciality that manages diseases in a population, where a “population” can be the inhabitants of a hamlet, a town or city, or of a country, an island, or a continent. Management includes prevention and treatment strategies. It’s a multi-disciplinary speciality today and includes, amongst others, epidemiologists who study the spread of disease, statisticians and modellers, and those responsible for policy and education. The World Health Organisation (WHO) is an agency of the United Nations and …

Perspectives on Covid, Part 1: Historical…

Robert Campbell on January 20, 2021, 7:35 am

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What we now call Covid-19 appeared as a new disease in China in late 2019. It rapidly spread worldwide as a pandemic with countries struggling to manage it, and to prevent their health services being overwhelmed while simultaneously keeping their economies functioning. Before considering some of the issues around this, I though that an historical perspective would help to understand how and why “we are where we now are”. Leprosy is one of mankind’s oldest scourges. It’s mentioned in the …

Healthcare staff showing signs of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD)

Mick Fealty on January 19, 2021, 12:07 pm

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Having a close friend who is a nurse, but is currently on maternity leave, but is still in daily contact with front line colleagues, I can confirm that this is spot on… Pat Cullen, the union’s NI director, said many healthcare staff were already showing signs of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). It comes as NI expects its toughest week so far in the pandemic. Mrs Cullen said the RCN has doubled its counselling services to meet the demand for support. …

Hospitals reaching crisis point, just as infection rates tail off everywhere but around the border..

Mick Fealty on January 18, 2021, 12:35 pm

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It’s striking how Ireland (north and south) now seems to be cooling its infection rates quicker than any single administration in Britain. Now, that’s just as well, because as Gav Reilly points out on Twitter, the situation in the south’s hospital system is close to bursting… Yesterday’s hospital stats – 193 in ICU, 22 beds left available. There are 299 people in intensive care, including non-COVID patients, which is higher than the standard national full-time capacity (gone from 255 to …

Northern Ireland currently has one of the world’s highest COVID-19 vaccination rates

Peter Donaghy (Salmon of Data) on January 14, 2021, 8:00 am

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Northern Ireland continues to rank among the world’s highest for the number of COVID-19 vaccinations administered per capita. The chart above, from Our World in Data, shows that if Northern Ireland were an independent country, it would rank third in the world for the number of COVID-19 vaccinations administered per person, behind the Israel and the United Arab Emirates, and fractionally ahead of Bahrain. The Northern Ireland Department of Health released this week a programme outlining its plans for vaccinating …

Life goes on…

Lisa Wells on January 9, 2021, 9:48 am

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As the end of 2020 approached (that was just last week) many people online seemed to be falling in to the usual New Year nonsense trap. I don’t mean the usual suspects of New Year New You, Dry January, Veganuary or whatever-you’re-having-yourself-anuary. I am of course referring to believing that a particular dawn on a new day will herald magical changes which were hitherto unlikely. Get real. (I sold this piece to the editor as a little bit of hope …

Republic is discovering that only vaccines not lockdown can provide an end to #Covid_19

Mick Fealty on January 4, 2021, 12:47 pm

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Just three weeks ago an Irish Examiner headline writer told us that whilst Ireland’s Covid cases are rising, “we are still in a good position compared to our neighbours”. Not that you’d guess that from the complete funk the Dublin media just now. The 14-day incidence rate for infections in Ireland is currently 80.4 per 100,000 which is the second lowest in the EU. Only remote Iceland is doing better with a rate of 49.3 cases. Yesterday The Irish Times noted that …

The Covid-19 Christmas hangover begins…

Brian O'Neill on January 4, 2021, 8:34 am

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How was your Christmas? Let me guess, quiet? While some of us were enjoying Black Narcissus and working our way through the Celebrations tub, Covid-19 was on an epic bender. A snapshot of how the #coronavirus rate has dramatically increased in Northern Ireland over the past few months. On 3rd of Sept, Oct, Nov, Dec & Jan. Mid Ulster's rate has increased from 9.3 per 100,000 to almost 900 per 100,000 pic.twitter.com/O1P7u49G96 — Darran Marshall (@DarranMarshall) January 3, 2021 As …

NI Department of Health has already vaccinated at least 50% of care home residents…

Mick Fealty on December 28, 2020, 10:40 am

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This is one reason why I’ve never bought into the slightly daft idea that just because we are on the same island that the north and the south should synchronise public health policies… Great news for Northern Ireland: https://t.co/8eZoCKfma4 pic.twitter.com/6ldxrxENMZ — Mick Fealty (@mickfealty) December 28, 2020 On Christmas Eve, Peter put these figures into proper perspective… So far, just over 50% of Northern Ireland care home residents, 75% of care home staff, and 18% of front line medical staff …

2020 through the lens of disability…

Lisa Wells on December 26, 2020, 8:00 am

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This year I’ve been mostly at home, maybe that’s been your experience too. This isn’t new for me as since 2015 I’ve been living with chronic illness. The essence of 2020 has been our shared experience of being forced by circumstances beyond our control to stay in, when all you really want to do is go out. As the stark reality of having an altered Christmas becomes ever more apparent you may be longing for those heady days of living your …

“Covid-19 does not care about the Battle of the Boyne…”

Peter Farrelly on December 24, 2020, 10:16 am

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These were words ushered by Minister for Health Stephen Donnelly in a recent Newstalk interview when asked about an all-island approach being adopted to tackle Covid-19. The irritation in his voice evident. The events over the past week will only strengthen his contempt for the Northern Ireland Executive. His Northern Ireland counterpart, Robin Swann, claimed they were blindsided by Ireland’s ban on travel from Britain and did not see it coming. Quite an extraordinary claim given the heavy media speculation …

Why I think Northern Ireland will still be part of the Union in another 100 years time…

Soapbox on December 23, 2020, 1:39 pm

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Alex Easton is one of two DUP MLAs currently representing North Down. Here he lays out what he thinks the current strength of the case for retaining the union between Northern Ireland and Great Britain, and why Northern Ireland needs more optimistic engagement with the future. Being passionate about the Union and never having done a piece for Slugger O’Toole before, I am hoping that those who oppose the Union will not be too hard on me for my first …

Exiling NI Expats Can’t Become Another Political Game

Michael Walker on December 23, 2020, 6:30 am

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30 January 2020 was my 27th birthday. That weekend also turned into my last time in Northern Ireland for a full 6 months. The pandemic that we have all experienced has been suffered in many different ways, and to different degrees. I won’t pretend that being a stranded celt in London meant I was on the sharper end of the experience, but you can only live through it the way you did and so while I ought not to have …

If only mainstream politicians could speak “human being” again…

Mick Fealty on December 18, 2020, 5:10 pm

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Great observation from Dave Winer which I think resonates with my essay for the Congregation.ie Unconference… The key point that the Democrats keep missing is that we want to do more. We will give you money and we will vote, but that’s not all we can do. Each of has special talents, abilities. Some of us have more time to give than others. But almost to a person, we want to be part of this, not spectators. Trump kind of …

Why we are where we are with our high Covid-19 rates…

Soapbox on December 17, 2020, 5:29 pm

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Dr Claire Donnelly is a consultant physician with expertise in infectious diseases and an MSc in epidemiology I want to try to explain from an epidemiological perspective how NI is approaching a cliff-face with Covid 19. Professor Devi Sridhar has used the analogy of boiling milk to explain this very well. Initially, it starts to boil slowly and it seems like nothing much is happening. As you get closer to the boiling point, if you take your eye off the …

Why did more than 1000 people queue outside Primark at midnight during a pandemic?

Brian O'Neill on December 14, 2020, 7:51 am

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I don’t know about you, but at midnight on Friday night, I was tucked up in bed snoozing. Some of our fellow citizens, on the other hand, thought it was a better idea to traipse down to Primark in the Abbey Centre for some midnight shopping. Unfortunately over a thousand people also had the same idea and the queue to get in was over a mile long. Primark AbbeyCentre last night we didn’t bother queuing up because it was absolutely …

“Build a future; only then can you revisit the past without being held captive by the past…”

Terry Wright on December 11, 2020, 3:42 pm

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“The most intriguing part of Irish history for me is the period of Grattan’s parliament…. the first emergence of the Renaissance Movement in this island amongst the non-conformists. They wanted to get freedom for everybody who was advancing, for the Roman Catholic community, the slowly emerging merchant class……. fighting not just for their own rights but for everyone’s. Then the Catholics in the South organised on their own, ultimately dividing the community….. realistically leading to partition…… I blame the South …

No, the COVID-19 Vaccine is not made from aborted babies…

Brian O'Neill on December 10, 2020, 12:47 pm

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You may have seen a story doing the rounds on social media about the new Covid-19 vaccine being made from the cells of aborted babies. Like most rumours on social media, it is just not true. A simple way to check if a story is true is to look it up on Snopes – the fact-checking site. From their entry on this rumour: A viral video published in late November 2020 re-energized a common anti-vaccine talking point, alleging that AstraZeneca’s …

Why other countries should draw inspiration from the Irish Government’s early response to the Covid-19 pandemic

Peter Farrelly on December 8, 2020, 7:00 pm

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When an outbreak of a virus such as Covid-19 occurs, where vaccines, drug treatments and high levels of testing do not yet exist, the communication that is delivered in the early days, both accurate and credible, is by the far the strongest medicine in any government’s arsenal. The reality is, in these early days, the capability of the virus is relatively unknown. Given the number of people infected by coronavirus around the world was minimal at the start, the data …

For health advice it’s not 111, it’s “Phone First”…

Lisa Wells on December 6, 2020, 9:07 am

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There’s an important transformation happening to our emergency health care. You might have heard about it on the local news/radio but it’s possibly been drowned out by the sheer volume of other headline-grabbing news. It’s not deliberately in the background or being introduced by stealth. It’s just got a lot of competition like the vaccine and Brexit innit. This change is something called “Phone First”, part of No More Silos, an initiative borne from how our health service came …