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Wingsuit flight through ESB chimneys a “serious safety incident”

Written by Joerg Steegmueller

Something spectacular happened over our heads on Friday: Three Red Bull Wingsuit pilots jumped out of a helicopter over Dublin and subsequently flew towards and then through the gap between the iconic ESB chimneys at Poolbeg. It seems to be part of a series of flights through landmarks and just three weeks ago wingsuit pilots flew through the gap at the Tower Bridge in London.

Nobody thinks that wingsuiting is a safe sport, Red Bull themselves say “Wingsuit flying is the most dangerous extreme sport in the world”, but it is still laughable that the ESB felt they had to release a statement calling the event a “serious safety incident”. Sometimes it is just better to say nothing. Have a look at the great flight here: www.rte.ie/news/ireland/2024/0531/1452382-dublin-skydive/

Red Bull is known for usually getting all necessary permissions and since the ESB probably doesn’t own the airspace above their buildings or between their chimneys they probably didn’t need to be asked.

The City of London took a different stance when the pilots flew during a much more spectacular stunt “through” the Tower Bridge. They didn’t complain about a safety incident, instead they supported the event by closing the Tower Bridge for the event. In London UK air traffic control also kept the airspace clear for the event on 12 May and a pontoon was installed in the Thames for the landing of the pilots. In Dublin ESB complains about a “serious safety incident”. Interesting!

Dublin, Overexaggerations, , , , ,

Ireland is in much worse position than people think…

Written by Joerg Steegmueller

The number of infected people is steadily growing again for the last two months or so. In Ireland this is happening despite the very high vaccination rate of well above 90% of the adult population and the only answer that doctors and politicians have, is to insist that people have to show their vaccination certificates and that they should get vaccinated more.

Vaccinations clearly help with SOMETHING as the number of deaths is lower than previously. But people can only die once. So when the people that were in the highest danger of dying from Covid are dead, then they can’t die a second time and naturally, the death rate will drop. Based on the infection numbers we see, it seems that the 90+% vaccination rate is possibly having much less an impact on that metric than people were told it would have.

On 04 Nov, the daily infections was reported as 3024 new cases (www.rte.ie/news/coronavirus/2021/1104/1257803-covid-ireland/), that is a small number if you compare to the world and there are many people in Ireland who don’t think this number is a cause of worry. But let’s put it in perspective!

Ireland is TINY, so therefore the numbers are small-ish. Ireland has 5,011,588 inhabitants. Germany has 84,142,708 inhabitants. That is a factor 16.79.

In Germany the authorities are close to panic station, because today 34,000 new cases were reported and RTE (possibly with some level of glee) reported the news here www.rte.ie/news/coronavirus/2021/1104/1257971-covid-transmission-europe/

3,024 vs 34,000 seems very clear! Ireland: good! Germany: Bad!

But let’s look at the real figures. With Germany being 16.79 times the size of Ireland. this would mean that Ireland – if it was the size of Germany – would have reported 50,370 new cases. FIFTY THOUSAND!

So now, how does the comparison look like?

Germany-sized Ireland: 50,370 vs Germany-sized Germany: 34,000

Anybody still think Ireland is in a good position?

Corona Virus, Covid-19, Elsewhere, Overexaggerations, ,

Covid Hotel Quarantine starts in Ireland…but NOTHING will change!

Written by Joerg Steegmueller

After a very long long delay, the Irish Government finally managed to “turn on” the mandatory Hotel Quarantine for some specific people coming to Ireland. It took a long time until all laws were in place and the whole scheme was organised and on Friday, the first people (rumours has it that they came to Ireland on a flight from Saudi Arabia) have moved into their hotel room where they will have to stay for 12 days and will to pay EUR 1850 for the pleasure.

On the list of countries of people that will be forced to stay in hotel quarantine are the usual holiday destinations like Botswana, Burundi and Angola and without a doubt a LOT of tourists will come from these locations. NOT! Also on it are countries like Brazil where there is a big problem at the moment. But there is no USA or France or Italy on the list where the problems are ALSO big. Instead from the countries we seem to like more, you just need a PCR test and then you won’t be forced into hotel quarantine. How can we apply completely different rules? Oddly the only European country on the list is Austria, which is definitely not the worst in Europe. And also very oddly: Mauritius is on the list that has a super low infection rate but that unfairly got involved in some mud throwing by the UK. (www.joergsteegmueller.com/2021/02/27/trust-in-authorities-during-covid-times/) So the UK added them to the list and magically, they appear on the Irish list as well.

In addition to arrivals from 33 countries (www.citizensinformation.ie/en/travel_and_recreation/travel_to_ireland/hotel_quarantine.html) everyone has to go into hotel quarantine that arrives from any other country but does not have a negative or not detected PCR test that was taken within 72 hours.

The quarantine MIGHT have made sense in March 2020, but now it is a joke! The HSE estimates that approx. 1.7% of all cases are brought into Ireland through international travel. So you can expect that that complicated scheme that involves a whole range of hotels with income guarantees and even utilises the army to escort the prisoners, sorry…arriving travelers to the hotels.

A totally mad and ineffective system at the totally wrong time with totally wrong rules.

Here are the rules if you want to know more: www.gov.ie/en/publication/3b8e1-mandatory-hotel-quarantine-your-questions-answered/

Irish, Justice, Overexaggerations, Politics, Taoiseach, Tourism, , , , , , ,

Don’t trust anybody! Covid-19: Astra Zeneca Blood clots

Written by Joerg Steegmueller

The newest information that reached Irish media is that all vaccinations with the Astra Zeneca vaccine have been put on hold over a risk of blood clots, that affected 4 patients in Norway and a few more in other countries. www.rte.ie/news/2021/0314/1203889-niac-recommends-suspension-of-use-of-astrazeneca-vaccin/

Sounds like a sound and responsible decision, right? Duty of care and all that. Well done, boys!

But then you look at the BIG picture and think back to February and also think about what else is going on and suddenly you realise that there is probably a lot more going on. AGAIN!

Here are the facts and conclusions:

Norway had 4 (FOUR!!) cases of blood clots. They are all in hospital and are being treated. In Austria one person died from a blood clot and one if in hospital, in Denmark one died (a second one is in hospital) and in Italy possibly also one death has been reported.

So that is a total of maybe three deaths and five people in hospital. 8 people out of 17 million administered vaccines. Maybe it is even 30 patients as the article mentions when referring to the European Medicines Agency (EMA).

That’s still not a lot and a link to the vaccine is far from clear, but yes, it probably makes sense to pause a clinical trial if you have some deaths. (Oh, you think this is NOT a clinical trial? Hmm, think again!! It is a mass trial and nothing else but an experiment!)

But let’s move on and remember January. We found out at the end of January that 33 elderly people in Norway died shortly after receiving their Covid-19 vaccination from Pfizer/BioNTech. But we were told quickly that this has NO relevance (www.wired.co.uk/article/norway-deaths-coronavirus-vaccine) because the patients were elderly and would have died anyway. :-O

We don’t even know if there were other deaths elsewhere in the world. Or maybe we do but we aren’t told? We don’t know in what state of health they or the others that possibly died elsewhere were in. We now their age and a conclusion was made. We just discarded the 33 old people in Norway and moved on. Not for a second the vaccination programme was halted.

This time a number of countries halted the Astra Zeneca vaccination and MANY countries followed quickly, because if ONE country stops it and someone dies in ANOTHER country the politicians and “experts” and the country where people died will be blamed. Publicity-caused ripple effect!

A blood clot is something serious, but there seem to be a number of different blood clot-caused issues that could have killed the patients and pulmonary embolism or deep vein thrombosis are the main ones.

As a side note: Between 1981 and 1999 a total of 5408 patients were admitted to hospital with venous thromboembolism (deep vein thrombosis) after they were on international flights according to a study www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC261739/. That is 5408 in 18 years or 300 per year. Have you heard of halting all international flights until the matter is investigated further?

But back to the vaccines:
The significant difference between the end of January and now is that at that time there was not much other choice available. So, we better keep going.

This time, however, we are in a situation where Astra Zeneca just can’t supply ENOUGH vaccine and governments around the world try to “fix” that problem or explain it SOMEHOW. The Irish Taoiseach (Prime Minister) Micheal Martin even thought it was prudent to seek a meeting with the CEO of Astra Zeneca to discuss the problem. As if the CEO was giggling while sitting on a stash that he doesn’t want to release to the governments of the world UNTIL Micheal Martin told him off..

So Astra Zeneca can’t deliver and there won’t be many vaccinations. People in Ireland and other countries are getting annoyed and governments try to make the process faster, but can’t and they get a lot of pressure from their people. And just in that moment a reason pops up that gives PERFECT justification to all countries to stop the use of that one vaccine for a week or so. Breathing space for politicians!!

Is anyone surprised that they JUMP On the opportunity to halt the vaccination? In one week there will be more doses, so this breathing space nicely shuts up all the complainers in media and public for a little bit.

Don’t trust ANYBODY in this Covid game!!! Everybody has an agenda!

 

Covid-19, Overexaggerations, Taoiseach, , , ,

How to lose the people’s support for anti-Covid measures!

Written by Joerg Steegmueller
How to lose the people’s support for anti-Covid measures!

You would think that people who are doing something the second time around will have learned from the first time and will do everything better, right? But strangely it seems that leopards really don’t change their spots, as the saying goes, at least not easily. :-O And it also seems that learning is harder than we think. We do make mistakes even if they stare us in the face. I know that and you might know that too!?

But before this turns into a psychotherapy session ;-) I should explain that I am (at least in part) referring to our politicians and their learning from the first lockdown. We will be for another good while in this lockdown… but they really didn’t learn!!

Things weren’t perfect the first time around, but we largely did what we were told, because it was quite clear and because we thought we understood why we did it. But then we realised that the politicians and “experts” really had no clue either and so the second time around the approach should have been to explain things better and to make it easier to adhere to the rules. More laws, threats (penalties, even prison) for breaking some of the rules and sending gardai to stop shops from selling their normal items (as they we allowed the first time around) is NOT the way to do it.

Instead it is a guarantee to lose the support from the people! And being out on the streets and in shops, it is clear that the trust and support is gone. The current nonsensical rules over “essential products” show that the government has no clue of what lockdowns mean to you and me. Closing SOME aisles of supermarkets, making it illegal to buy stationary or a towel, but legal to buy alcohol is a ridiculous over exaggeration.

Leo Varadkar who didn’t do too badly the first time around has totally screwed up this time (www.rte.ie/news/coronavirus/2020/1025/1173788-coronavirus-ireland/) and our temporary other Taoiseach, Micheal Martin is just continuing his non-impressive handling of an admittedly challenging situation.

There are two effects that the “making illegal” of selling any extra products in supermarkets apart from things that are required for survival will have: The first effect is that as soon as shops are open fully again, there will be a mad run on shops with the consequence that even before Christmas the infection numbers will increase like crazy again. And the second effect is that even the bit of money that is made through selling a chainsaw in Lidl or a fleece jacket in Aldi or a child’s runners in Dunnes during the lockdown will now make its way to Amazon, instead of staying in Ireland. The government is showing the middle finger to any “buy local” campaign and in the end the small retailers that they allegedly want to protect with this stupid rule will not get the business anyway.

Corona Virus, Overexaggerations, Politics, Taoiseach, , , , , , ,
 
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