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Elaine Doyle Profile picture
Elaine Doyle
@laineydoyle
Writer and researcher. Particularly interested in the history of medicine. She/her. Formerly: historian, PhD (QUB), MPhil (University of Cambridge)
19 subscribers
Feb 25, 2022 • 10 tweets • 4 min read
Signal boosting this. For anyone with Ukrainian family: no visas are required for any Ukrainian trying to enter Ireland. Just get to any EU country and then fly here, if you can.

I’m so sorry this is happening. Our borders are open to you. Some British people are having trouble getting UK visas for Ukrainian family members.

A reminder: British citizens are automatically entitled to live & work in Ireland & **no visa requirements for any Ukrainian coming here**.

Come to Ireland.

Dec 18, 2021 • 19 tweets • 8 min read
Put bluntly, this is absolute nonsense.

We're experiencing a crisis in Irish schools and NPHET is clinging to dogma and bad data.

They stopped contact tracing in Irish schools on 27 September. To quote @RobOHanrahan, you can't find what you're not looking for. If you're an 8-year-old in an Irish school, and there's a case of covid in your class, *you generally won't be notified*.

You are not considered a close contact.

The HSE will not tell your parents. You are free to meet your friends and your vulnerable family members.
Dec 17, 2021 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
Responses - by reply and quote-tweet - are striking.

People are (rightly) furious. This is obviously, patently untrue; if you suspend contact tracing, you can say that schools are safe by simply not recording the outbreaks happening there.

Does @EamonRyan understand this? The many children who WILL be infected next Tuesday and Wednesday (at school!) will be infectious and likely still asymptomatic when they meet their grandparents on Christmas Day.

This is an easy win. Don’t throw away an easy win. Close the schools *two and a half days early*.
Dec 16, 2021 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
It is wildly frustrating that, almost 2 years into a pandemic, we see healthcare worker infections as inevitable.

They’re not inevitable. We can make choices to protect them.

For crying out loud, mandate FFP2/3 respirators for ALL healthcare workers.

The bar is on the FLOOR. And provide at least two KN95/FFP2/FFP3 masks to every household in the country, free of charge, weekly.

Yes, it would cost money, but a lot less than a lockdown.

Boosters take time to take effect. Masks work NOW.
Jul 12, 2021 • 7 tweets • 4 min read
If you're in the UK - & frankly, if you're not - please consider donating to @allthecitizens. They give a platform to scientists & researchers criticising the UK government's covid strategy. Without them, we would have very few effective opposition voices.
crowdfunder.co.uk/the-citizens I'm based in Ireland but – as any number of people have pointed out – we have an open border with the UK. What happens there, spills over here a few weeks later.

And beyond that: we experience a pandemic together. Every life counts, and nobody is safe until we're all safe.
Jan 4, 2021 • 29 tweets • 10 min read
It's hard to overstate how bad the situation is in Ireland right now.

We had 6,110 new covid cases confirmed today, in a population of 4.9m people.

If we scale that up to the population of the US (328.2 million), the equivalent would be over 400,000 new cases in Ireland today. By comparison: US had over 200,000 new cases of covid yesterday & just under 300,000 new cases the day before. US data is noisy, with testing lags & undercounting.

But even so: by official stats, Ireland had at least a 1/3 more new cases per capita today than the US.
Jan 4, 2021 • 8 tweets • 4 min read
Question for twitter:
You can currently download Weeks 46-51 of the weekly Covid-19 schools and childcare mass testing reports for Ireland.

But: I can’t find Weeks 35-45. Does anyone have them? I know they exist.

My DMs are open. Any leads? For the curious:

Weeks 47-51 are here: hse.ie/eng/services/n…

Week 46 is here: gov.ie/en/publication…
Jan 2, 2021 • 19 tweets • 12 min read
Very much appreciating the engagement with this thread - some really great, thoughtful replies, which I'm slowly working through.

(RIP my mentions etc - it can be easy to miss things when there are so many responses!)

First up, the always-insightful @gavreilly points out that, even if the current IT system were fully automated & had enough people to resource it, the *system itself* has an upper ceiling of 2000 cases per day.

(...)

(... dear god.)

Jan 2, 2021 • 38 tweets • 16 min read
Everyone knows that the case numbers in Ireland aren't real, right? Or rather, that they're wildly undercounted?

That we've hit a ceiling of 1700 cases per day *because that's the max no. of cases that can be confirmed* by an over-subscribed public health system, right?

Right? Officially, Ireland had 1,754 cases of coronavirus today.

But that's not the true picture of the state of covid infection.

There's a backlog of 9000 positive swabs awaiting verification. In @ShaneHastingsIE helpful graph, that's the bit under the red line, scribbled in yellow.
Dec 23, 2020 • 15 tweets • 4 min read
Alright, after my humongous last thread, here's a shorter one. Stay home this Christmas. If you want to see family, don't visit them *inside* their homes; wear masks, put on a warm coat and visit *outside* only.

Keep your masks on.

Don't nip inside if it gets cold; plan ahead. Bring hot water bottles, blankets. Stay physically apart.
Dec 23, 2020 • 40 tweets • 6 min read
A while ago, my friend's kid started throwing a birthday party every day.

It was a pretty stylish affair.

She'd grab all her teddies and line them up one by one. Then she'd open the front door and welcome in her guests - invisible, of course - with her Mam. They would greet each of them by name. There would be (invisible) cake and (invisible) juice and (invisible) sandwiches. They would blow out the (invisible) candles.

And then the guests would leave. They would be escorted to the front door. The birthday party was over.
Aug 19, 2020 • 28 tweets • 6 min read
Let's talk about statistics.

Something struck me from @FergalBowers (excellent) coverage of today's covid numbers in Ireland: the breakdown is super weird. 190 cases, of which 75 are close contacts of an existing case, & 14 are community transmission.

What about the other 101? Were they infected in hospital? Or because of travel?

Did they get sick because they were exposed at work (say, a meat factory)?

Do we just not know yet, & the contact tracers are working it out?

Why give us info about under half of the cases, and completely ignore the rest?
May 30, 2020 • 13 tweets • 6 min read
Some thoughts on what's been happening in the US over the last few days.

Firstly, I want to listen. I want to hear what is being said, here & in the US, on the reality of racism & how white supremacy has benefited my life.

If you're the same, start here:
docs.google.com/document/d/1BR… There are extraordinary voices coming from the US right now, voices filled with grief, pain & righteous anger, and I could fill a thread with them alone.

As someone who spends time in both the US and Ireland: I hear you. I'm so sorry. I'm listening.

May 30, 2020 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
Really helpful thread on what to expect over the next year.

This is specific to the UK; I have some hope that the pandemic will be contained in Ireland - or at least that our path will be less bumpy.

But I think the beats might be broadly similar, esp Sept/Jan as crunch points (A note: our schools aren't going back in June, thankfully, so hopefully we'll avoid that particular boost to infection rates)
May 18, 2020 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
The last gig I was at - before *gestures* all this happened - was Lankum in Dublin, last Jan.

I was just out of hospital & a bit wobbly on my feet. I almost didn’t go. I’m so glad I did.

Layers of sound, good friends, blackest & brightest of songs, curry chips after. Perfect. Playing the NPR Tiny Desk concert brought it all back - the clink of glasses at Vicar Street, bodies gathered together in the dark, and the sharp cold of the night air when you spill out onto the street afterwards.

God, it feels like a different world, doesn’t it?
Apr 15, 2020 • 25 tweets • 7 min read
My op-ed is out in today's print edition of the @guardian - Why is coronavirus killing so many more people in the UK than Ireland?

I have some additional thoughts to follow up – the biggest of which is: it's so much worse than I thought.

theguardian.com/commentisfree/… I said in my original thread that the death toll in the UK was double that in Ireland.

It's not.

It's almost three and a half times higher.
Apr 12, 2020 • 49 tweets • 9 min read
I don't understand the British media. I really, really don't.

Basic things: Ireland and the UK started this pandemic with roughly the same number of ICU beds (6.5 per 100,000 for Ireland, 6.6 per 100,000 in the UK).

If anything, the UK was slightly better off. As of today, there have been 320 deaths from the coronavirus in Ireland, and 9,875 deaths in the UK.

Ok, ok, but the UK has a ginormous population, right? Especially compared to Ireland.

So we adjust per capita - how many deaths per 100,000 people?
Apr 11, 2020 • 9 tweets • 4 min read
It’s a tradition in Ireland to light a candle in the window - usually in the depths of winter, for the stranger passing by, & to remember those far away. Something to light the way in the dark.

Tonight, in the midst of so much darkness, we lit our candles again.
#ShineYourLight My sister is a doctor in St James’ Hospital in Dublin. At 9pm, she looked out the window, to see the whole street lit up like a Christmas tree, and her neighbours in Stoneybatter flicking their lights on and off like maniacs. #ShineYourLight