I do like to be beside the seaside....& lakes

Half time!

My turn😎

Hang'n with the cuzins on lovely Lough  Errit 🏊🎣🎸

Free rides on uncle Robert's boat: schtyle

Wanted: A few 14 year olds & a teacher for Covid safe school in Galway

Taken from my article in today's Indo👇

https://www.independent.ie/opinion/comment/our-children-are-at-grave-risk-of-covid-as-state-puts-profit-ahead-of-public-health-41893293.html

Read below & if interested, get in touch.

"I’ve been scouring the web to see if any school has managed to prevent outbreaks. I found one – Abrome, in Texas. How did it do it? By ignoring politicians and following the science.

Acknowledging Covid is airborne, mitigations included daily testing, mandatory FFP2/3 masks indoors and outdoors in close contact during surges, distancing, remote learning when cases were extremely high, outdoor learning options, and Hepa filtration in every classroom. If CO2 readings exceeded 800, rooms were evacuated and classes continued in sheltered outdoor spaces, also used for eating. Everyone is vaccinated.

Abrome’s ethos is that of inclusion. A Covid-safe school is accessible to everyone. The sense of collective compassion over mé féinism.

In the same way I would challenge institutional racism, I won’t participate in a system that discriminates against disabled, clinically vulnerable children and those with clinically vulnerable family. Without Covid protections, they are being robbed of their right to in-school education – indefinitely. The Ombudsman for Children told me: “A child rights-based approach needs to inform any decisions in respect of Covid.”

My son never got to know his grandparents because the State put profit before public health. I believe it’s happening again with Covid.

I can’t go to Texas, but I am going to try to create a Covid-safe educational facility here in Galway. All I need is a few 14-year-olds – and a teacher.

Our children are at grave risk of Covid as State puts profit ahead of public health

 My column in today's Indo👇

https://www.independent.ie/opinion/comment/our-children-are-at-grave-risk-of-covid-as-state-puts-profit-ahead-of-public-health-41893293.html

It’s up to parents to risk-assess, but if we’re not allowed to know if the unmasked kid sitting next to ours who was off sick for a few days has Covid and is potentially still infectious, how can we? Nits we need to be informed of, but a highly infectious neurotropic disease that can cause organ damage, disability and death? That’s an ecumenical matter.

Many parents, sometimes emboldened by mental-health practitioners who should know better, interpret the Government’s removal of public health protections as being outside their locus of control and therefore, succumbing to the “inevitability” of infection is best. For many, due to financial or health precarity, exposure to Covid is increasingly difficult to avoid but an infection is not beneficial to mental health because; a) psychiatric disorders are common post-Covid sequelae, the risk of which increases with every infection and b) mental and physical health are inextricably linked.

Pitting one against the other, instead of advocating for both, is harmful. The World Health Organisation’s Mike Ryan recently spoke of the cumulative impact of repeated infections and negative long-term neurological and other health outcomes, warning: “You don’t want to get this disease once if you can avoid it but you don’t want to get it four times, for sure.”

"I spoke to one of Ireland’s leading children’s rights lawyers, Gareth Noble, who said: “I’m concerned we’re creating a culture of conditioning us to think Covid infections and outbreaks in schools are inevitable. They’re not. We significantly reduce risk for our children if we follow basic public health advice such as mask-wearing, contact tracing, air filtration and other measures. Any expert advice from the WHO needs to be considered and actioned. Ignoring it would be negligent.”

Interim chief medical officer Professor Breda Smyth needs to explain why she has not adopted WHO guidance in her advice to government.