We have had 5,573 positive swabs in the last 24 hours.

Allowing that Quality Assurance will eventually discard about 5-10% as duplicates or otherwise invalid, that's about 5,000 new cases of covid in Ireland today.

5000 cases.
Not 1,754.

https://covid19.shanehastings.eu/api/swabs/ 

This matters.

It matters, because @CMOIreland and @President_MU and every person connected with our pandemic response is trying to communicate the urgency of this moment.

That we NEED to stay home.
That we NEED to respond quickly beyond our current restrictions.

But how can we communicate this urgency, how can we respond with urgency, if we can't even name what is happening?

Take this excellent article from @IrishTimes, for example. The article highlights the 9000 case backlog; the headline figure is still 1,745.

This is what the front page of the Irish Times looks like.
Lots of people don't look beyond the headline.

https://www.irishtimes.com/news/health/coronavirus-1-754-new-cases-and-11-more-deaths-reported-as-hospital-numbers-pass-500-1.4448184

Can you imagine the shock value alone if the headline figure were 5000 cases today?

The conversations that would take place across the radio, tv, internet? In homes across Ireland?

And, as @andrewflood has pointed out, this number is only going to rise. GP referrals are x 10 times higher than they were at the start of December.

(Please read his entire thread) https://twitter.com/andrewflood/status/1345048867134464001

So where do we go from here?

1. When reporting on our daily cases, can we approximate the true number of cases while we're waiting for a backlog to clear? Can we at least say that the est. no. of cases for today was 5000, even if the true official number is yet to be confirmed?

2. Can we please throw resources at @marietcasey and her colleagues? Now, please?

We shouldn't need to strike.
GIVE THEM WHAT THEY NEED.

We owe them so much, and they are doing incredible work. Imagine what they could do if they were resourced properly!

3. Make funding our public health units an election issue. Email your representatives. Let's get noisy.

Make it so that it's not politically possible for our governments to starve our public health units, as they have done to date. https://twitter.com/NICU_doc_salone/status/1344855873470885889

Make it so that our ministers *know what public health units are* and what they do.

(And yes, that was an issue with a Minister interviewed just one month ago) https://twitter.com/Antcon7062/status/1337752287045971969

Let's listen to our incredibly talented, internationally respected public health specialists & give them everything they need.

They are our line of defence before pandemics. And, as @marietcasey pointed out, pandemics are only increasing in frequency. https://twitter.com/marietcasey/status/1343992586269294593

Grim though it is to consider, Mike Ryan pointed out this week that this pandemic may not, in fact, be the big one.

If this is the planet's wake-up call, let it be Ireland's national wake-up call also. https://www.irishtimes.com/news/health/covid-19-pandemic-not-necessarily-the-big-one-says-who-1.4447084

Let us invest in our public health systems.

Let us invest in our talented, over-worked, brilliant public health specialists.

Let them never be stranded like this ever again.