Relaxation of Restrictions, Part III - **Read OP for Mod Warnings**

oceanman

I would guess in a few years time conspiracy theorists will be claiming there was never really any covid-19, that it was just a way for governments across the world to control people.

Arghus

Ginger n Lemon wrote: »

Could you please admit that multiple scientists are showing that covid is dying out by itself?

I dont kno why we talk about Sweden, their unemployment numbers arent even in double digits. While their deaths per 1 million is nearly identical to ours. Trust me you dont want to get that cat out of the bag.

I'll admit that two mathematicians with no background in epidemiology have suggested that may be the case. But they are two outliers. Wouldn't you say that it seems highly coincidental that this "dying out" syncs up with widespread lockdown measures? It would appear self evident that there's a causal link there.

In any case they haven't shown anything conclusively. They've crunched some numbers. They haven't conclusive proof - it's all preliminary data. They would say themselves that you'd need more data to come to anything resembling a conclusion, in they were honest.

You can't base life or death momentous public health decisions on flimsy absolute best case scenario outcomes. That's just silly and irresponsible.

I don't mind debating the merits or otherwise of the lockdown. I can understand arguments to made against restrictions and so on. There's many elements of how it's been implemented and government's approach that I could take issue with: I like a good worthwhile debate.

I try to write what I write here in good faith. I don't think I can say the same for yourself, in my opinion. I don't think you're honest. You cherry pick facts, ignore things that don't suit you and latch onto anything - no matter how flimsy or preliminary - that appears at first glance, to support your argument.

You are anti-lockdown, okay, fair enough - but then be a fair broker. Apply the same level of skepticism and critical analysis to both sides of the debate and come to a fair and balanced opinion. Everything that is in any way anti-lockdown is treated as 100% certain by you and everything else - which does make up the majority of scientific and medical opinion - is instantly dismissed. I can't trust what you have to say.

SusieBlue

lainey_d_123 wrote: »

Has that been conclusively proven? Weren't the first few cases in Wuhan thought to have been in late November? So it's not completely out of the realms of possibility that a handful of people might have been infected in France from someone who had just come from there, without that implying any community spread in Europe at that time.

Well French hospitals have conclusively proven that there were a number of patients who were in hospital since early December, who had been tested for flu/pneumonia on December 27th and those tests came back negative.
The same swabs were retested for coronavirus earlier this month & they came back positive - so it was definitely in French hospitals since early December.

Another interesting development was that the World Military Games (a sort of olympics for the various militaries around the world) was held in October in... wait for it... Wuhan, China.
A number of athletes from European countries became so ill with a flu like illness after they arrived that they could not even take part in the competition.
They also reported that Wuhan was like a ghost town and that restrictions/lockdown had already been imposed by then. And that was in early October.

Athletes from Italy, Spain, Luxembourg, Belgium and France all fell ill, so it’s possible that this is how it actually got into Europe.
Link here for more info: https://www.thesun.ie/news/5400791/fears-coronavirus-europe-october-french-athletes-military-games-wuhan/amp/

I think it’s quite widely accepted at this point that China have been lying through their teeth from the beginning, I have no interest in any of the various conspiracy theories but it’s pretty clear that they have lied about when the illness came about, the number of cases/deaths and where the virus originated since day 1.
They haven’t been a bit honest and have been more interested in protecting their own self interest than anything else.

road_high

Arghus wrote: »

I haven't been able to see my family for two months. And it'll probably be a while longer.

But I'll put up with it. I know why I'm doing it.

Do you really though? I think people like you were border brainwashed into this thing. No logic whatsoever. If you went and sat in family gardens and social distanced what effect in the wide earthly world would that make? It makes me sad to see people’s critical faculties and judgements so easily surrendered. For me making my own personal choices in life is one of my cherished freedoms

Whirlaway

oceanman wrote: »

I would guess in a few years time conspiracy theorists will be claiming there was never really any covid-19, that it was just a way for governments across the world to control people.

I think that's already the conspiracy. Linked with 5g of course.

statesaver

Ginger n Lemon wrote: »

Pass. When I read his interview response below, his vaccine will probably be even worse than Oxford's one

"Humankind has never had a more urgent task than creating broad immunity for coronavirus. Realistically, if we’re going to return to normal, we need to develop a safe, effective vaccine. We need to make billions of doses, we need to get them out to every part of the world, and we need all of this to happen as quickly as possible."

The "anti vaxxer" insults are coming. And all because i am slightly concerned about that in bold. That doesnt sound healthy or sane.

Pass is right.

We'll wait 6 to 8 months before taking any vaccine.

Colibri

Apparently the vaccine didn't fail, that the headlines are misrepresenting what actually happened. Comments under this link discusses it - https://twitter.com/cggbamford/status/1261930743900577797



While the vaccine technically didn't *work*, it reduced viral load and removed covid related complications like pneumonia.

growleaves

oceanman wrote: »

I would guess in a few years time conspiracy theorists will be claiming there was never really any covid-19, that it was just a way for governments across the world to control people.

Nope, the virus is real. But the hugely controlling behaviour from governments and the way people have accepted it uncritically is the maddest thing I've ever seen.

Serious outbreaks of viruses in 1957 and 1968 did not lead to coincidentally quasi-fascist restrictions. In fact no pandemic of the past did.

In the media the talk is of making social distancing semi-permanent. Unless you want to be atomised and cut off from other human beings, you should question it.

Ginger n Lemon

Arghus wrote: »

I'll admit that two mathematicians with no background in epidemiology have suggested that may be the case. But they are two outliers. Wouldn't you say that it seems highly coincidental that this "dying out" syncs up with widespread lockdown measures? It would appear self evident that there's a causal link there.

In any case they haven't shown anything conclusively. They've crunched some numbers. They haven't conclusive proof - it's all preliminary data. They would say themselves that you'd need more data to come to anything resembling a conclusion, in they were honest.

You can't base life or death momentous public health decisions on flimsy absolute best case scenario outcomes. That's just silly and irresponsible.

I don't mind debating the merits or otherwise of the lockdown. I can understand arguments to made against restrictions and so on. There's many elements of how it's been implemented and government's approach that I could take issue with: I like a good worthwhile debate.

I try to write what I write here in good faith. I don't think I can say the same for yourself, in my opinion. I don't think you're honest. You cherry pick facts, ignore things that don't suit you and latch onto anything - no matter how flimsy or preliminary - that appears at first glance, to support your argument.

You are anti-lockdown, okay, fair enough - but then be a fair broker. Apply the same level of skepticism and critical analysis to both sides of the debate and come to a fair and balanced opinion. Everything that is in any way anti-lockdown is treated as 100% certain by you and everything else - which does make up the majority of scientific and medical opinion - is instantly dismissed. I can't trust what you have to say.

But its more than 2 mathematicians. There was a Wuhan lockdown study done as well.

"In the second study, newly published in the Science journal, researchers in Wuhan, China, concluded that strict social distancing alone would have been enough to control viral transmission.

If true, Ireland could be channelling billions into keeping the economy in deep freeze when strict social distancing could achieve close to the same result.

Speaking to the Sunday Independent, Prof Moynagh said: "We have to ask if the return that we get for exercising full lockdown justifies closing down the entire economy and seriously threatening non-Covid-19 healthcare. A lockdown was the right thing to do at the start to get control of the virus, but we need to ask if its continuation is warranted."

https://www.independent.ie/world-news/coronavirus/longer-lockdown-not-warranted-says-leading-immunologist-39176618.html

I always provide links of what I say. btw.

I am unsure how I can cherry pick something and still provide a link to leave myself to be exposed to being proved wrong. :pac:

Jaysus just saw Simon Harris there on News. People need to show a bit of "cop on". Just because places are open doesn't mean people have to go there..... he says!
I just think its an awful way to be speaking on the day deaths are just 4. Would you not give people a bit of praise and a bit of hope after all this time? We've been doing this for 10 weeks now - a bit of appreciation would go a long way.

nc6000

colly10 wrote: »

There are apps out there that calculate what 5/20km from your home looks like.
These apps calculate distance as the crow flies.
When they say you’re allowed to travel up to 5km, is that as the crow flies or is it defined anywhere?

This is handy - allows you pick a radius of between 1KM and 20KMs

https://2kmfromhome.com/

Colibri

[Deleted User] wrote: »

Jaysus just saw Simon Harris there on News. People need to show a bit of "cop on". Just because places are open doesn't mean people have to go there..... he says!
I just think its an awful way to be speaking on the day deaths are just 4. Would you not give people a bit of praise and a bit of hope after all this time? We've been doing this for 10 weeks now - a bit of appreciation would go a long way.

The thing is too, our cases are low as hell. There's guaranteed to be extra cases once we lift up even more, and then CMO et al will sing doomsday because cases have arisen. F-ck sake.

Arghus

road_high wrote: »

Do you really though? I think people like you were border brainwashed into this thing. No logic whatsoever. If you went and sat in family gardens and social distanced what effect in the wide earthly world would that make? It makes me sad to see people’s critical faculties and judgements so easily surrendered. For me making my own personal choices in life is one of my cherished freedoms

Well I work in a busy supermarket and my father is over 70. So I made the decision that even if the chances were low of transmitting the virus, it still, ultimately, wasn't worth it. The chances of something bad happening were in absolute terms quite low, but considering where I worked put me slightly more at risk than a regular person and also considering that my father was slightly more at risk than a regular person - I decided that it was best to err on the side of caution. It's perfectly logical and it too was a personal choice.

Ginger n Lemon

growleaves wrote: »

Nope, the virus is real. But the hugely controlling behaviour from governments and the way people have accepted it uncritically is the maddest thing I've ever seen.

Serious outbreaks of viruses in 1957 and 1968 did not lead to coincidentally quasi-fascist restrictions. In fact no pandemic of the past did.

In the media the talk is of making social distancing semi-permanent. Unless you want to be atomised and cut off from other human beings, you should question it.

You dont need to say much more than "healthy people have never been put into quarantine before". And its really baffling why hysteria continues given that we already know its mortality rate to be closer to 0.3%.

Stheno

The Oxford vaccine does appear to significantly reduce the impact of the virus though and studies are still early

The Moderna one looks promising along with other research coming out that indicates that our t cells which fight infection are able to beat it off due to having another coronavirus - the common cold, the study published at the weekend indicated that 40-60% of unexposed people had the t cells from the common cold to.fight it off.

Interesting and plain speaking discussion about it on the vaccine thread, still early days but.positive

SusieBlue

[Deleted User] wrote: »

Jaysus just saw Simon Harris there on News. People need to show a bit of "cop on". Just because places are open doesn't mean people have to go there..... he says!
I just think its an awful way to be speaking on the day deaths are just 4. Would you not give people a bit of praise and a bit of hope after all this time? We've been doing this for 10 weeks now - a bit of appreciation would go a long way.

Is he not aware of how supply and demand works? If you take away a service that was previously relied upon and utilised by the general public, for say 9 weeks, when that service reopens there is going to be a lot of demand because there was no supply for just over two months.

Hopefully this will give him an idea of the amount of demand there will be for some services by August, by which time 21 weeks (or over 5 months) will have passed & these services will be badly, badly needed.
What wasn’t a necessity on the 15th of March is needed now.

The longer you deprive people of something, the bigger the demand will be when supply returns. That’s how it works.
Perhaps he’ll look at the queues this morning and realise how stupid the plan to make people wait 5 months to go the gym, indoor shopping centres and pubs and bars is.

Conte..

Ginger n Lemon wrote: »

You dont need to say much more than "healthy people have never been put into quarantine before". And its really baffling why hysteria continues given that we already know its mortality rate to be closer to 0.3%.

Holy cow do u ever get tired of posting

nickkinneg

statesaver wrote: »

Pass is right.

We'll wait 6 to 8 months before taking any vaccine.

Agreed - pass as well - don’t pay much heed to conspiracy theories either - but the whole thing makes me feel “uncomfortable” in some way

the kelt

The lock down was 100% the right thing to do, the timing was good, how it was implemented was right. Spot on

How long it took to get our testing capacity up to speed was not, how long it took to get our tracing up to speed was not, trying to lay the blame on the ordinary citizen whilst all this was not being addressed was not, sending patients from hospitals into nursing homes at the beginning was not.

The plan to ease restrictions is not right either imho. 2 to 3 months in some cases behind the rest of Europe and I’ve yet to see any coherent reasons as to why our situation differs when we are being told we have been much better in many circumstances.

The only reason being apart from the off the wall reasons are “sure let’s just see how they get on” which is either cowardly or an admission of we don’t really have a plan. So much for the country leading the world with gay marriage and smoking bans etc.

People are talking about the plan moving quicker if the circumstances warrant it? We couldn’t even fully implement the first phase of the plan whilst companies spent money preparing to open and people preparing to get back to work were told 3 days before they were due to open, oops, bit of a typo there, my bad.

Waits till phase 2 hits and we reach the fiasco of “what’s a small retail unit” because they can open, of course we don’t have a definition so use your common sense, well we tried that with phase one and were told em sorry bit of a typo there.

The powers that be deserve praise for their initial reaction and implementation, the problem is a lot of people believe that should apply for the remainder of this emergency and can’t laterally or critically engage their brains enough to look past well they done a good job then so they must be doing a good job still.

We are still so focussed on the worst case scenario it’s scary and you see that at senior level, I mean being concerned because people are being optimistic as if optimism is something that needs to be stomped out ffs, no let’s stay paralysed with fear of the worst that could happen or be optimistic that we can do this and get through this.

I know which one I prefer but I think the problem is too many people don’t believe you can be positive, optimistic and careful all at the same time.

Stheno

SusieBlue wrote: »

Is he not aware of how supply and demand works? If you take away a service that was previously relied upon and utilised by the general public, for say 9 weeks, when that service reopens there is going to be a lot of demand because there was no supply for just over two months.

Hopefully this will give him an idea of the amount of demand there will be for some services by August, by which time 21 weeks (or over 5 months) will have passed & these services will be badly, badly needed.
What wasn’t a necessity on the 15th of March is needed now.

The longer you deprive people of something, the bigger the demand will be when supply returns. That’s how it works.
Perhaps he’ll look at the queues this morning and realise how stupid the plan to make people wait 5 months to go the gym, indoor shopping centres and pubs and bars is.

Those comments were from this morning and tbh to Tony Holohan, at the briefing tonight, he said even at this early stage he is hopeful we will be easing restrictions on June 8

He was also asked at the queues for e
G
Woodies and said he hadn't seen them but heard social distancing was being observed well

He was much more upbeat than usual tbh

Mike3287

colly10 wrote: »

There are apps out there that calculate what 5/20km from your home looks like.
These apps calculate distance as the crow flies.
When they say you’re allowed to travel up to 5km, is that as the crow flies or is it defined anywhere?

It didnt fail

They gave the monkeys an insane high dose of the virus, something a human would only ever get if you spent a long time in a covid ward with no ppe, breathing in the virus

Colibri

Stheno wrote: »

The Oxford vaccine does appear to significantly reduce the impact of the virus though and studies are still early

The Moderna one looks promising along with other research coming out that indicates that our t cells which fight infection are able to beat it off due to having another coronavirus - the common cold, the study published at the weekend indicated that 40-60% of unexploded people had the t cells from the common cold to.fight it off.

Interesting and plain speaking discussion about it on the vaccine thread, still early days but.positive

If that's a new complication I'm never leaving the house again :pac:

SusieBlue

SusieBlue wrote: »

Is he not aware of how supply and demand works? If you take away a service that was previously relied upon and utilised by the general public, for say 9 weeks, when that service reopens there is going to be a lot of demand because there was no supply for just over two months.

Hopefully this will give him an idea of the amount of demand there will be for some services by August, by which time 21 weeks (or over 5 months) will have passed & these services will be badly, badly needed.
What wasn’t a necessity on the 15th of March is needed now.

The longer you deprive people of something, the bigger the demand will be when supply returns. That’s how it works.
Perhaps he’ll look at the queues this morning and realise how stupid the plan to make people wait 5 months to go the gym, indoor shopping centres and pubs and bars is.

this is exactly why I cannot understand the decision about homeware stores and IKEA? They keep them shut because they don't want people queuing? But surely whenever they actually open the queues will be longer than ever!

If they hadn't closed garden centres and hardware stores which incidentally are never packed then there would have been no queuing today!

Stheno

Colibri wrote: »

If that's a new complication I'm never leaving the house again :pac:

Damn autocorrect

Colibri

I'm going by anecdotes but a supervisor in work told me that branches of our retail stores in Europe opened recently (our opening will model theirs) and queues were out the door like what Woodies saw today, but quickly died down over subsequent days. Customers went in, got what they needed and left.

colly10

nc6000 wrote: »

This is handy - allows you pick a radius of between 1KM and 20KMs

https://2kmfromhome.com/

Thanks, I know the site. The site give the distance as the crow flies. You may need to drive 30km to reach point that’s “inside” 20km.
So wondering if there’s a definition on whether the 5/20k is road distance or straight line distance

LiquidZeb

Colibri wrote: »

I'm going by anecdotes but a supervisor in work told me that branches of our retail stores in Europe opened recently (our opening will model theirs) and queues were out the door like what Woodies saw today, but quickly died down over subsequent days. Customers went in, got what they needed and left.

Yeah I think once the novelty wears off people won't give a ****e that the shops are open and will just do the old in-out job like normal.

bush

Did they expect people to rush the doors down and not q like they have been for weeks? They should cop on themselves and open homeware next week.

Stark

colly10 wrote:

Thanks, I know the site. The site give the distance as the crow flies. You may need to drive 30km to reach point that’s “inside” 20km.
So wondering if there’s a definition on whether the 5/20k is road distance or straight line distance

It says "5km/20km radius". Also that site has been well known and publicised, including on RTE since the 2km rule was introduced and no-one from government/news outlets has said it's wrong so you can take it that it's safe to rely on imo.

jibber5000

Colibri wrote: »

The thing is too, our cases are low as hell. There's guaranteed to be extra cases once we lift up even more, and then CMO et al will sing doomsday because cases have arisen. F-ck sake.

Was listening to Prof Anthony Staines of DCU earlier on The Last Word. Gives an insight into what many in the academic community feel on the matter.

Claimed that flattening the curve was nonsense and we have to eridicate the virus completely until a vaccine is found. Advised that we cut ourselves off from Europe and keep our economy closed until then.

Not one mention of the catostrophic economic consequences.

I think this is what led to our conservative measures in the first place. Academics and Doctors advising the government without any regard for the consequences for people of the extended lockdown.