Relaxation of Restrictions, Part VII *Read OP For Mod Warnings*

GazzaL

Deleted User wrote: »

this is beginning to feel worryingly like March 2020 ...................and people seem very willing to buy into the entire lockdown all over again, except this time it seems to be "let's throw away the keys"! A relative of mine committed suicide on New Years Eve - a single man in his mid forties, very isolated , never married, no kids. I think we are paying a huge price for this.

Sorry to hear that. It's a very lonely time for a lot of people, it's not easy.

froog

FintanMcluskey wrote: »

Are you not a believer in masks?

Or social distancing?

Sounds like you don’t think either works

if every single person in the world practiced perfect social distancing and mask wearing, along with hygiene practices, this thing would have been over in the summer.

Silentcorner

froog wrote: »

if every single person in the world practiced perfect social distancing and mask wearing, along with hygiene practices, this thing would have been over in the summer.

Ingenius....We'd have wiped out the flu forever as well as a bonus!!

FintanMcluskey

Deleted User wrote: »

this is beginning to feel worryingly like March 2020 ...................and people seem very willing to buy into the entire lockdown all over again, except this time it seems to be "let's throw away the keys", people aren't even allowed question this anymore! A relative of mine committed suicide on New Years Eve - a single man in his mid forties, very isolated , never married, no kids. I think we are paying a huge price for this.

Essentially we are sacrificing the futures of the youngest, to make it look like we are slightly extending the lives of the very vulnerable.

The economic catastrophe that’s going to befall Ireland will make Covid seem like a mild cold

GreeBo

Silentcorner wrote: »

The only pretending going are the people pretending we don't suffer from an annual capacity crisis in our hospitals...people are comparing it to a flu season which is the logical thing to do as we are exposed to differing strains of the flu every year, year in year out, this is just a new virus arguably a notch more severe than a bad flu.

If this was as vicious to the population as it's made out to be we wouldn't need to be battered with the incessant and highly emotive headlines day in day out, we'd be able to see the carnage with our own eyes.

Ok, let's break it down even more for ya then.

Do you see any difference between a hospital full of people with broken legs versus a hospital full of people with an infectious disease that's 4-5 times more fatal then the flu?

If this wasn't as viscous as they say, why is the entire world reacting to it? How are FFG pulling the strings on the entire planet?

You need to educate yourself somewhere other than Facebook chief.

FintanMcluskey

froog wrote: »

if every single person in the world practiced perfect social distancing and mask wearing, along with hygiene practices, this thing would have been over in the summer.

But you said only lockdown works

Silentcorner

Silentcorner wrote: »

The only pretending going are the people pretending we don't suffer from an annual capacity crisis in our hospitals...people are comparing it to a flu season which is the logical thing to do as we are exposed to differing strains of the flu every year, year in year out, this is just a new virus arguably a notch more severe than a bad flu.

If this was as vicious to the population as it's made out to be we wouldn't need to be battered with the incessant and highly emotive headlines day in day out, we'd be able to see the carnage with our own eyes.

I'm of the distinct impression there is an elaborate cover-up being performed to protect the reputation of the HSE and their hideaway administrators. All summer long and into the autumn: "Well then, about those ICU beds. Who wants to pick up the slack. Wait, did you see the slip Maura wore on the afternoon show? Atrocious". Flat-line organisational structure, nobody taking any responsibility and the can is kicked round in circles. After all that dawdling and hole scratching, the inevitable panic stations when the realisation dawns they're ill prepared for a small increase in critical admissions. Enter NPHET and Tony Holohan to save their hides and vigorously blame the public. Media ramping up the hysteria, when hospitals still have vacant beds and idle wards. Now compare that to the seasonal flu last winter and people clogging up the hallways on trolleys. Not taken in by this charade anymore. Once bitten, twice shy and thrice fed up to the back teeth.

GreeBo

FintanMcluskey wrote: »

Essentially we are sacrificing the futures of the youngest, to make it look like we are slightly extending the lives of the very vulnerable.

The economic catastrophe that’s going to befall Ireland will make Covid seem like a mild cold

Sorry Fintan, why do you single out Ireland here? What about the rest of the planet who are doing the same things we Ireland is?

Perhaps try to join a more global Facebook page to broaden your horizons...?

froog

FintanMcluskey wrote: »

But you said only lockdown works

it does. no country can get their population practicing perfect social distancing and mask wearing as you well know.

so you tell me - what is your alternative to lockdowns to stop the spread of the virus? i've yet to see anyone offer up an alternative.

cause the impression i get from your posts is basically to let it rip and let the hospitals deal with it.

tell me i'm wrong, and be specific.

froog

the floor is open lads - alternatives to lockdowns.

anyone? anyone at all?

Silentcorner

GreeBo wrote: »

Ok, let's break it down even more for ya then.

Do you see any difference between a hospital full of people with broken legs versus a hospital full of people with an infectious disease that's 4-5 times more fatal then the flu?

If this wasn't as viscous as they say, why is the entire world reacting to it? How are FFG pulling the strings on the entire planet?

You need to educate yourself somewhere other than Facebook chief.

OK "chief", let me make this very clear...I spend as little time on social media as I can as it is full of sanctimonious idiots who have bought wholesale into the hysteria currently being pumped into the population day in day out.

What you can't seem to fathom it is probably people with broken legs that are catching this virus whilst in hospital that are driving the numbers, my own relative caught in whilst in an isolation room in hospital.

I don't know why regions around the world are reacting the way they are, like I don't know the reason there hasn't been developed a rapid, cheap, accurate testing kits which allow many of us return to normality safely... I don't know why we are not focused on therapeutics...it's like the only way out of this are vaccines that have been developed in record time.

I don't know what is going on, but as previously pointed out to you...the world is headed to a financial and economic devastation that will do a lot more damage than the virus has since it got here!!!

Graham

Silentcorner wrote: »

What you can't seem to fathom it is probably people with broken legs that are catching this virus whilst in hospital that are driving the numbers

it's not

froog

Silentcorner wrote: »

OK "chief", let me make this very clear...I spend as little time on social media as I can as it is full of sanctimonious idiots who have bought wholesale into the hysteria currently being pumped into the population day in day out.

What you can't seem to fathom it is probably people with broken legs that are catching this virus whilst in hospital that are driving the numbers, my own relative caught in whilst in an isolation room in hospital.

I don't know why regions around the world are reacting the way they are, like I don't know the reason there hasn't been developed a rapid, cheap, accurate testing kits which allow many of us return to normality safely... I don't know why we are not focused on therapeutics...it's like the only way out of this are vaccines that have been developed in record time.

I don't know what is going on, but as previously pointed out to you...the world is headed to a financial and economic devastation that will do a lot more damage than the virus has since it got here!!!

you think hospitals are the primary driver of 5000 cases a day? are you for real??

SusieBlue

froog wrote: »

so what is your plan - no more lockdowns, but magic up 1000 ICU beds and 1000+ highly trained specialist ICU staff that are in demand in every single country in the world? so you can go about life as normal?

lockdowns are the only thing that works in reducing numbers. it's true in ireland. and it's true in every single other country in the world. if you have other control measures you think would work instead, please share them and be specific. cause if you're against lockdowns, you surely have other methods in mind, or else you are simply happy to let it rip.

Please look at the attached chart shared by Fergal Bowers. Since August, there have been a negligible amount of cases (around 100 or so combined) from non essential retail, hairdressers, restaurants and gyms.
There have been over 6 THOUSAND cases from private houses.

Logically this tells me that lockdown or no lockdown, the public buy in has been lost and a large amount of families and households are mixing privately behind closed doors.
This is how the virus is spreading, and this is exactly why cases have exploded this week.
From so many families mixing last week.
No amount of closing gyms and hairdressers will help with that, so those people are out of jobs for nothing.

Now cases are so high at the moment it is probably prudent to close those industries until things calm down a bit.
But that chart proves irrefutably that those industries have never been responsible for massive amounts of cases, and have been made into scapegoats.
It shows me that the government are blaming these industries instead of being accountable for their own failures and acknowledging that their strategies & constant changing of the rules is causing compliance to slip by the day.
It shows me that public buy in and support has been lost, largely due to our weak leadership & constant goalpost and objective moving.
And when that’s lost, it’s very hard to get that back.

There is also huge amounts of outbreaks inside hospitals, nursing homes, and direct provision centres. None of which Joe Soap is responsible for.

So my suggestion would be focusing on lowering the cases in any or all of the above, before hitting the nuclear button and shutting down the country.
Particularly when taking away the supply doesn’t remove the demand - it just cases it to grow, meaning more queues and people congregating to avail of services when things reopen again. A la December.

During the last lockdown, if they had allowed people to meet their families and friends outdoors in the fresh air or in controlled environments with social distancing such as cafes etc, there might not have been a such mad rush & pressure to see as many people as possible in the 3 weeks we were open for business, and the cases might not have risen so much as a result.

froog

SusieBlue wrote: »

Please look at the attached chart shared by Fergal Bowers. Since August, there have been a negligible amount of cases (around 100 or so combined) from non essential retail, hairdressers, restaurants and gyms.
There have been over 6 THOUSAND cases from private houses.

Logically this tells me that lockdown or no lockdown, the public buy in has been lost and a large amount of families and households are mixing privately behind closed doors.
This is how the virus is spreading, and this is exactly why cases have exploded this week. From so many families mixing last week.
No amount of closing gyms and hairdressers will help with that, so those people are out of jobs for nothing.

Now cases are so high at the moment it is probably prudent to close those industries until things calm down a bit.
But that chart proves irrefutably that those industries have never been responsible for massive amounts of cases, and have been made into scapegoats.
It shows me that the government are blaming these industries instead of being accountable for their own failures and acknowledging that their strategies & constant changing of the rules is causing compliance to slip by the day.
It shows me that public buy in and support has been lost, largely due to our weak leadership & constant goalpost and objective moving.
And when that’s lost, it’s very hard to get that back.

There is also huge amounts of outbreaks inside hospitals, nursing homes, and direct provision centres. None of which Joe Soap is responsible for.

So my suggestion would be focusing on lowering the cases in any or all of the above, before hitting the nuclear button and shutting down the country.

During the last lockdown, if they had allowed people to meet their families and friends outdoors in the fresh air or in controlled environments with social distancing such as cafes etc, there might not have been a such mad rush & pressure to see as many people as possible in the 3 weeks we were open for business, and the cases might not have risen so much as a result.

i actually agree with you about retail. i don't see the need to shut those places down if they are implementing and enforcing proper health guidelines.

pubs and restaurants is a different story.

the driver in my opinion is schools, and people visiting houses.

so an appropriate targeted lockdown would be: closing schools, pubs, restaurants, and household visit bans unless emergency.

but you see where i'm going here, no matter what way you approach this, you end up in the same place: some form of lockdown.

SusieBlue

froog wrote: »

you think hospitals are the primary driver of 5000 cases a day? are you for real??

66 of the 101 deaths in December were from hospital outbreaks and nursing homes. Any comment on that?

Silentcorner

froog wrote: »

you think hospitals are the primary driver of 5000 cases a day? are you for real??

We have no idea, we are not being told...we haven't been told very little beyond case numbers...

Can you explain why our ICU rates were stable for 5 months just past despite the varying severity of restrictions.

You have about as much a clue as I have...it is peak flu season so barring nailing us all in our bedrooms for 6 months this thing ain't going away....I would guess, and it is just a guess, that severely restricting movements in Oct/Nov just created a pent up body of vulnerable immune systems that were never going to avoid it.

Silentcorner

Graham wrote: »

it's not

Well, you obviously have the numbers, so can you link please? Is there anyone catching this virus in hospitals, if so, how many?

froog

SusieBlue wrote: »

66 of the 101 deaths in December were from hospital outbreaks and nursing homes. Any comment on that?

the median age for death is 81 or something? so most deaths will be in nursing homes/hospitals.

did you miss where we just opened up the entire country for christmas month and people lost the plot. we now have 5000 daily cases.

blaming hospitals for where we are now? utterly ridiculous.

froog

Silentcorner wrote: »

We have no idea, we are not being told...we haven't been told very little beyond case numbers...

Can you explain why our ICU rates were stable for 5 months just past despite the varying severity of restrictions.

You have about as much a clue as I have...it is peak flu season so barring nailing us all in our bedrooms for 6 months this thing ain't going away....I would guess, and it is just a guess, that severely restricting movements in Oct/Nov just created a pent up body of vulnerable immune systems that were never going to avoid it.

yes we are being told if you bother to look it up. it's even posted on here if not daily then a few times a week.

SusieBlue

froog wrote: »

i actually agree with you about retail. i don't see the need to shut those places down if they are implementing and enforcing proper health guidelines.

pubs and restaurants is a different story.

the driver in my opinion is schools, and people visiting houses.

so an appropriate targeted lockdown would be: closing schools, pubs, restaurants, and household visit bans unless emergency.

but you see where i'm going here, no matter what way you approach this, you end up in the same place: some form of lockdown.

You seem to be mistaken, because I’ve never advocated for a free for all scenario. I agree that some restrictions will be needed and sacrifices will need to be made to control this virus until the vaccine is implemented.

I just reject the notion that the level 5 panic button is the only option, and I think it’s pretty disgraceful that we’ve spent most of the last 10 months in lockdown.
Most of the meaningful restrictions weren’t lifted in the Summer until the 29th of June, even though cases were as low as we’d ever get them. We just had July, august and September before we went back to level 3.5, and then after that 6 weeks of level 5.

Spending nearly 7 months of the year in lockdown to still have this many cases & outbreaks is outrageous when you think about it.

copeyhagen

46 Long wrote: »

Ahem

jaysus, lock er up bois, too risky...

froog

froog wrote: »

the floor is open lads - alternatives to lockdowns.

anyone? anyone at all?

You’ve been told lots of times but you fail to listen or understand each time.

Lockdown can be used as a last resort. Other European countries used it last March/April and now during winter. But they were opened during May - September. It benefited them greatly socially and economically.

A good health system... we have done next to nothing to increase capacity.

Good testing and tracing can go a long way to preventing lockdown. Tracing that falls apart at a few hundred cases is not fit for purpose

Local restrictions work well also, or by county. But Tony has no interest in that.

Having an IT system that can process the case volumes would be great as well. Should really be a given in 2020 but not in Ireland.

Perhaps most importantly, a proper vaccination plan. Not the type where vaccines sit in freezers for days and we have just 1800 vaccinated a week after vaccines arrive.

We also could have had much stricter controls around airports but we didn’t want to upset our EU overlords.


At this point, I wish we could just outsource our vaccination program to the Germans or somebody with a bit of competence.

froog

SusieBlue wrote: »

You seem to be mistaken, because I’ve never advocated for a free for all scenario. I agree that some restrictions will be needed and sacrifices will need to be made to control this virus until the vaccine is implemented.

I just reject the notion that the level 5 panic button is the only option, and I think it’s pretty disgraceful that we’ve spent most of the last 10 months in lockdown.
Most of the meaningful restrictions weren’t lifted in the Summer until the 29th of June, even though cases were as low as we’d ever get them. We just had July, august and September before we went back to level 3.5, and then after that 6 weeks of level 5.

Spending nearly 7 months of the year in lockdown to still have this many cases & outbreaks is outrageous when you think about it.

the decision of the government to open up the country for christmas was a massive mistake. that much is clear.

but the same people who were campaigning hard to open up, are the exact same people now shouting at the government for messing things up. it's ludicrous.

TallyRand

froog wrote: »

i actually agree with you about retail. i don't see the need to shut those places down if they are implementing and enforcing proper health guidelines.

pubs and restaurants is a different story.

the driver in my opinion is schools, and people visiting houses.

so an appropriate targeted lockdown would be: closing schools, pubs, restaurants, and household visit bans unless emergency.

but you see where i'm going here, no matter what way you approach this, you end up in the same place: some form of lockdown.

Driver is schools? Surely most of the 5k cases is made out of kids and teachers so......

froog

froog wrote: »

the median age for death is 81 or something? so most deaths will be in nursing homes/hospitals.

did you miss where we just opened up the entire country for christmas month and people lost the plot. we now have 5000 daily cases.

blaming hospitals for where we are now? utterly ridiculous.

We don’t know how many daily cases there are. They are adding backlog because the system is not fit for purpose.

SusieBlue

froog wrote: »

the median age for death is 81 or something? so most deaths will be in nursing homes/hospitals.

did you miss where we just opened up the entire country for christmas month and people lost the plot. we now have 5000 daily cases.

blaming hospitals for where we are now? utterly ridiculous.

Right, most deaths are in nursing homes and hospitals. Why are they still this high 10 months into the pandemic, and why are patients not being better protected?

And how will closing swimming pools and barbers save their lives?

It’s almost as though there could be better ways of protecting the vulnerable besides shutting down the economy.
But that would involve the HSE and government taking responsibility for their ineptitude and being accountable for the fact that could be doing a better job of protecting them.
That many deaths in those kinds of facilities this far into the pandemic is just not good enough.

Instead we have people crying that M&S are promoting parties by leaving party food on the shelves and others demanding the immediate banning of birthday cakes. Don’t start me on the calls for water cannons and curfews.
Logic has left the building.

Graham

Silentcorner wrote: »

Well, you obviously have the numbers, so can you link please? Is there anyone catching this virus in hospitals, if so, how many?

as posted by SusieBlue a few messages back.

froog

Deleted User wrote: »

You’ve been told lots of times but you fail to listen or understand each time.

Lockdown can be used as a last resort. Other European countries used it last March/April and now during winter. But they were opened during May - September. It benefited them greatly socially and economically.

A good health system... we have done next to nothing to increase capacity.

Good testing and tracing can go a long way to preventing lockdown. Tracing that falls apart at a few hundred cases is not fit for purpose

Local restrictions work well also, or by county. But Tony has no interest in that.

Having an IT system that can process the case volumes would be great as well. Should really be a given in 2020 but not in Ireland.

Perhaps most importantly, a proper vaccination plan. Not the type where vaccines sit in freezers for days and we have just 1800 vaccinated a week after vaccines arrive.

We also could have had much stricter controls around airports but we didn’t want to upset our EU overlords.


At this point, I wish we could just outsource our vaccination program to the Germans or somebody with a bit of competence.

a few things;

as i said before, beefing up hospital capacity does not reduce the spread of the virus.

track and trace is a myth. at best it slows down the spread a bit. it has failed in many more countries than it has worked in.

were you in ireland in the summer? there was hardly any restrictions. even pubs were open.

agree about the airports.

agree on IT systems.

agree vaccination appears to slow. however i don't see any country racing ahead with vaccinations with the exception of israel.

SMC92Ian

FintanMcluskey wrote: »

Essentially we are sacrificing the futures of the youngest, to make it look like we are slightly extending the lives of the very vulnerable.

STFU, just because my parents are old doesn't make their lives less meaningful than little Timmy what's his face.