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

kenmc

JRant wrote: »

Why would you have little sympathy for him?
Young people doing what young people have always done is not some reason to leave your empathy at the door.

Do stupid things, win stupid prizes. We were told time and again to reduce contacts. But no, some people can't be bothered doing as requested.

If you were told not to touch the fire because it's hot, many times, and you still did it, would you expect sympathy? You'd not get any from me.

Treseemme.

kenmc wrote: »

Do stupid things, win stupid prizes. We were told time and again to reduce contacts. But no, some people can't be bothered doing as requested.

If you were told not to touch the fire because it's hot, many times, and you still did it, would you expect sympathy? You'd not get any from me.

You're getting adults and young people mixed up

They've a different set of priorities

CruelSummer

I think the elephant in the room here is the behaviour of RTE, NPHET & the Zero Covid Professor group from May to Oct, with the help of mainstream media. They have ground down the public to the point where a certain section of the population just didn’t believe them anymore.

1. George Lee states reopening the parts of the Country in June with 0 or 4 cases per day was ‘scary’
2. Various professors calling for Zero Covid over the summer conveniently forgetting the North of Ireland exists and that we’re members of the EU, using false numbers and statistics, McConkey’s estimated death numbers, Ryan claiming hundreds of children would die, and jumping up and down furiously trying to prevent reopening of anything, signed letters to Government - numerous media appearances. Some seem to have taken up permanent residence in RTE.
3. NPHET repeating daily the next 2 weeks are crucial and how ‘concerned’ they are.
4. Dr Holohan admitting at a press conference that they were using a ‘worry metric’ to gauge how ‘fearful’ the public were, effectively letting the cat out of the bag that the tactic was to keep people scared.

All of this led to a perfect storm after a Level 5 in the Autumn. The more I hear of this Christmas, the more I realise there were many establishments and people who made the conscious decision to go out and disregard the guidelines. I’m all for reopening but when we’ve no vaccine, the only way to do it for Christmas was to follow the given guidelines to allow people socialise. Restaurants who allowed people in to drink all night, Shebeens rife everywhere, many house parties, big family gatherings. I’m not blaming people, as the population weren’t given a single mental break from this even when hospitals were empty over the summer and Autumn. It was always going to happen.

Now the Health Service is approaching a crisis. And while January flu season is usually horrendous, having so many healthcare workers off due to Covid is dangerous.

Having a blame game now between NPHET and Government will help no-one.
DeGascun’s tiny sample and claim the U.K. strain isn’t here is laughable and seems politically motivated.
Was glad to see Ronan Glynn on RTE he’s a good communicator and is less about politics. He has less of the authoritarian attitude Dr Holohan gives off.
The opposition (Sinn Féin) retrospectively criticising everything the Government have done is an absolute joke. They’re pathetic and offer nothing to help solve the problem. They and other opposition parties should be hauled into a cross party Government and made to do a days work.

_Kaiser_

What strikes me about the situation at the moment is that it's coming full circle.

The difference between now and this time last year I think is that back then there was a "pretty bad dose" going around and we knew nothing of CV-19 beyond that there was something happening in Asia. It's already been found that CV-19 was in Europe late winter 2019 and given our multicultural population it's no stretch to think that it was probably here too - even Leo said this at one point.

Flash forward to Now and we've identified a virus and are actively testing for it and finding cases that probably last year were attributed to the aforementioned dose.

I think, like last year, this will peak over the next weeks and by March/April we'll be seeing it start to fall off a cliff as the temperatures increase (as happened last year) and the effects of the vaccine take hold.

My point is that we've been here before and got through it without outlandish talk of getting the army out, curfews - or in those early months, any social restrictions at all!

People should really stop listening to the hysteria and scaring themselves and others. While (as I've said all along) the virus certainly is dangerous to some, the vast majority of people in this country will be just fine if they even realise they have it, and it's those actually vulnerable people who we should be focusing our finite (as the HSE are at pains to remind us - again like every winter) resources on.

Odeta

FintanMcluskey wrote: »

Good lord.

Society will break down before this is over.

The most basic requirement for survival of the species has been made a morally criminal penalty by kangaroo courts of online vigilantes

Should have also mentioned that the “lad” is 30 and living with his siblings, parents (one on dialysis) and 93 year old granny. I’m usually very sympathetic but he should have taken extra care. Just my opinion

Hoboo

_Kaiser_ wrote: »

While (as I've said all along) the virus certainly is dangerous to some, the vast majority of people in this country will be just fine if they even realise they have it, .

I've yet to see any studies past 12 months let alone long term so until then, and without this knowledge, that can't be said with any certainty whatsoever.

JRant

Hoboo wrote: »

I've yet to see any studies past 12 months let alone long term so until then, and without this knowledge, that can't be said with any certainty whatsoever.

We have almost 12 months of data to show that is the case. This is a very good thing IMO. What type of studies would you like to see when we have ample data available right now.

JRant

_Kaiser_ wrote: »

What strikes me about the situation at the moment is that it's coming full circle.

The difference between now and this time last year I think is that back then there was a "pretty bad dose" going around and we knew nothing of CV-19 beyond that there was something happening in Asia. It's already been found that CV-19 was in Europe late winter 2019 and given our multicultural population it's no stretch to think that it was probably here too - even Leo said this at one point.

Flash forward to Now and we've identified a virus and are actively testing for it and finding cases that probably last year were attributed to the aforementioned dose.

I think, like last year, this will peak over the next weeks and by March/April we'll be seeing it start to fall off a cliff as the temperatures increase (as happened last year) and the effects of the vaccine take hold.

My point is that we've been here before and got through it without outlandish talk of getting the army out, curfews - or in those early months, any social restrictions at all!

People should really stop listening to the hysteria and scaring themselves and others. While (as I've said all along) the virus certainly is dangerous to some, the vast majority of people in this country will be just fine if they even realise they have it, and it's those actually vulnerable people who we should be focusing our finite (as the HSE are at pains to remind us - again like every winter) resources on.

The daily briefings on numbers need to be stopped, should have happened long ago. There's a lot of well paid people in the HSE and government to manage this situation. At the moment it appears they are more focused on communicating what appears to be useless information right now and less on actually getting the job done. If the backlog is as bad as they say then any daily numbers given out are worse than useless. They really need to shut up about them and get on with their actual jobs.

Solar2021

_Kaiser_ wrote: »

What strikes me about the situation at the moment is that it's coming full circle.

The difference between now and this time last year I think is that back then there was a "pretty bad dose" going around and we knew nothing of CV-19 beyond that there was something happening in Asia. It's already been found that CV-19 was in Europe late winter 2019 and given our multicultural population it's no stretch to think that it was probably here too - even Leo said this at one point.

Flash forward to Now and we've identified a virus and are actively testing for it and finding cases that probably last year were attributed to the aforementioned dose.

.

I thought the same for a long time but the maths don't add up anymore

Covid19 had an Ro of 6 without restrictions in Wuhan and its nearly 2 here with restrictions

Ro of 6 means it doubles every 2 days or so

If it was here in December and went unrestricted

Say 1 person had it on 1st Dec

1,2,4,8,16,32,64,128,256,512,1024,2048,4096,81i92, 16,384, 32,768, 65,536, 131,702, 262,144, 524,288

That's 40-50 days there of unrestricted growth

By Mid January we would have had 524,288 cases

I believe Wuhan noticed it at about day 30-40 when they had about 100,000 cases in circulation and with those insane restrictions kept it under 1,000,000

It crept up on them so quickly field hospitals had to be built

We could never have left it grown unrestricted imo

average_runner

JRant wrote: »

The daily briefings on numbers need to be stopped, should have happened long ago. There's a lot of well paid people in the HSE and government to manage this situation. At the moment it appears they are more focused on communicating what appears to be useless information right now and less on actually getting the job done. If the backlog is as bad as they say then any daily numbers given out are worse than useless. They really need to shut up about them and get on with their actual jobs.

They need to keep the daily update. We need the numbers each day to get the message across.

average_runner

Nursing home where one of my parents are, two nurses have tested for the virus. Picked it up in the community as a close contact. Nursing home fully tested yesterday.

They were notified as close contacts, so stayed away from the home from that moment.

Fingers cross it hasn't got in. Shows how the community can cause damage though

_Kaiser_

average_runner wrote: »

They need to keep the daily update. We need the numbers each day to get the message across.

What message? We're already in Level 5 restrictions with NPHET telling us (again) all to act as though we're infected :rolleyes:

You seem to think people aren't aware of this. They are. The difference is they're sick of listening to it because it doesn't translate to what they see around them, and if the measures have meant they're now out of work/their business is closed I dare say they have more immediate worries than something that MIGHT happen and they MIGHT actually notice they have.

Personally speaking, I know of only 2 people (a colleague and his wife) who've had this and both have recovered fine after a week or so of being diagnosed. Maybe I'm an outlier, but a poll somewhere might be useful.

Windmill100000

average_runner wrote: »

Nursing home where one of my parents are, two nurses have tested for the virus. Picked it up in the community as a close contact. Nursing home fully tested yesterday.

They were notified as close contacts, so stayed away from the home from that moment.

Fingers cross it hasn't got in. Shows how the community can cause damage though

Hopefully your parent and everyone will be ok.

average_runner

_Kaiser_ wrote: »

What message? We're already in Level 5 restrictions with NPHET telling us (again) all to act as though we're infected :rolleyes:

You seem to think people aren't aware of this. They are. The difference is they're sick of listening to it because it doesn't translate to what they see around them, and if the measures have meant they're now out of work/their business is closed I dare say they have more immediate worries than something that MIGHT happen and they MIGHT actually notice they have.

Personally speaking, I know of only 2 people (a colleague and his wife) who've had this and both have recovered fine after a week or so of being diagnosed. Maybe I'm an outlier, but a poll somewhere might be useful.

Well we bloody didnt get the message in level 3 anyhow

CruelSummer

average_runner wrote: »

Nursing home where one of my parents are, two nurses have tested for the virus. Picked it up in the community as a close contact. Nursing home fully tested yesterday.

They were notified as close contacts, so stayed away from the home from that moment.

Fingers cross it hasn't got in. Shows how the community can cause damage though

Glad to hear they're testing regularly and picking up the cases. Fingers crossed it didn't get in.

average_runner

CruelSummer wrote: »

Glad to hear they're testing regularly and picking up the cases. Fingers crossed it didn't get in.

Apparently the covid app told them they were close contacts. HSE were on top of the testing asap.

CruelSummer

CruelSummer wrote: »

I think the elephant in the room here is the behaviour of RTE, NPHET & the Zero Covid Professor group from May to Oct, with the help of mainstream media. They have ground down the public to the point where a certain section of the population just didn’t believe them anymore.
1. George Lee states reopening the parts of the Country in June with 0 or 4 cases per day was ‘scary’
2. Various professors calling for Zero Covid over the summer conveniently forgetting the North of Ireland exists and that we’re members of the EU, using false numbers and statistics, McConkey’s estimated death numbers, Ryan claiming hundreds of children would die, and jumping up and down furiously trying to prevent reopening of anything, signed letters to Government - numerous media appearances. Some seem to have taken up permanent residence in RTE.
3. NPHET repeating daily the next 2 weeks are crucial and how ‘concerned’ they are.
4. Dr Holohan admitting at a press conference that they were using a ‘worry metric’ to gauge how ‘fearful’ the public were, effectively letting the cat out of the bag that the tactic was to keep people scared.

All of this led to a perfect storm after a Level 5 in the Autumn. The more I hear of this Christmas, the more I realise there were many establishments and people who made the conscious decision to go out and disregard the guidelines. I’m all for reopening but when we’ve no vaccine, the only way to do it for Christmas was to follow the given guidelines to allow people socialise. Restaurants who allowed people in to drink all night, Shebeens rife everywhere, many house parties, big family gatherings. I’m not blaming people, as the population weren’t given a single mental break from this even when hospitals were empty over the summer and Autumn. It was always going to happen.

Now the Health Service is approaching a crisis. And while January flu season is usually horrendous, having so many healthcare workers off due to Covid is dangerous.

Having a blame game now between NPHET and Government will help no-one.
DeGascun’s tiny sample and claim the U.K. strain isn’t here is laughable and seems politically motivated.
Was glad to see Ronan Glynn on RTE he’s a good communicator and is less about politics. He has less of the authoritarian attitude Dr Holohan gives off.
The opposition (Sinn Féin) retrospectively criticising everything the Government have done is an absolute joke. They’re pathetic and offer nothing to help solve the problem. They and other opposition parties should be hauled into a cross party Government and made to do a days work.

Good post and I agree with all of it. The main bit is that Dr Ronan Glynn should have been the communicator all along, especially after Tony Holohan took leave to be with his wife.

Ronan GLynn's way of communicating is far less emotive, far more measured and does NOT RUB PEOPLE UP THE WRONG WAY. For some reason Tony Holohan's manner does the opposite, its all about finger wagging, criticism, no appreciation for what the public have been trying to do for 9 months (while appearing himself in person on the Late Late Show (!) ) no encouragement, just continual beating us with the big stick. The messaging on this has been wrong from the beginning. Blame, blame, blame. People turning on their neighbours, peeking out windows, reporting, shaming on social media.

Scare mongering and creating panic and hysteria has been the default from our Government and it NEVER let up once, not even in the Summer. It reminds me of " the boy who cried wolf". By December nobody was listening, most people had their spirits broken from 9 months of being admonished, criticized and blamed.
The chickens have come home to roost. No point in any more blame, we all just need to suck it up for the next 6-8 weeks and hopefully then days will be getting brighter, case numbers will be coming down and we can hope to live again.

FintanMcluskey

Lead DR from CUH on radio talking about how many people presenting for other reason’s are testing positive for Covid.

He said people presenting with broken bones have tested positive when tested upon arrival despite having absolutely no Covid symptoms.

The best way out of this mess is to stop actually testing healthy people

Windmill100000

Article here from September on ICU capacity that some be interested in.


https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.thejournal.ie/icu-bed-numbers-5217685-Sep2020/%3famp=1

Windmill100000

FintanMcluskey wrote: »

Lead DR from CUH on radio talking about how many people presenting for other reason are testing positive for Covid.

He said people presenting with broken bones have tested positive when tested upon arrival despite having absolutely no Covid symptoms.

The best way out of this mess is to stop actually testing healthy people

Obviously those presenting with no symptoms is a concern. I have read differing rates on percentage that are covid positive and were unaware. One article said 20% but not sure how accurate that is.

_Kaiser_

Windmill100000 wrote: »

Article here from September on ICU capacity that some be interested in.


https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.thejournal.ie/icu-bed-numbers-5217685-Sep2020/%3famp=1

Paul Reid was on NT earlier and said they currently have 50 ICU beds free and the overall total can stretch to 375 at present.

They're also talking to the private hospitals about taking their facilities again. Another expensive bill on the way if that happens no doubt.

Captain_Crash

Solar2021 wrote: »

Say 1 person had it on 1st Dec

1,2,4,8,16,32,64,128,256,512,1024,2048,4096,81i92, 16,384, 32,768, 65,536, 131,702, 262,144, 524,288

That's 40-50 days there of unrestricted growth

By Mid January we would have had 524,288 cases

Might this explain why the vast majority of positive cases have no symptoms? Because so many people had it last winter that they now have the antibodies to fight it?

Boggles

JRant wrote: »

The daily briefings on numbers need to be stopped, should have happened long ago.

FintanMcluskey wrote: »

The best way out of this mess is to stop actually testing healthy people

Suppress data, don't test.

So ignore the once in a generation pandemic?

It's a bold move.

:rolleyes:

_Kaiser_

Boggles wrote: »

Suppress data, don't test.

So ignore the once in a generation pandemic?

It's a bold move.

:rolleyes:

Well if the noises from the HSE are anything to go by, testing is grinding to a halt regardless.

It can't do any worse by reserving that capacity for people actually sick. The rest of our resources should be devoted to sourcing and deploying the vaccine ASAP

pjohnson

Boggles wrote: »

Suppress data, don't test.

So ignore the once in a generation pandemic?

It's a bold move.

:rolleyes:

At least they arent trying to wish the virus away using magic.

Not yet anyway.

_Kaiser_

_Kaiser_ wrote: »

They're also talking to the private hospitals about taking their facilities again. Another expensive bill on the way if that happens no doubt.

Which is inevitable as it is infuriating. All those months twiddling their thumbs instead of adding ICU beds. When (not if) critical numbers topple over into private hospitals, then the taxpayer will be saddled with an enormous bill. The next budget is going to be intimidating, crippling taxation and stealth charges by the truckload. Will the government ministers and HSE executives who presided over this fiasco take a hit to their ample pensions? Not one cent.

pjohnson

[Deleted User] wrote: »

Which is inevitable as it is infuriating. All those months twiddling their thumbs instead of adding ICU beds. When (not if) critical numbers topple over into private hospitals, then the taxpayer will be saddled with an enormous bill. The next budget is going to be intimidating, crippling taxation and stealth charges by the truckload. Will the government ministers and HSE executives who presided over this fiasco take a hit to their broad pensions? Not one cent.

I remember this "fear mongering" being used for last years budget.

CruelSummer

CruelSummer wrote: »

I think the elephant in the room here is the behaviour of RTE, NPHET & the Zero Covid Professor group from May to Oct, with the help of mainstream media. They have ground down the public to the point where a certain section of the population just didn’t believe them anymore.
1. George Lee states reopening the parts of the Country in June with 0 or 4 cases per day was ‘scary’
2. Various professors calling for Zero Covid over the summer conveniently forgetting the North of Ireland exists and that we’re members of the EU, using false numbers and statistics, McConkey’s estimated death numbers, Ryan claiming hundreds of children would die, and jumping up and down furiously trying to prevent reopening of anything, signed letters to Government - numerous media appearances. Some seem to have taken up permanent residence in RTE.
3. NPHET repeating daily the next 2 weeks are crucial and how ‘concerned’ they are.
4. Dr Holohan admitting at a press conference that they were using a ‘worry metric’ to gauge how ‘fearful’ the public were, effectively letting the cat out of the bag that the tactic was to keep people scared.

All of this led to a perfect storm after a Level 5 in the Autumn. The more I hear of this Christmas, the more I realise there were many establishments and people who made the conscious decision to go out and disregard the guidelines. I’m all for reopening but when we’ve no vaccine, the only way to do it for Christmas was to follow the given guidelines to allow people socialise. Restaurants who allowed people in to drink all night, Shebeens rife everywhere, many house parties, big family gatherings. I’m not blaming people, as the population weren’t given a single mental break from this even when hospitals were empty over the summer and Autumn. It was always going to happen.

Now the Health Service is approaching a crisis. And while January flu season is usually horrendous, having so many healthcare workers off due to Covid is dangerous.

Having a blame game now between NPHET and Government will help no-one.
DeGascun’s tiny sample and claim the U.K. strain isn’t here is laughable and seems politically motivated.
Was glad to see Ronan Glynn on RTE he’s a good communicator and is less about politics. He has less of the authoritarian attitude Dr Holohan gives off.
The opposition (Sinn Féin) retrospectively criticising everything the Government have done is an absolute joke. They’re pathetic and offer nothing to help solve the problem. They and other opposition parties should be hauled into a cross party Government and made to do a days work.

There is a lot that is false in your narrative, not least that the message is to blame for people behaving like December 2019, not the people who made that choice, most of whom were fully aware of the facts and not simpletons, however I will focus on one blatant factual error - 160 samples sent for genetic sequencing is sufficient to estimate the proportion of the new strain here, in fact the data shared by de Gascun is sufficient to claim with 95% confidence that the true proportion of the new strain here is between 5 and 17%.

Solar2021

Captain_Crash wrote: »

Might this explain why the vast majority of positive cases have no symptoms? Because so many people had it last winter that they now have the antibodies to fight it?

Yes it would

If it was true

Be interesting to know who had that bad dose last winter and who had Covid this year

If its not many

Its telling.alright

I had that bad dose and all family

None of us had Covid

Captain_Crash

[Deleted User] wrote: »

The next budget is going to be intimidating, crippling taxation and stealth charges by the truckload.

I don’t think 2021’s budget will see the impact, they’ll try and hold any increases off until 2022 at the earliest, or longer if possible. 2021 will be too fresh in the memory and pushing back will likely lead to the next government having to make the hard decisions. Politics at play!