When will it all end?

El_Duderino 09

Scotty # wrote: »

We're doing better than most countries.

But we have kinda flat-lined at this stage. It's going to take us a long long time to get to double digits but at least we're going in the right direction. Plenty others are not.




Worth noting... the correlation between 'cases' and hospital cases' is changing as more and more vaccines are given. So the numbers above are not as bad as they would have been if this were a few months ago. Hopefully anyway.

That's really interesting. Spain has had the most dramatic change on the graph. What have they been doing in the last month?

Likewise what have Italy, France and Poland been doing in the last month that has caused their cases to rise?

Scotty #

AdamD wrote: »

You keep posting this yet all polls so far show that take up will be higher than that in Ireland. Beginning to think you aren't exactly posting in good faith.

People keep saying 'everyone will be vaccinated'. Everyone won't.

bucketybuck

FlubberJones wrote: »

have to agree with the last statement, if they refuse it so **** them, if they get sick and even if they die they had a chance at some protection and declined.

It comes back to something that has been ignored for nearly a year now.

Adult conversations about death.

People get sick and die all the time, it happens, a friend of mine died at the weekend, cancer, mid 40's, very sad but it happened and thats life.

Too many people have blinded themselves to that fact, now they are scared to pass people on the street in case they catch a bug and die. Such mindsets are not compatible with living, they are childish and narrow minded.

It was a relief to hear that UK minister acknowledging that people would die from covid but that society needed to open up anyway, hopefully now that will seep into the mindset elsewhere and we finally start taking a rational approach to all things covid.

timmyntc

Scotty # wrote: »

People keep saying 'everyone will be vaccinated'. Everyone won't.

The vulnerable will and thats all that matters. Once hospital admissions are at a controlled level we should be able to resume normal life.

El_Duderino 09

NIMAN wrote: »

Are under 18s even on the list to be vaccinated?

I thought I read that the vaccines are only approved for use in 18+.

As it stands the under 18s cant be vaccinated because the vaccine hasn't been tested on them yet. The trials are beginning for some groups of children now from 12-17 in various announcements I've seen) and they hope to have approval to start vaccinating those children by the end of the year.

This leads to a conflation between "everybody" meaning the whole population, "everybody" meaning the adult population and "everybody" meaning the adult population minus the people who will refuse the vaccine. So some people say "everybody" and mean 100% of the population and others say "everybody" and actually mean 60ish%

The important thing is that they are starting to do the trials. It just might not happen as fast as we want.

gozunda

patnor1011 wrote: »

Well, some people can stick with what they see on TV and reading on ESRI studies.
Other people like me continued to work and meet with people during the course of their work. I get it, if someone sit in home waiting for daily count being announced on TV they can get a little out of touch with reality of what people really think or want. For that you need to meet people, talk to them and then you may realize that studies and polls were many times wrong.
So I would disregard vague anonymous studies and polls which are mostly designed to fit expectations of people who conduct them.

While I got way more vaccines than most of the people here since I came from country where vaccination was mandatory and involved way more vaccines than is the norm in Ireland, I am pretty much sure I do not need this one.
As far as covid goes majority of the people would get more benefit simply by changing diet and lifestyle than getting this particular vaccine.

So let me see from that:

Yourself:
Works, meets people, doesn't watch TV, highly vaccinated, has talked to everyone in the country, In touch with reality, Knows more about other people opinions here than the ERSI . Medical expert on infectious disease control.

Others:
Watch TV, don't work, don't meet others, dont talk to others, out of touch with reality. Wrongly accept research carried out by the ERSI etc. Know nothing about anything. Need to change diet and lifestyle rather than get vaccine.

Lol. OK so ...

Tazz T

Scotty # wrote: »

20% won't be offered it, under 18's
a further 15-30% will refuse it.

This leaves somewhere between 56% and 68% vaccinated. Maximum. Unless we can convince a lot of that 15-30% group to get vaccinated. Which I think we will do in the form of requirements to travel, indoor mass gatherings, etc.



- New variants
- Not enough people get vacc'ed - (The single most likely reason).

Interestingly, there's a piece on Newstalk a few moments ago saying that uptake of the Astrazenaca is just 50% in Germany and 25% in France, with people viewing it as 'second class' and with a higher chance of side effects. Even more worryingly, many healthcare/frontline workers aren't accepting it.

There will be a higher take up here because we have stricter restrictions and people will just about do anything to get out of them at this
stage.

But yeah, this will definitely be used as an excuse for continued restrictions/lockdowns come winter. Nothing conspiracy theory about it like others have suggested, simply a government that doesn't want to get it wrong and has applied overly cautious/disproportional restrictions all along. This won't change and may even get more disproportional during the summer.

Dickie10

interesting to see a lot more talk about the cost to the economy that covid is having on irish media, i think this points to end coming, cant see them giving out PUP money after end of june. thats why they will open everything up. just on topic of nightclubs, is there any reason why nightclubs wouldnt open along with gyms/cinemas and other pubs/restaurants?

bucketybuck

Dickie10 wrote: »

is there any reason why nightclubs wouldnt open along with gyms/cinemas and other pubs/restaurants?

If the vaccine is available and demonstrated to protect vulnerable people, then there is no need for any restrictions at all, never mind getting into picking and choosing what is closed and what isn't.

If the vaccine doesn't work that is a different question altogether.

Having a vaccine available that protects the vulnerable but still locking down because of vague fears about the future? That is bull****.

El_Duderino 09

Dickie10 wrote: »

interesting to see a lot more talk about the cost to the economy that covid is having on irish media, i think this points to end coming, cant see them giving out PUP money after end of june. thats why they will open everything up. just on topic of nightclubs, is there any reason why nightclubs wouldnt open along with gyms/cinemas and other pubs/restaurants?

Nightclubs opening would depend on whether we still need social distancing or not. Nightclub are one of the places where people go to act foolish and shake off a lot of the normal rules of the rest of normal life. I wouldn't expect anyone to adhere to distancing rules in a nightclub. So I'd say it will come down to whether we still need distancing or not.

ypres5

El_Duderino 09 wrote: »

Nightclubs opening would depend on whether we still need social distancing or not. Nightclub are one of the places where people go to act foolish and shake off a lot of the normal rules of the rest of normal life. I wouldn't expect anyone to adhere to distancing rules in a nightclub. So I'd say it will come down to whether we still need distancing or not.

imagine that people enjoying themselves in a nightclub it's a disgrace joe

Responder XY

I'd imagine that nightclubs will be last to open on an unwind of restrictions. I can't think of a place that would be more suited to spreading the virus.

That said, they do need to re-open too, so as the population gets vaccinated restrictions should be unwound and as the vaccination coverage gets high nightclubs should get there too.  

Batattackrat

Are people actually fretting about under 18's been vaccinated. Most of them don't even know they have Covid or might have a slight cough or slight fatigue and that's it.

Once the over 70's are all vacinated it's time to go to Level 2 and no reason why the country shouldn't be fully open when everyone over 55 has go the vacinne.

ypres5

ypres5 wrote: »

imagine that people enjoying themselves in a nightclub it's a disgrace joe

On Liveline a couple of months ago, several people were overcome with emotion and one lady was reduced to tears because two people went on holidays to Spain.

El_Duderino 09

ypres5 wrote: »

imagine that people enjoying themselves in a nightclub it's a disgrace joe

Did someone say anything bad about people enjoying themselves in nightclubs?

hatrickpatrick

El_Duderino 09 wrote: »

Did someone say anything bad about people enjoying themselves in nightclubs?

Ok, one yes or no question and I'll go from there:

Are you personally willing to countenance the possibility that crowded scenarios such as nightclubs, concerts, festivals etc may be permanently banned because of COVID and potential variants etc?

Responder XY

Batattackrat wrote: »

Are people actually fretting about under 18's been vaccinated. Most of them don't even know they have Covid or might have a slight cough or slight fatigue and that's it.

Once the over 70's are all vacinated it's time to go to Level 2 and no reason why the country shouldn't be fully open when everyone over 55 has go the vacinne.

I'd agree with the sentiment (although I might be a little more cautious - lv. 2 after over 55s and the high risk population are done sounds better to me - that's not going to be too far off!)

But the risk related to U-18s isn't that the U18s get sick themselves, it's that they will spread the virus amongst the vulnerable population (the vaccine isn't 100% effective) and that it might drive mutations/variants.

El_Duderino 09

hatrickpatrick wrote: »

Ok, one yes or no question and I'll go from there:

Are you personally willing to countenance the possibility that crowded scenarios such as nightclubs, concerts, festivals etc may be permanently banned because of COVID and potential variants etc?

Permanently? No. (I hope you appreciate how easy it was to get me to answer a straight question first time. I certainly wish it was that easy to get you to answer the questions I have asked you)

Why do you ask?

Kunta Kinte

Batattackrat wrote: »

Are people actually fretting about under 18's been vaccinated. Most of them don't even know they have Covid or might have a slight cough or slight fatigue and that's it.

Once the over 70's are all vacinated it's time to go to Level 2 and no reason why the country shouldn't be fully open when everyone over 55 has got the vaccine.

Are you trolling? No way will this happen nor should it.

Responder XY

hatrickpatrick wrote: »

Ok, one yes or no question and I'll go from there:

Are you personally willing to countenance the possibility that crowded scenarios such as nightclubs, concerts, festivals etc may be permanently banned because of COVID and potential variants etc?

Why should they be permanently banned? of course not. Either we suppress the virus through vaccines or we go back to normal accepting that our ability to treat sickness has regressed slightly and people might die. We need to give the vaccines a chance to work, but once we have we need to go back to normal and open these types of events again.

hatrickpatrick

El_Duderino 09 wrote: »

Permanently? No. (I hope you appreciate how easy it was to get me to answer a straight question first time. I certainly wish it was that easy to get you to answer the questions I have asked you)

Why do you ask?

Firstly, I have repeatedly answered straight questions from you, it's just that you choose to ignore my answers

Secondly: Permanently, no. Fair enough. In that case, at what point in terms of mass vaccination do you personally believe it would be appropriate to allow such mass gatherings again?

Again, this is about what you personally believe. Forget about NPHET, Leo or anyone else. Out of curiosity.

El_Duderino 09

hatrickpatrick wrote: »

Firstly, I have repeatedly answered straight questions from you, it's just that you choose to ignore my answers

Secondly: Permanently, no. Fair enough. In that case, at what point in terms of mass vaccination do you personally believe it would be appropriate to allow such mass gatherings again?

Again, this is about what you personally believe. Forget about NPHET, Leo or anyone else. Out of curiosity.

I don't know what point of vaccination would be appropriate to allow such mass gatherings again. I don't have the data to have an informed opinion. Time will tell, particularly how things go the winter after when most people are vaccinated and most restrictions have been dropped. That will be a good test (hopefully that's this winter)

Do you have the data to make an informed opinion on that question?

ypres5

Kunta Kinte wrote: »

Are you trolling? No way will this happen nor should it.

how is it trolling and why shouldn't it happen?

Batattackrat

Kunta Kinte wrote: »

Are you trolling? No way will this happen nor should it.

How am I trolling? Once hospital numbers are low and the most vunerable vacinated which is the over 70's there is no reason not to move to Level 2.

In 2017/2018 there were 4000 people in hospital over the year with flu but didn't shut down the country. 191 admitted to ICU over the same year due to flu.

Once the hospitals are stable and the most vunerable protected it's time to open up.

SheepsClothing

bucketybuck wrote: »

It comes back to something that has been ignored for nearly a year now.

Adult conversations about death.

People get sick and die all the time, it happens, a friend of mine died at the weekend, cancer, mid 40's, very sad but it happened and thats life.

Too many people have blinded themselves to that fact, now they are scared to pass people on the street in case they catch a bug and die. Such mindsets are not compatible with living, they are childish and narrow minded.

It was a relief to hear that UK minister acknowledging that people would die from covid but that society needed to open up anyway, hopefully now that will seep into the mindset elsewhere and we finally start taking a rational approach to all things covid.

Categorising the reaction to covid as people afraid to have adult conversations about death is a fairly significant misunderstanding of the problem.

The reason we've been social distancing for the last year, is to prevent the unnecessary death that would come from hospitals and ICU's being packed out whilst medical staff are forced to take sick absence.

It's a big problem when a cancer patient can't get treated or a person involved in a motorcycle accident can't get a place in ICU. You can throw out platitudes like "that's life", but in 1st world democracies, that's not life. If you are in a car accident, you should be able to get treatment and if you are denied that essential life saving help, societal trust degrades.

Quantum Baloney

FlubberJones wrote: »

have to agree with the last statement, if they refuse it so **** them, if they get sick and even if they die they had a chance at some protection and declined.
The rest of us, take the vaccine and get back to normal lives.. which I for one simply can't wait for and will not accept restrictions because some prick thinks the vaccine is a conspiracy or some other ****e

You might spare a thought for those of us who are not intending to have the vaccine but who have anyway had to live through a year of restrictions and lockdowns because of gullible individuals like yourself who go along with everything they're told.

Don't worry, you'll be patted on the head like a good dog when you get your vaccine (and annual boosters) and be allowed to travel. Now can you finally leave the rest of us alone.

Sobit1964

SheepsClothing wrote: »

Categorising the reaction to covid as people afraid to have adult conversations about death is a fairly significant misunderstanding of the problem.

The reason we've been social distancing for the last year, is to prevent the unnecessary death that would come from hospitals and ICU's being packed out whilst medical staff are forced to take sick absence.

It's a big problem when a cancer patient can't get treated or a person involved in a motorcycle accident can't get a place in ICU. You can throw out platitudes like "that's life", but in 1st world democracies, that's not life. If you are in a car accident, you should be able to get treatment and if you are denied that essential life saving help, societal trust degrades.

Now that all 'frontline' medical staff in Ireland have had their first dose, and massive evidence suggests that they are no longer at risk, do you agree that it's time to speed up the pace of reopening the country?

If not what are your reasons for continuing to remain under current regulations?

Kunta Kinte

Quantum Baloney wrote: »

You might spare a thought for those of us who are not intending to have the vaccine but who have anyway had to live through a year of restrictions and lockdowns because of gullible individuals like yourself who go along with everything they're told.

Don't worry, you'll be patted on the head like a good dog when you get your vaccine (and annual boosters) and be allowed to travel. Now can you finally leave the rest of us alone.

Take your conspiracy theory bull****e to the proper forum. This is not the place for it.

hatrickpatrick

El_Duderino 09 wrote: »

I don't know what point of vaccination would be appropriate to allow such mass gatherings again. I don't have the data to have an informed opinion. Time will tell, particularly how things go the winter after when most people are vaccinated (hopefully that's this winter)

Do you have the data to make an informed opinion on that question?

Fair answers, and no I do not.

I do, however, believe that a point will come at which for the sake of not just the economy but the nation's mental health, we will have to make a judgment call on this - and I personally believe that that point is going to arrive before the end of this year. I certainly don't believe that two full years of that kind of lockdown, as has been recently raised as a possibility by Leo and others, should be countenanced at all. I think that's fundamentally where we differ.

I'm saying all of this as somebody who has close family and friends who are severely immunocompromised, by the way. Anyone suggesting that I'm taking this lightly couldn't be more wrong, myself and my family have been overly cautious about COVID since literally the first case was reported in Ireland (close family member's doctor told him that he'd be advised to get out ahead of this before things got bad) so I very much take it seriously and understand the risks.

However, I also understand the serious risks to mental health which come from having the only sources of happiness taken away from people, and for many, many people, being surrounded by people is that source. Therefore I believe in balance on this, and I don't believe "however long it takes" is an acceptable answer. At some point, we have to talk about balancing the risk of COVID outbreaks leading to death by COVID, and existential misery leading to death by suicide. That's all I've been saying pretty much all along.

I think what many here don't understand (and I get this, having been a full-on internet nerd for my entire life I totally get that many of us are far more introverted than others and thus find this situation easier to cope with) is that for a huge proportion of people, life without mass gatherings is genuinely a life not worth living. Maybe it's because some people need a lot of background noise to drown out their inner demons. Maybe it's because some people don't have as many close friends as others and need the experience of a crowd in order to compensate. Maybe it's because some people have never known any other way of socialising since they were young.

Whatever the reason, the bottom line is that there are people - and I know some of them, so I can say this with 100% certainty - for whom an indefinite ban on mass gatherings, as has been either deliberately or inadvertently raised as a genuine possibility by the media over the last month or so, will fundamentally result in a "f*ck this, life is going to be sh!t from here on out and I'm not bothered sticking with it" mentality.

That isn't hyperbole - I've caught myself feeling like this several times since the idea of quasi-permanent social distancing started being raised and I've had to seriously catch myself. I'm lucky though in that I survived a brush with suicidal ideation in my early 20s (when I say ideation I don't mean the vague ruminating kind, I mean coming within a hair's breadth of actually going through with it and surviving honestly by the grace of God, happening to get a random phone call which interrupted me in what I was about to do) and as such, I have a very specific set of coping mechanisms and internal dialogue with myself which I use to talk myself down from such thoughts. What's alarming is that I haven't had to call these into action since that horrible night in 2011. They've been deeply buried inside my psyche for almost ten years. But the suggestion of social distancing being a permanent reality (and thus, by extension, the thought of never getting to sing my heart out in a gigantic crowd of similarly singing people) was more than enough to dig that sh!t up from where I'd buried it.

I have those coping mechanisms from when I felt like this before, so I know I'll survive the current lockdown. I know of many people who never faced this in their lives and are genuinely scared at where their thoughts have been leading them over the last month. I know this because I've been relatively open about my prior experience over the last year and thus people are comfortable texting or calling me to talk about this where they might otherwise hesitate. And I can tell you for a fact that it's been the idea of "mass vaccination by Autumn, yet we still need a lockdown in Winter and "well into next year" -> mass vaccination doesn't solve this -> we might never get to dance again until we're f*cking middle aged" which has directly precipitated that sentiment.

I'm a musician and I grew up surrounded by musicians, so naturally my friend group skews overwhelmingly extroverted - the kind of people I mentioned above who need crowded dancefloors and mosh pits in order to feel alive. And all of us were more than capable of tolerating this quarantine situation for as long as it took to achieve mass vaccination. What isn't ok is the idea that even after mass vaccination, this "new normal" won't go away, and the one thing which makes life worth living for us will never return.

Whether intentionally or inadvertently, that's the conclusion many are drawing from the government and the media's messaging over the last several weeks. And you can tell us we're misinterpreting things or misremembering things, but I think the bottom line is that once such "misinterpretation" is applying to dozens upon dozens of people, not just a few outliers, it's an indication that either the messaging from those in charge has been sh!te, or that they've left so many gaps and vacuums in their discourse that peoples' minds are having to fill in the blanks on their own. And just like watching a horror film, when one is already in a heightened state of anxiety, one's mind will tend to fill those vacuums with worst case scenarios - indeed, this psychological device has been employed by writers in the horror genre since time immemorial, and is one of the reasons many horror movies and stories which never directly show you the monster tend to scare people a lot more effectively than those which eventually have a big reveal.

What I'm basically saying is that we eventually need to have a conversation about balancing the risk of death by COVID outbreak and balancing the risk of death by loneliness-induced suicide. We cannot countenance this "only if this or that" conversation - we need to publicly acknowledge that eventually, mass gatherings must return, COVID risk or not, ineffective vaccines or not, etc, because without them, people will die from another equally potent epidemic.

Right now, the national discourse is skewed far too much in the direction of "as long as COVID remains a threat, we can't gather - and that has no end date whatsoever". We need to have a conversation with the balance of "Eventually, we cannot countenance banning people from gathering anymore, even if we've thrown everything including the kitchen sink at suppressing the pandemic and it hasn't worked". That needs to be acknowledged in the public discourse. Right now, it isn't being, and the fact that it isn't being is causing an unimaginable wave of existential dread among those many, many young people I've alluded to, for whom a life without crowded spaces is a living death.

Eventually, we have to be able to have a conversation around "even if the vaccines don't work and covid is still with us, there's some kind of cut-off point at which we have to allow people to socialise again". That's all I've been saying. The current discourse of "some undefined and vaguely explained date months or years after mass vaccination" is unpalatable to many people and is running the serious risk of causing a cascading series of mental health breakdowns. And folks here can accuse me of being hyperbolic in saying this, all I can say in response is that I know my sh!t for the reasons I've outlined in this post. It's not a theory, it's a fact.

The current discourse is already causing a slide into extreme depression and hopelessness among many young people in that extroverted bracket, and something needs to change fairly rapidly about how those in charge are talking about the future, or they are going to end up killing people. It's as simple as that.

gozunda

hatrickpatrick wrote: »

Fair answers, and no I do not.

I do, however, believe that a point will come at which for the sake of not just the economy but the nation's mental health, we will have to make a judgment call on this - and I personally believe that that point is going to arrive before the end of this year. I certainly don't believe that two full years of that kind of lockdown, as has been recently raised as a possibility by Leo and others, should be countenanced at all. I think that's fundamentally where we differ.

I'm saying all of this as somebody who has close family and friends who are severely immunocompromised, by the way. Anyone suggesting that I'm taking this lightly couldn't be more wrong, myself and my family have been overly cautious about COVID since literally the first case was reported in Ireland (close family member's doctor told him that he'd be advised to get out ahead of this before things got bad) so I very much take it seriously and understand the risks.

However, I also understand the serious risks to mental health which come from having the only sources of happiness taken away from people, and for many, many people, being surrounded by people is that source. Therefore I believe in balance on this, and I don't believe "however long it takes" is an acceptable answer. At some point, we have to talk about balancing the risk of COVID outbreaks leading to death by COVID, and existential misery leading to death by suicide. That's all I've been saying pretty much all along.

I think what many here don't understand (and I get this, having been a full-on internet nerd for my entire life I totally get that many of us are far more introverted than others and thus find this situation easier to cope with) is that for a huge proportion of people, life without mass gatherings is genuinely a life not worth living. Maybe it's because some people need a lot of background noise to drown out their inner demons. Maybe it's because some people don't have as many close friends as others and need the experience of a crowd in order to compensate. Maybe it's because some people have never known any other way of socialising since they were young.

Whatever the reason, the bottom line is that there are people - and I know some of them, so I can say this with 100% certainty - for whom an indefinite ban on mass gatherings, as has been either deliberately or inadvertently raised as a genuine possibility by the media over the last month or so, will fundamentally result in a "f*ck this, life is going to be sh!t from here on out and I'm not bothered sticking with it" mentality.

That isn't hyperbole - I've caught myself feeling like this several times since the idea of quasi-permanent social distancing started being raised and I've had to seriously catch myself. I'm lucky though in that I survived a brush with suicidal ideation in my early 20s (when I say ideation I don't mean the vague ruminating kind, I mean coming within a hair's breadth of actually going through with it and surviving honestly by the grace of God, happening to get a random phone call which interrupted me in what I was about to do) and as such, I have a very specific set of coping mechanisms and internal dialogue with myself which I use to talk myself down from such thoughts. What's alarming is that I haven't had to call these into action since that horrible night in 2011. They've been deeply buried inside my psyche for almost ten years. But the suggestion of social distancing being a permanent reality (and thus, by extension, the thought of never getting to sing my heart out in a gigantic crowd of similarly singing people) was more than enough to dig that sh!t up from where I'd buried it.

I have those coping mechanisms from when I felt like this before, so I know I'll survive the current lockdown. I know of many people who never faced this in their lives and are genuinely scared at where their thoughts have been leading them over the last month. I know this because I've been relatively open about my prior experience over the last year and thus people are comfortable texting or calling me to talk about this where they might otherwise hesitate. And I can tell you for a fact that it's been the idea of "mass vaccination by Autumn, yet we still need a lockdown in Winter and "well into next year" -> mass vaccination doesn't solve this -> we might never get to dance again until we're f*cking middle aged" which has directly precipitated that sentiment.

I'm a musician and I grew up surrounded by musicians, so naturally my friend group skews overwhelmingly extroverted - the kind of people I mentioned above who need crowded dancefloors and mosh pits in order to feel alive. And all of us were more than capable of tolerating this quarantine situation for as long as it took to achieve mass vaccination. What isn't ok is the idea that even after mass vaccination, this "new normal" won't go away, and the one thing which makes life worth living for us will never return.

Whether intentionally or inadvertently, that's the conclusion many are drawing from the government and the media's messaging over the last several weeks. And you can tell us we're misinterpreting things or misremembering things, but I think the bottom line is that once such "misinterpretation" is applying to dozens upon dozens of people, not just a few outliers, it's an indication that either the messaging from those in charge has been sh!te, or that they've left so many gaps and vacuums in their discourse that peoples' minds are having to fill in the blanks on their own. And just like watching a horror film, when one is already in a heightened state of anxiety, one's mind will tend to fill those vacuums with worst case scenarios - indeed, this psychological device has been employed by writers in the horror genre since time immemorial, and is one of the reasons many horror movies and stories which never directly show you the monster tend to scare people a lot more effectively than those which eventually have a big reveal.

What I'm basically saying is that we eventually need to have a conversation about balancing the risk of death by COVID outbreak and balancing the risk of death by loneliness-induced suicide. We cannot countenance this "only if this or that" conversation - we need to publicly acknowledge that eventually, mass gatherings must return, COVID risk or not, ineffective vaccines or not, etc, because without them, people will die from another equally potent epidemic.

Right now, the national discourse is skewed far too much in the direction of "as long as COVID remains a threat, we can't gather - and that has no end date whatsoever". We need to have a conversation with the balance of "Eventually, we cannot countenance banning people from gathering anymore, even if we've thrown everything including the kitchen sink at suppressing the pandemic and it hasn't worked". That needs to be acknowledged in the public discourse. Right now, it isn't being, and the fact that it isn't being is causing an unimaginable wave of existential dread among those many, many young people I've alluded to, for whom a life without crowded spaces is a living death.

Eventually, we have to be able to have a conversation around "even if the vaccines don't work and covid is still with us, there's some kind of cut-off point at which we have to allow people to socialise again". That's all I've been saying. The current discourse of "some undefined and vaguely explained date months or years after mass vaccination" is unpalatable to many people and is running the serious risk of causing a cascading series of mental health breakdowns. And folks here can accuse me of being hyperbolic in saying this, all I can say in response is that I know my sh!t for the reasons I've outlined in this post. It's not a theory, it's a fact.

The current discourse is already causing a slide into extreme depression and hopelessness among many young people in that extroverted bracket, and something needs to change fairly rapidly about how those in charge are talking about the future, or they are going to end up killing people. It's as simple as that.

Not to pick any issue with your own personal experience of the Pandemic to date. They are yours and completely valid. If its any consolation - I don't know anyone who has found the last year easy or on whom it hasn't taken its toll.

For myself - those who are in the main making claims 'we will be in lockdown forever' or wtte are those who are using that idea to demand we "open up now".

As to the the media, I've found a lot of the headlines are easily dismissed as hyperbole and much is mainly conjecture especially considering we are only at the beginning of our vaccination programme.

It remains most other countries with some exceptions are at more of less the same point in this journey. And not that we should look to them to do what and when - rather we can view them as fellow travellers at this point in time. Young people are not stupid - they know what the likley consequences if not for themselves then for others.

It may be somewhat trite but the saying about the darkest hour is before the dawn is more than apt at this time imo.