When will it all end?

Wanderer78

Lillyfae wrote: »

TUI is a German company?

do they have offices here?

malinheader

Wanderer78 wrote: »

...with deep connections with its neighbors that are ultimately opposed to barriers that prevent the free movement of people, im not so sure about that!

Totally. That's why our leaders have to stand up and lead on this and make the kind of decisions that are needed to protect our island and its people.

Lillyfae

Wanderer78 wrote: »

do they have offices here?

Does it matter? Why would the government pay off a multinational company that has been dying a slow death for years now anyway?

El_Duderino 09

El_Duderino 09 wrote: »

Highly dynamic you say... does that mean they should have made a strategy back in last February and never deviated from that decision, lest they be accused of “changing their minds” every few weeks?

Of course they should change their minds when new information comes to light. The new variations are more transmissible and that changes the calculations. If our leaders didn’t change their minds based on the evidence, then we’d really be in trouble.

People’s expectations should also change along with the new information. The poster telling people they’re sure we’ll be able to travel (presumably they mean for holidays or recreation) is not helping. If you look around, the only people encouraging anyone to book a holiday is the holiday companies like TUI...

Why shouldnt people be able to travel later on in the year? We are only in January. A lot could change in the next few months.I will be on a plane this year if we are allowed to travel.

plodder

TomSweeney wrote: »

And they will keep doing that, Next January they will be saying no travel for 2022 ... the following january for 2023 etc.


When will people realise this ? and for the lockdown larrys in here, when will you say enough is enough ???


Will you be happy in 2024 when you still can't take a holiday abroad ?

I think we can see what is going to happen by looking at Israel. The fact that they are in the middle of a third wave like ourselves is complicating the picture, but it's surely going to be clear enough one way or the other there within a month or two, given they have already vaccinated 40% of the population. One (apparently) good quality comparison has already shown a reduction of 33% in infection rate in the over 60's, 14 days after the first dose, with continuing decline in infections after that. And that's from comparing 200,000 vaccinated people with another 200,000 unvaccinated.

So we're going to see what effect vaccination has on Israel very soon, and it will just (hopefully) then be down to us to get our hands on the vaccine to get to the same place ourselves.

I had been thinking of booking cheapo Ryanair flights for September (wouldn't book accommodation yet tho) on the understanding I could cancel at short notice if necessary. The Astra Zeneca debacle is the only thing stopping me right now.

El_Duderino 09

Wanderer78 wrote: »

if the government put better protective measures in place for businesses, maybe companies wouldnt be doing so

What do you mean? Pay off travel companies so they don't have to sell holidays?

El_Duderino 09

[Deleted User] wrote: »

Why shouldnt people be able to travel later on in the year? We are only in January. A lot could change in the next few months.I will be on a plane this year if we are allowed to travel.

Depends on how things unfold, wouldn't you agree? At this stage we don't know how things will go. Saying "I'm sure well be able to travel later this year" as the poster above did, is unhelpful and is creating an unrealistic expectation. If it's safe later in the year, then great. If the new more transmissible variants make travel impossible, then we need to react to that too.

For now all we can do is wait and see.

Wanderer78

Lillyfae wrote: »

Does it matter? Why would the government pay off a multinational company that has been dying a slow death for years now anyway?

El_Duderino 09 wrote: »

What do you mean? Pay off travel companies so they don't have to sell holidays?

interesting! so allow people to become unemployed, wonder what happens then?

Lillyfae

Wanderer78 wrote: »

interesting! so allow people to become unemployed, wonder what happens then?

Many have already become unemployed across all travel agents- it's an area that's becoming obsolete. It's like saying it's unfair if telegram operators are being let go :pac:

Wanderer78

Lillyfae wrote: »

Many have already become unemployed across all travel agents- it's an area that's becoming obsolete. It's like saying it's unfair if telegram operators are being let go :pac:

so who pays their dole?

Lillyfae

Wanderer78 wrote: »

so who pays their dole?

Hopefully they've go the sense to start looking around for retraining opportunities. I've a friend who was in the industry for 20 years who was let go 4 years ago- she didn't sit on her h*le waiting for someone to magic up a position when there is waning demand for the industry, she job hopped, retrained and has just started a totally new career.

Anyone working in the travel industry knows how things are going for travel agents, they're not stupid.

El_Duderino 09

Wanderer78 wrote: »

interesting! so allow people to become unemployed, wonder what happens then?

Ah no. It’s a serious question and it deserves more discussion than a sarcastic response. Should they pay off foreign companies to stop them advertising and selling their products in Ireland? Should they pay off the Irish staff so they don’t sell to Irish people? Should they close those businesses by law and put the staff on furlough or what exactly do you mean?

I don’t object to government borrowing and helping businesses through this period which we will spend the rest of our lives repaying through increased tax. But you haven’t actually said what support you think they should get

Quazzie

malinheader wrote: »

A small island surrounded by water. I think a good leader with good politicians could of had this island in as good a place as new Zealand.

There's more than one country on this island.

One of those countries can't even get on with themselves, so don't expect any kind of common approach to regulations.

Lillyfae

Lillyfae wrote: »

Hopefully they've go the sense to start looking around for retraining opportunities. I've a friend who was in the industry for 20 years who was let go 4 years ago- she didn't sit on her h*le waiting for someone to magic up a position when there is waning demand for the industry, she job hopped, retrained and has just started a totally new career.

Anyone working in the travel industry knows how things are going for travel agents, they're not stupid.

Wanderer78 isn't a fan of endeavour etc............ fond of the hand out culture etc.

Wanderer78

Augeo wrote:

Wanderer78 isn't a fan of endeavour etc............ fond of the hand out culture etc.

We dont live on some magical planet whereby all folks can simply walk out of a job into another, whereby folks can simply head off and retrain for a couple of years, while trying to maintain a roof over their and their loved ones heads, that's just fantasy land!

KaneToad

Wanderer78 wrote: »

We dont live on some magical planet whereby all folks can simply walk out of a job into another, whereby folks can simply head off and retrain for a couple of years, while trying to maintain a roof over their and their loved ones heads, that's just fantasy land!

Also not everyone lives near a big centre of employment.

PTH2009

Last year i would of said 'this has to stop because we simply can't afford it' but that issue has been pushed to the side by the government and they want restrictions as long as possible now

Some people will never give in and are quite happy leaving like this and will do what there told by the government

I just want this to end and go back to living properly

El_Duderino 09

PTH2009 wrote: »

Last year i would of said 'this has to stop because we simply can't afford it' but that issue has been pushed to the side by the government and they want restrictions as long as possible now

Some people will never give in and are quite happy leaving like this and will do what there told by the government

I just want this to end and go back to living properly

We all want things to go back to normal. But i think we all know that things aren't going back to normal in the short-medium term, so there's no point taunting yourself.

I think everyone, even those who pretend they don't understand it, know that things can't go back to normal and they know why things can't go back to normal.

Lillyfae

Wanderer78 wrote: »

We dont live on some magical planet whereby all folks can simply walk out of a job into another, whereby folks can simply head off and retrain for a couple of years, while trying to maintain a roof over their and their loved ones heads, that's just fantasy land!

There's no back to education support in Ireland?

KaneToad wrote: »

Also not everyone lives near a big centre of employment.

Travel companies don't tend to set up in rural towns.

Responder XY

El_Duderino 09 wrote: »

We all want things to go back to normal. But i think we all know that things aren't going back to normal in the short-medium term, so there's no point taunting yourself.

I think everyone, even those who pretend they don't understand it, know that things can't go back to normal and they know why things can't go back to normal.

I don't know your definition of medium term - but I'd be very hopeful that we'll be back to some form of what most people call normal in the next few months. There may be some addoptions, but I think restrictions are going to become increasingly indefensible come the summer and will be lifted.

Even in the worst case scenario and the vaccine isn't effective - that's terrible, but the cost of restrictions is too high and is only justifiable with a short term silver bullet. We either have that or we don't. Either way the restrictions (or many of them anyway) are getting lifted (IMO!).

El_Duderino 09

Responder XY wrote: »

I don't know your definition of medium term - but I'd be very hopeful that we'll be back to some form of what most people call normal in the next few months. There may be some addoptions, but I think restrictions are going to become increasingly indefensible come the summer and will be lifted.

Even in the worst case scenario and the vaccine isn't effective - that's terrible, but the cost of restrictions is too high and is only justifiable with a short term silver bullet. We either have that or we don't. Either way the restrictions (or many of them anyway) are getting lifted (IMO!).

By medium term, I mean year - a few years. And by restrictions I mean masks and some distancing.

I think a good vaccine and a good rollout would mean we have masks and distancing measures, but nothing has to close down next winter - no lockdown. And then return towards normal as the weather warms up next spring and into summer.

I know some people want to treat it as just an Irish problem, so as soon as most Irish pepper are vaccinated, return to normal. But it’s a global problem and they will deal with it as a global problem.

JDD

Responder XY wrote: »

I don't know your definition of medium term - but I'd be very hopeful that we'll be back to some form of what most people call normal in the next few months. There may be some addoptions, but I think restrictions are going to become increasingly indefensible come the summer and will be lifted.

Even in the worst case scenario and the vaccine isn't effective - that's terrible, but the cost of restrictions is too high and is only justifiable with a short term silver bullet. We either have that or we don't. Either way the restrictions (or many of them anyway) are getting lifted (IMO!).

I think you're probably right. The CMO has come out today to say that a zero Covid policy cannot work in Ireland (even if we could agree it with the North and/or UK) as we rely too much on imports. So we are stuck with rolling lockdowns as a policy, and we can't stay in a Level 4/5 for six months or more, it simply won't work.

While the population at large have definitely adhered to this Level 5 much more than the one in October/November, you can see that there is a larger proportion of the population that are not as worried as they were early last year about the virus and are choosing to break the rules and go about their lives normally. That's reflected in the numbers going on holiday abroad and incidents such as the 200 people at the funeral in Enniscorthy.

You could only forsee this cohort getting much larger as hospitals start to empty out. No amount of "hold firm until we complete vaccinations" is going to convince anyone to stay at home much longer than Easter, as everyone has seen the shaky start to the vaccination programme and nobody holds a huge amount of faith that the vast majority of people will be vaccinated by the end of the summer.

Wanderer78

Wanderer78 wrote: »

We dont live on some magical planet whereby all folks can simply walk out of a job into another, whereby folks can simply head off and retrain for a couple of years, while trying to maintain a roof over their and their loved ones heads, that's just fantasy land!

Endless excuses Wanderer78, as always.
Get the hand out and let the government provide for all.

El_Duderino 09

Augeo wrote: »

Endless excuses Wanderer78, as always.
Get the hand out and let the government provide for all.

Ah, that's harsh. There seems to be an endless stream of "the government should do more for business during the pandemic", but also abuse for people receiving help - but absolutely no negative sentiment for businesses receiving government help.

Government should help businesses and people affected by the pandemic. They should borrow the money and we should all spend the rest of our lives paying higher tax to repay it. But the proposals have to be sensible. At this stage there must be a lot of businesses which have effectively failed and are only staying open to make sure they receive the government support - zombie businesses, as they're being called. At some point we'll have to pull the plug on those businesses. It made sense to support them when we thought the pandemic might be short lived, but now we know it's at least a year long.

We should switch focus from propping up all businesses to propping up viable businesses and helping those involved in failed businesses to retrain, reskill and get back into employment. And government will still need to borrow to fund those programmes and we will still need to pay higher tax to repay it.

Lillyfae

El_Duderino 09 wrote: »

Ah, that's harsh. There seems to be an endless stream of "the government should do more for business during the pandemic", but also abuse for people receiving help - but absolutely no negative sentiment for businesses receiving government help.

Government should help businesses and people affected by the pandemic. They should borrow the money and we should all spend the rest of our lives paying higher tax to repay it. But the proposals have to be sensible. At this stage there must be a lot of businesses which have effectively failed and are only staying open to make sure they receive the government support - zombie businesses, as they're being called. At some point we'll have to pull the plug on those businesses. It made sense to support them when we thought the pandemic might be short lived, but now we know it's at least a year long.

We should switch focus from propping up all businesses to propping up viable businesses and helping those involved in failed businesses to retrain, reskill and get back into employment. And government will still need to borrow to fund those programmes and we will still need to pay higher tax to repay it.

Absolutely people and businesses should be helped out, but Wanderer78 seems to think poor TUI need a bit of pocket money to keep afloat. People working as travel agents need to be getting out of that game ASAP because it was barely functioning before this. Upskilling/ reskilling is a part of life. Does he think that people should be able to retire at 40 because they've been made redundant??

El_Duderino 09

Lillyfae wrote: »

Absolutely people and businesses should be helped out, but Wanderer78 seems to think poor TUI need a bit of pocket money to keep afloat. People working as travel agents need to be getting out of that game ASAP because it was barely functioning before this. Upskilling/ reskilling is a part of life. Does he think that people should be able to retire at 40 because they've been made redundant??

I don’t know what they think. I asked them to explain what they think and they declined.

Honestly, I think they’re just caught up in the “government should have done more” rhetoric, without beginning to think through what that would mean and where it should actually start AND stop.

Responder XY

El_Duderino 09 wrote: »

By medium term, I mean year - a few years. And by restrictions I mean masks and some distancing.

I think a good vaccine and a good rollout would mean we have masks and distancing measures, but nothing has to close down next winter - no lockdown. And then return towards normal as the weather warms up next spring and into summer.

I know some people want to treat it as just an Irish problem, so as soon as most Irish pepper are vaccinated, return to normal. But it’s a global problem and they will deal with it as a global problem.

Fair enough, largely agree with this. For me restrictions which must go soon are the ones that prevent me from seeing friends and family in social settings. I expect to be able to return to an office at some point too. They should also allow biger gatherings outdoors (summer festivals, sport events)

School closures should end immediately! Shocking cost to children isn't defendable to me. Universities close behind!

I'm ok if indoor places where we meet have lower max capacity than it used too. I don't mind wearing a mask. I don't mind restrictions on who and how we visit vulnerable in hospital and care settings. 

That could be a sustainable way forward in my view.

El_Duderino 09

El_Duderino 09 wrote: »

I don’t know what they think. I asked them to explain what they think and they declined. ........

They think the same now as pre pandemic.
There should be a magic money tree that supports anyone not doing well. There are no wasters, folk who don't or won't retrain are stuck in some hole not of their own doing that capitalism has created.
Springboard courses and other education options don't suit everyone and these people cannot be expected to work their way up from minimum wage entry level jobs either.
Excuses for everything.

FileNotFound

Augeo wrote: »

They think the same now as pre pandemic.
There should be a magic money tree that supports anyone not doing well. There are no wasters, folk who don't or won't retrain are stuck in some hole not of their own doing that capitalism has created.
Springboard courses and other education options don't suit everyone and these people cannot be expected to work their way up from minimum wage entry level jobs either.
Excuses for everything.

Expectation grows the more that's given. Its just a natural reaction of society.

Like these new god given rights that say houses should be given out like confetti.

The element that believe this are too far gone to fix, all we can do is support them enough to keep them from being a detriment to society.

Supports in my eyes keep crime down, it's cheaper to keeps people on the dole than it is to put em in jail.

Then there are many genuine cases. Overall I say Gov supports are good, flawed but better than potential alternatives.

El_Duderino 09

Responder XY wrote: »

Fair enough, largely agree with this. For me restrictions which must go soon are the ones that prevent me from seeing friends and family in social settings. I expect to be able to return to an office at some point too. They should also allow biger gatherings outdoors (summer festivals, sport events)

School closures should end immediately! Shocking cost to children isn't defendable to me. Universities close behind!

I'm ok if indoor places where we meet have lower max capacity than it used too. I don't mind wearing a mask. I don't mind restrictions on who and how we visit vulnerable in hospital and care settings. 

That could be a sustainable way forward in my view.

Could be as you outline above. I’d say festivals are on the less realistic side, but distancing at sports events is probably more doable.

I certainly hope they allow more household mixing and outdoor meeting like bbqs. But we’ll have to see what happens.

The UK took a very business centric approach where the joke was that people could only meet if there was a cash register in the vicinity. Pubs open but no visiting granny’s house. We need to balance the economic needs with the human need for contact and intimacy with family and friends.

It’s tricky. Anyone who tries to tell you it’s simple, is not taking it seriously enough or doesn’t understand the competing issues at play. Those being economic needs, personal needs and virus transmission.

I know nobody wants to think no about it, but I think they’re terrified that the virus will mutate around the vaccine and we’ll be back to square 1. It could happen by normal mutation in humans or by jumping to other animals and back to humans in a different form - that’s why they culled the mink in Scandinavia before Christmas.

It’s not as simple as allowing the virus to go wild among the healthy population once the vulnerable are vaccinated. Until they know more, or develop a broader vaccine, they will want to keep global numbers low. So distancing and masks are in for the medium term.