Is 2021 a write off?

Datacore

Hopefully the second half of 2021 should be very much on the road to recovery, but I think we are kidding ourselves and setting ourselves up for disappointment if we don’t get our heads around the fact that this is the biggest disruption to life in this part of Europe and much of the world since the end of WWII and it will take time and effort to restore life to what it was.

It will absolutely get better but I think it’s one of those moments where this quote is highly relevant:

"It is far better to grasp the universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring."

- Carl Sagan

Clutching at straws, politicising masks, denying a virus exists, pretending it’s just the flu, generally burying our heads in the sand, throwing tantrums or expecting things to just return to how they were in 2019 by just snapping our fingers and then being frustrated when it doesn’t and can’t is just not helpful to anyone or even our own mental state.

Patience and pragmatism!

We are where we are and we will get out of it, but it will take time and effort.

c68zapdsm5i1ru

timeToLive wrote: »

After the vulnerable people are vaccinated why wouldn't we open up?

Why is it nonsense NOW was my question.

GazzaL

Datacore wrote: »

Hopefully the second half of 2021 should be very much on the road to recovery, but I think we are kidding ourselves and setting ourselves up for disappointment if we don’t get our heads around the fact that this is the biggest disruption to life in this part of Europe and much of the world since the end of WWII and it will take time and effort to restore life to what it was.

It will absolutely get better but I think it’s one of those moments where this quote is highly relevant:

"It is far better to grasp the universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring."

- Carl Sagan

Clutching at straws, politicising masks, denying a virus exists, pretending it’s just the flu, generally burying our heads in the sand, throwing tantrums or expecting things to just return to how they were in 2019 by just snapping our fingers and then being frustrated when it doesn’t and can’t is just not helpful to anyone or even our own mental state.

Patience and pragmatism!

We are where we are and we will get out of it, but it will take time and effort.

The smallest of small minorities deny that a virus exists. It's sinply wrong to lump everyone who's critical of non-stop lockdowns into that category. There's nothing patient or pragmatic about NPHET's approach. Even when they've implemented higher levels of restrictions, they never gave them a wet week before calling for even more restrictions and chastising the public.

Meanwhile, in the rest of Europe, the pragmatic are either already open for business or are in the process of doing so.

suicide_circus

suicide_circus wrote: »

I'm thinking earliest we get back to normal is Feb 2022

Sanjuro wrote: »

I think we're looking at 2067 for a return to normal. May as well throw that out as it's as much of a guess as any other timeline in this thread.

AdamD wrote: »

Any logic behind this or have you just plucked a date out of your arse?

Yikes! Do untwist your knickers for a moment.

Is early 2022 really such a far fetched estimate? I don't want it to be true but consider the vaccination schedule as it currently stands and then consider will NPHET and the government actually end restrictions when vulnerable groups get their two jabs? I'm struggling to believe that some other issue won't arise meaning restrictions "need" to be extended or reintroduced at some point. Surveys have show the majority of people in Ireland and Britain are in favour of lockdown. I'd be surprised if some degree of Stockholm Syndrome hasn't kicked in - even if restrictions are lifted - how long will it take for society to behave normally again. I've met people, including in my own family, who are beside themselves with fear over this virus, that dosnt just vanish overnight.

titan18

Before Christmas, I was quite hopeful we might see ourselves start to come out of restrictions and maybe being able to travel easier again in April/May time but with the speed of the vaccinations in Europe and globally (bar a few exceptions like Israel) being so slow, I'm thinking it'll be other end of the summer before things get back to some normality.

Hector Savage

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-55699581

Here is Australia admitting borders will remain closed - even after 100% vaccination...


Still think this is about a virus ?

kravmaga

Cerveza wrote: »

The country will be back open by summer.

I disagree, not a hope in hell, sure the entire population wont even be fully vaccinated by September.

3 the square

Will there be a chance the ploughing championships will take place in September?? 250000 plus meeting in a field in laois .

Sam Hain

3 the square wrote: »

Will there be a chance the ploughing championships will take place in September?? 250000 plus meeting in a field in laois .

The ploughing championships can go and sh1te.

Dr. Bre

3 the square wrote: »

Will there be a chance the ploughing championships will take place in September?? 250000 plus meeting in a field in laois .

You already know the answer to this

3 the square

Dr. Bre wrote: »

You already know the answer to this

It might just make it

pgj2015

anyone know why they said yesterday that they dont want foreign tourists coming to Ireland in 2021? I was surprised to hear that in January and with the rollout of vaccines.

duffman13

Hector Savage wrote: »

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-55699581

Here is Australia admitting borders will remain closed - even after 100% vaccination...


Still think this is about a virus ?

It doesn't say after 100% vaccination in that article. If I was in Australia I'd be delighted given they have relative normality. They rely on tourism quite a bit but domestic tourism will make up for a bit of it for them.

They've done brilliant so why ruin the good work until clarity is there. They haven't even started vaccinations as they are watching what is happening elsewhere before granting approval

Sanjuro

Hector Savage wrote: »

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-55699581

Here is Australia admitting borders will remain closed - even after 100% vaccination...


Still think this is about a virus ?

No, you're right. It's clearly a massive world-wide conspiracy by the elite to eventually turn us all into chum to feed the .001% of the top 1%.

douglashyde

Sanjuro wrote: »

No, you're right. It's clearly a massive world-wide conspiracy by the elite to eventually turn us all into chum to feed the .001% of the top 1%.

Or maybe ... it's a fine example that lockdowns are propagated by fear. If your population is safe from the virus through vaccination, why would you keep any restrictions in place?

The risk/reward is arguably not there without vaccines, with vaccines I would imagine there is no argument at all.

Datacore

GazzaL wrote: »

The smallest of small minorities deny that a virus exists. It's sinply wrong to lump everyone who's critical of non-stop lockdowns into that category. There's nothing patient or pragmatic about NPHET's approach. Even when they've implemented higher levels of restrictions, they never gave them a wet week before calling for even more restrictions and chastising the public.

Meanwhile, in the rest of Europe, the pragmatic are either already open for business or are in the process of doing so.

Had we actually stuck to the calm and rational approach over Christmas we wouldn’t be in this situation now. We would have had low numbers and probably be operating as we were over the summer, with relatively light restrictions.

The reality in Ireland is we’ve a huge spike to contend with now and that was caused by head in sand approaches and trying to move to absolute normality when it wasn’t possible or appropriate.

We had personal control over this at Christmas. People were asked to manage it and make sensible decisions about it and clearly many of them didn’t and this is where we are.

As for the tiny minority, in Ireland perhaps, but if you’re looking at the US or parts of continental Europe they’re a significant part of the debate. The Irish version isn’t flat out American style MAGA denial stuff, it’s the “Aragh sure it’s all nonsense! I’m off to to a house party”

The position we are in now was entirely avoidable and the fact that we are in it shows a huge degree of impatience and dismissal of expert opinions by society at large, by commercial lobbies, by the media going into Santa mode and by politics responding to those pressures.

Had we been more calm and cool about it, business would likely be operating now, life would be more normal, the hospitals wouldn’t be overwhelmed and would be treating other diseases and doing normal diagnostic procedures and a lot of people wouldn’t be dead.

The choice is either deal with the reality or keep running into a brick wall - over and over.

It’s not a political choice.

In general, most of Europe has made an utter dogs dinner of this. Citing examples from Europe or the US is a bit pointless. They by and large all handling it badly. The spikes are just occurring in different places at different times. Ours was very extreme because we have a culture of going absolutely mad at Christmas and travel around much like the Americans do for thanksgiving.

Had we just accepted that a normal Christmas wasn’t possible this year and been calm about it, we would not be dealing with this now.

There’s a continuous false dichotomy being projected that you can control the spread or open business as usual. The reality is the two are deeply interlinked.

If you fail to control the virus the less likely it is that you can operate closer to normal. We can’t function if the levels get too high.

The reality we aren’t facing is this *is* reality. We can’t just magic back to a time that the virus wasn’t here and continuously yabbering on as if this is a political issue is why the US and Europe are where they are.

Until there’s a technical solution to the virus (vaccination and effective treatments) this is reality. It’s unpleasant and it’s definitely undesirable but it’s where we are and we have to deal with it.

It’s a tightrope walk until then and we had been doing fairly well until we fell off, rather spectacularly, a few weeks ago.

It will get better as the year goes on, but if a large % of us go into “Karen mode” over and over then it’s just going to be a hell of a lot of brick walls to keep running into.

timeToLive

tara2k wrote: »

You need to define vulnerable. Are people in their forties with no underlying conditions vulnerable? People who fall into that category have been hospitalised due to Covid. I would love to know what NPHET's definition is. It'd give us a good idea of what lies ahead in 2021.

No... 40 year olds are not vulnerable :eek::D

I reckon it will be mid 2022 before we are truly and completely 100% back to normal. Reason being I reckon it will take a WHO approved standard cocktail of vaccines with all the up-to-date variants to be ideally effective. In meantime we will indeed get travel and some normality, with odd troublesome outbreaks with new variants, but far less deaths overall. They will still be tweaking with a few restrictions until then, and won't be encouraging density of gatherings.

Datacore

Datacore wrote: »

The position we are in now was entirely avoidable and the fact that we are in it shows a huge degree of impatience and dismissal of expert opinions by society at large, by commercial lobbies, by the media going into Santa mode and by politics responding to those pressures
.

On Liveline we had Joe Duffy telling us "Covid can't cancel Christmas" with similar bring spouted by Ryan Tubridy.

Irish Steve

So, let's think about holidays abroad this year?

Flight to Playinthesun, bargain basement price to get as many bums on seats as possible €50
PCR test 3 days before flying €150
2 weeks accomodation lets say to be nice it's €300 because everyone out there is desperate to get people to come there
PCR test 3 days before coming home €150
Flight home €50
PCR test after 5 days of self isolation €150

So, 2 weeks in playinthesun is going to cost somewhere around €850 per person, without any food or drink in that price, but remember that your 2 weeks could actually become nearer 4 weeks because you are having to self isolate when you get home.

Now, let's throw another spanner in the works. 3 Days before you come home, you get tested but fail the PCR test in Playinthesun. Your first problem will be finding any accomodation that will take you having failed the PCR test. Good Luck with that, and likely scenario is that you won't have travel insurance to cover that, as none of the insurance companies will be willing to provide that cover, due to the high risk factor.

If you are lucky, you might be able to change your flight home to a different date without having to pay for it again, but depending on the small print, you might not, and when you do eventually get a clear PCR test, another €150, you're still looking at another 2 weeks in self isolation when you get home.

So, if all goes well, and nothing goes wrong, for a family of 4, a couple of cheap off peak weeks in the sun could well end up costing somewhere north of €4000, and if anything goes wrong with that plan, because Covid is not behaving as expected, the costs could be considerably higher, possibly another €700 per person by the time you get home, depending on how many pass or fail the test before coming home. For the peak period of the summer school holidays, try at least doubling that figure.

Not sure that there will be too many takers on that sort of bargain deal! Not sure how many airlines will even bother offering flights to Playinthesun this year, given the problems that there will be getting people over and back without problems. Getting a PCR test 3 days before flying, and having the result before travelling is not going to be easy as things are at the moment, and that's without significant numbers wanting to travel.

Irish Steve

Irish Steve wrote: »

So, let's think about holidays abroad this year?

Flight to Playinthesun, bargain basement price to get as many bums on seats as possible €50
PCR test 3 days before flying €150
2 weeks accomodation lets say to be nice it's €300 because everyone out there is desperate to get people to come there
PCR test 3 days before coming home €150
Flight home €50
PCR test after 5 days of self isolation €150

So, 2 weeks in playinthesun is going to cost somewhere around €850 per person, without any food or drink in that price, but remember that your 2 weeks could actually become nearer 4 weeks because you are having to self isolate when you get home.

Now, let's throw another spanner in the works. 3 Days before you come home, you get tested but fail the PCR test in Playinthesun. Your first problem will be finding any accomodation that will take you having failed the PCR test. Good Luck with that, and likely scenario is that you won't have travel insurance to cover that, as none of the insurance companies will be willing to provide that cover, due to the high risk factor.

If you are lucky, you might be able to change your flight home to a different date without having to pay for it again, but depending on the small print, you might not, and when you do eventually get a clear PCR test, another €150, you're still looking at another 2 weeks in self isolation when you get home.

So, if all goes well, and nothing goes wrong, for a family of 4, a couple of cheap off peak weeks in the sun could well end up costing somewhere north of €4000, and if anything goes wrong with that plan, because Covid is not behaving as expected, the costs could be considerably higher, possibly another €700 per person by the time you get home, depending on how many pass or fail the test before coming home. For the peak period of the summer school holidays, try at least doubling that figure.

Not sure that there will be too many takers on that sort of bargain deal! Not sure how many airlines will even bother offering flights to Playinthesun this year, given the problems that there will be getting people over and back without problems. Getting a PCR test 3 days before flying, and having the result before travelling is not going to be easy as things are at the moment, and that's without significant numbers wanting to travel.

Joe Duffy's Liveline (& the thread) will get very busy about mid summer

[Deleted User]

[Deleted User] wrote: »

I reckon it will be mid 2022 before we are truly and completely 100% back to normal. Reason being I reckon it will take a WHO approved standard cocktail of vaccines with all the up-to-date variants to be ideally effective. In meantime we will indeed get travel and some normality, with odd troublesome outbreaks with new variants, but far less deaths overall. They will still be tweaking with a few restrictions until then, and won't be encouraging density of gatherings.

I think we will be fully open this year with the exception of night clubs. Indoor gatherings will have a restriction on numbers. Early 2022 will see us back to pre Covid life so that's no social distancing and no masks. I can just about get through this with my state of mind intact if I believe that.

Marty Bird

Irish Steve wrote: »

So, let's think about holidays abroad this year?

Flight to Playinthesun, bargain basement price to get as many bums on seats as possible €50
PCR test 3 days before flying €150
2 weeks accomodation lets say to be nice it's €300 because everyone out there is desperate to get people to come there
PCR test 3 days before coming home €150
Flight home €50
PCR test after 5 days of self isolation €150

So, 2 weeks in playinthesun is going to cost somewhere around €850 per person, without any food or drink in that price, but remember that your 2 weeks could actually become nearer 4 weeks because you are having to self isolate when you get home.

Now, let's throw another spanner in the works. 3 Days before you come home, you get tested but fail the PCR test in Playinthesun. Your first problem will be finding any accomodation that will take you having failed the PCR test. Good Luck with that, and likely scenario is that you won't have travel insurance to cover that, as none of the insurance companies will be willing to provide that cover, due to the high risk factor.

If you are lucky, you might be able to change your flight home to a different date without having to pay for it again, but depending on the small print, you might not, and when you do eventually get a clear PCR test, another €150, you're still looking at another 2 weeks in self isolation when you get home.

So, if all goes well, and nothing goes wrong, for a family of 4, a couple of cheap off peak weeks in the sun could well end up costing somewhere north of €4000, and if anything goes wrong with that plan, because Covid is not behaving as expected, the costs could be considerably higher, possibly another €700 per person by the time you get home, depending on how many pass or fail the test before coming home. For the peak period of the summer school holidays, try at least doubling that figure.

Not sure that there will be too many takers on that sort of bargain deal! Not sure how many airlines will even bother offering flights to Playinthesun this year, given the problems that there will be getting people over and back without problems. Getting a PCR test 3 days before flying, and having the result before travelling is not going to be easy as things are at the moment, and that's without significant numbers wanting to travel.

Have you looked at prices abroad? Looking at this post I’m going to say no you haven’t a clue what a load of nonsense.

Irish Steve

Holiday inn express Malaga Airport, 2 weeks July, 2 adults, 2 children, €1300, so yes, I have looked and there were a number of places for that period that were massively more than that figure.

Marty Bird

Irish Steve wrote: »

Holiday inn express Malaga Airport, 2 weeks July, 2 adults, 2 children, €1300, so yes, I have looked and there were a number of places for that period that were massively more than that figure.

When I go on holiday I always stay at the airport.

SheepsClothing

Hector Savage wrote: »

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-55699581

Here is Australia admitting borders will remain closed - even after 100% vaccination...


Still think this is about a virus ?

Probably a good idea for them to act conservatively in the medium term. Countries that are pinning one hundred percent of their hopes on the vaccine, are one vaccine resistant strain away from being plunged right back into the depths again.

Lux23

Deleted User wrote: »

I think we will be fully open this year with the exception of night clubs. Indoor gatherings will have a restriction on numbers. Early 2022 will see us back to pre Covid life so that's no social distancing and no masks. I can just about get through this with my state of mind intact if I believe that.

I think masks will become a permanent fixture in a lot of settings such as transport and hospitals; it isn't a bad habit to keep up.

phormium

Lux23 wrote: »

I think masks will become a permanent fixture in a lot of settings such as transport and hospitals; it isn't a bad habit to keep up.

I would hate to see masks continuing, could agree with in hospitals alright though.

We should definitely though keep the sanitiser in and out of places, in hindsight it was fairly manky going into say a restaurant using door handle, touching menus/condiments etc etc and eating without some form of sanitisation before starting tearing your bread roll apart!

Lux23

Lux23 wrote: »

I think masks will become a permanent fixture in a lot of settings such as transport and hospitals; it isn't a bad habit to keep up.

I hate the things but if it's only those 2 settings I'll manage. I miss peoples faces.

505_

Not a write off to 2020 extent but not sure if the freedom we'll have will be a whole lot more than there was in the summer. A lot depending on the vaccine rollout.