Covid 19 Part XXXIV-249,437 ROI(4,906 deaths) 120,195 NI (2,145 deaths)(01/05)Read OP

Jim_Hodge

Turtwig wrote: »

Israel unlocked at 50%. They operated a strict vaccine certification system for indoor venues.
We don't appear to have the appetite for such a system here.

And when that was advocated here there was uproar about a two tier system, those who sacrificed to protect the vulnerable being excluded from events etc.

They can't win with this thing.

mohawk

hmmm wrote: »

I'm basing the 70% on us having less community spread than Israel had - it's just a guess, but I generally agree with your figures. I think end of June is probably too early - some people will have only just received their vaccine & it takes some time to take effect. If I was to pick a date I'd say end of July at the earliest for indoor dining.

Either way people need to plan for doing stuff outdoors. Put on a jumper and be thankful that science looks like it is going to get us out of this.

End of July would be a disaster for the hospitality business. It gives them one month peak season. The vaccines take time to reach full effect, however there is some protection after the first dose and then full protection following the second.

Once we get into vaccinating the 50-60 group that should stop hospitals getting overrun as quickly as they did previously.

WoollyRedHat

Turtwig wrote: »

Israel unlocked at 50%. They operated a strict vaccine certification system for indoor venues.
We don't appear to have the appetite for such a system here.

We also have very little data of first dose efficacy re transmission. Most of the studies done so far are on HCWs in a healthcare setting which would have strict infection control processes in place. Gen pop locations were in the midst of a lockdown.
Preliminary indicators are really positive. The UK in the next 4 to 6 weeks will tell us a lot.

Yes, UK is due to resume indoor hospitality by May 17th, so we should have a good idea of what is possible here in last week of May.

KrustyUCC

mohawk wrote: »

End of July would be a disaster for the hospitality business. It gives them one month peak season. The vaccines take time to reach full effect, however there is some protection after the first dose and then full protection following the second.

Once we get into vaccinating the 50-60 group that should stop hospitals getting overrun as quickly as they did previously.

Exactly

Government know they need indoor dining in place late June or 1st of July at the latest

They need hospitality back and to enable staycations they need indoor dining

Prices are exorbitant for July and August

People aren't going to go on 'holidays' when the only option is getting takeaways back to your room

Pandiculation

Realistically, I think the peak for the hospitality season is likely to be extended though. I can't see people just not doing anything in August, September and even into October once things start to happen again and we can move around the country.

The traditional peak season my not apply as much as it did and international travel's likely to be weird for 12 months or more, I suspect. I'm not entirely convinced the airlines are going to be ramping back up at the flip of a switch and we will have to rely a lot on domestic tourism and rather more focused international tourism for a while.

I could see transatlantic tourism (both directions) taking a while to come back to normality, which has a fairly significant impact here. Also, the profile of some of our tourism is older, so you might factor that into it too.

The biggest issue at the moment is there's a sense you can't plan anything in terms of holidays or trips at all and that's probably feeding into light bookings, even if there's a possibility of having some kind of tourism back to semi-normality later this summer.

I just think there's a difference between prudent caution and total paralysis and we seem to have drifted more towards the later.

WoollyRedHat

hmmm wrote: »

I'm basing the 70% on us having less community spread than Israel had - it's just a guess, but I generally agree with your figures. I think end of June is probably too early - some people will have only just received their vaccine & it takes some time to take effect - and the government are going to be cautious. If I was to pick a date I'd say end of July at the earliest for indoor dining.

Either way people need to plan for doing stuff outdoors. Put on a jumper and be thankful that science looks like it is going to get us out of this.

You've got to factor in drop in transmission of Covid as a result of vaccines, which means community spread will decrease significantly. I think indoor hospitality will be back by end of June on that basis, but there should be incentives to those in the industry to offer outdoor seating to as many people as possible.

fm

Turtwig wrote: »

Israel unlocked at 50%. They operated a strict vaccine certification system for indoor venues.
We don't appear to have the appetite for such a system here.

We also have very little data of first dose efficacy re transmission. Most of the studies done so far are on HCWs in a healthcare setting which would have strict infection control processes in place. Gen pop locations were in the midst of a lockdown.
Preliminary indicators are really positive. The UK in the next 4 to 6 weeks will tell us a lot.

they also had an average of 6000 cases per day to deal with when they started to unlock,9 million population, now an average of 160 cases per day

KrustyUCC

Pandiculation wrote: »

Realistically, I think the peak for the hospitality season is likely to be extended though. I can't see people just not doing anything in August, September and even into October once things start to happen again and we can move around the country.

The traditional peak season my not apply as much as it did and international travel's likely to be weird for 12 months or more, I suspect. I'm not entirely convinced the airlines are going to be ramping back up at the flip of a switch and we will have to rely a lot on domestic tourism and rather more focused international tourism for a while.

I could see transatlantic tourism (both directions) taking a while to come back to normality, which has a fairly significant impact here. Also, the profile of some of our tourism is older, so you might factor that into it too.

The biggest issue at the moment is there's a sense you can't plan anything in terms of holidays or trips at all and that's probably feeding into light bookings, even if there's a possibility of having some kind of tourism back to semi-normality later this summer.

I just think there's a difference between prudent caution and total paralysis and we seem to have drifted more towards the later.

hmmm maybe but very hard for holidays in September/October when the children are back in school

That's always a severe limiting factor

Pandiculation

It's also a live situation which needs to roll and adapt to the science as it comes to conclusions about what's going on.

That's necessary, but it's also causing issues with planning far ahead and I suspect that's also a problem for policy making as you can't really give iron clad guarantees of anything. It's all looking rather more optimistic than we'd have thought, but I still suspect 2021 being anything like total business as usual is a bit unlikely.

It'll be a weird year, but we need to make it as close to normal as we can, with prudent decision making. I'm just not sure that's something we seem to be showing much talent for of late.

The Government got its fingers burnt, and quite badly, due to decisions it made about Christmas, but that being said, it can't just go into some kind of deer caught in headlights mode indefinitely either.

mohawk

Pandiculation wrote: »

Realistically, I think the peak for the hospitality season is likely to be extended though. I can't see people just not doing anything in August, September and even into October once things start to happen again and we can move around the country.

The traditional peak season my not apply as much as it did and international travel's likely to be weird for 12 months or more, I suspect. I'm not entirely convinced the airlines are going to be ramping back up at the flip of a switch and we will have to rely a lot on domestic tourism and rather more focused international tourism for a while.

I could see transatlantic tourism (both directions) taking a while to come back to normality, which has a fairly significant impact here. Also, the profile of some of our tourism is older, so you might factor that into it too.

The biggest issue at the moment is there's a sense you can't plan anything in terms of holidays or trips at all and that's probably feeding into light bookings, even if there's a possibility of having some kind of tourism back to semi-normality later this summer.

I just think there's a difference between prudent caution and total paralysis and we seem to have drifted more towards the later.

A huge determination for peak season is schools. (And weather). Once kids are back at school that is a huge amount of people who won’t be going anywhere especially when kids have missed so much in person teaching.

Pandiculation

mohawk wrote: »

A huge determination for peak season is schools. (And weather). Once kids are back at school that is a huge amount of people who won’t be going anywhere especially when kids have missed so much in person teaching.

That's a lot of people, but not everyone's in a position that they have school going kids, particularly when you're looking at some of our international inbound tourism market, which has a high % of people travelling either as 20-40 somethings without kids, or older retirees and tends to be fairly upmarket.

Domestic tourism's more of a broad mix of everything, but I think we could definitely get the weekend luxury breaks and all that stuff back up and running well in into autumn.

I could definitely see parents being quite concerned about any missed time in school come September. It's nearly been two academic years of messing around now.

We need to be looking at adapting tourism to suit 2021 and getting things functioning safely.

For example, if we're looking at inbound travel from places with adequate vaccine programmes, we should be able to bundle PCR testing the day of departure and all of that. I don't think MHQ can really just go on beyond July other than for very high risk areas.

We'll need to be looking at opening up the EU to intra EU travel and safe travel bubbles into countries that are ready to do that.

The vaccine certs / passports need to be part of that and I'm just concerned that they're going to end up so watered down as a concept that they'll be useless. There's a big load of paranoia around them at the moment coming from the same groups that were anti-sensible measures the whole way through, but they could end up being an extremely important tool in any kind of normality of travel again in the short to medium term.

hmmm

WoollyRedHat wrote: »

You've got to factor in drop in transmission of Covid as a result of vaccines, which means community spread will decrease significantly. I think indoor hospitality will be back by end of June on that basis, but there should be incentives to those in the industry to offer outdoor seating to as many people as possible.

I don't see it unless as Turtwig mentions we only allow vaccinated people in. We can't have it every way - no vaccination certs, we want to re-open relatively early, and we want a guarantee of no more lockdowns. It's just not possible, particularly if the government wants to guarantee no further lockdowns are required - it will only take one or two large outbreaks and we'll be shutting the pubs and restaurants a week later.

I expect the government to be cautious, and will re-open indoor dining only when they are sure they will not have to shut it again.

Israel reopened at 50% yes, but the unvaccinated group were concentrated in a cohort who had been pure reckless up to that date and had been widely infected with Covid - I wouldn't be surprised if half of the other 50% had already had Covid.

hmmm

Pandiculation wrote: »

Realistically, I think the peak for the hospitality season is likely to be extended though. I can't see people just not doing anything in August, September and even into October once things start to happen again and we can move around the country.

Agreed, the holiday season this year will start 3 months late and continue into late in the year. We're seeing something like this already in the US as booking air travel is up massively - people are going on the trips they put off for the past 12 months, and are eager to travel just in general.

Pandiculation

hmmm wrote: »

Agreed, the holiday season this year will start 3 months late and continue into late in the year. We're seeing something like this already in the US as booking air travel is up massively - people are going on the trips they put off for the past 12 months, and are eager to travel just in general.

I think you're going to see a lot of people approaching foreign travel, more so long haul, with an abundance of caution too.

You have to remember that for someone from outside the EU healthcare systems, a trip into hospital with COVID in Europe could be extremely expensive or complex with just travel medical insurance. The same applies for an Irish person going to say the US, where you could run into serious hassle with medical expenses very quickly.

That sort of issue is going to be problematic for US inbound tourism for some time to come and also Irish outbound tourism beyond the EU/EEA/UK.

I think that kind of stuff is a huge barrier, especially for older tourists, until the vaccines are really well proven, which could take 12 months of evidence realistically.

JP Liz V1

Deeper Blue wrote: »

Why would there have been arrests in the first place?

I would assume breaking restrictions of more than 6 meeting up

Beasty

By my reckoning Ireland has recorded 199 Covid deaths so far this month. However looking at the daily reports a maximum of 62 of those deaths (not much more than 2 a day) occurred in April. Of course there will be deaths reported in May and later that occurred in April, so that is not a complete picture. However only a third or so of deaths reported have actually occurred in April. In March the total reported was 376, of which a maximum of 182 occurred during the month. Indeed another 38 deaths reported in April occurred in March

My conclusion is we have made massive inroads and that is presumably primarily down to vaccines. We are probably actually averaging around 3 deaths a day when including likely future reports in April, compared with something nearer 8 a day in March. Corresponding numbers for February and January will be very much higher, as we recorded over 1,000 deaths in each of those months

Ficheall

Beasty wrote: »

My conclusion is we have made massive inroads and that is presumably primarily down to vaccines. We are probably actually averaging around 3 deaths a day when including likely future reports in April, compared with something nearer 8 a day in March. Corresponding numbers for February and January will be very much higher, as we recorded over 1,000 deaths in each of those months

Also hugely down to the majority of people abiding by (most) restrictions and precautions and keeping the cases low..

WoollyRedHat

hmmm wrote: »

I don't see it unless as Turtwig mentions we only allow vaccinated people in. We can't have it every way - no vaccination certs, we want to re-open relatively early, and we want a guarantee of no more lockdowns. It's just not possible, particularly if the government wants to guarantee no further lockdowns are required - it will only take one or two large outbreaks and we'll be shutting the pubs and restaurants a week later.

I expect the government to be cautious, and will re-open indoor dining only when they are sure they will not have to shut it again.

Israel reopened at 50% yes, but the unvaccinated group were concentrated in a cohort who had been pure reckless up to that date and had been widely infected with Covid - I wouldn't be surprised if half of the other 50% had already had Covid.

That's fair enough, I didn't think of that.

I think vaccination certificate for couple of months and then outdoor dining for everyone else in that case. Government already preparing to pedestrianise many city centre streets in Dublin, this will have to be done across the country, including villages and towns with supports to businesses along the way.

We also need to look at having more plazas, time we got more European I reckon.

JP Liz V1

JP Liz V1 wrote: »

I would assume breaking restrictions of more than 6 meeting up

Would you seriously like to see groups of more than 6 people going for a walk or having a picnic or few drinks, arrested?

gozunda

hmmm wrote: »

Agreed, the holiday season this year will start 3 months late and continue into late in the year. We're seeing something like this already in the US as booking air travel is up massively - people are going on the trips they put off for the past 12 months, and are eager to travel just in general.

The US State Department released a statement on the 19th with the advisory that it "strongly recommends U.S. citizens reconsider all travel abroad. With the State Department icaning against travel to 80% of the world

As a result of the update, some 8 out of 10 nations around the globe are classified as “Level 4: Do Not Travel.” More than 100 countries were recategorized Level 4, including popular destinations such as Canada, France, Mexico and the U.K."

Ireland is also on the listed of Do Not Travel.

https://www.cnbc.com/2021/04/24/covid-80-percent-of-world-is-unsafe-for-travel-amid-pandemic-state-dept-warns.html

https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/traveladvisories/traveladvisories/ireland-travel-advisory.html

Ficheall

Ficheall wrote: »

Also hugely down to the majority of people abiding by (most) restrictions and precautions and keeping the cases low..

I notice Ficheall that your posts are always on the negative side of the situation. How are you finding the restrictions? Do you have hope for normal life to return in 2022 if not this year?

Ficheall

WoollyRedHat wrote: »

Government already preparing to pedestrianise many city centre streets in Dublin, this will have to be done across the country, including villages and towns with supports to businesses along the way.

They had a great opportunity to put in a nice cycle lane in Salthill when it was "closed" for most of the year, but they opened it up last week and now it's just one big car park again

WoollyRedHat

Ficheall wrote: »

They had a great opportunity to put in a nice cycle lane in Salthill when it was "closed" for most of the year, but they opened it up last week and now it's just one big car park again

Is that Salthill in Galway?

Royale with Cheese

Royale with Cheese wrote: »

Lol, so it's gone from flatten the curve to wait until the vulnerable are vaccinated to wait until the entire adult population is vaccinated and now to we don't know how effective the vaccinations will be so let's just write off the year. Complete fúcking joke, I don't know how anyone could defend that policy (I'm sure many on here will though).

Even being very conservative, once 80% of people have received a vaccine then 2 weeks thereafter indoor dining and bars should open. No excuses.
With the huge volume of vaccines incoming I think that number will be hit around June 20th so the 1st week of July bars & Restaurants should be open for indoor purposes.

gozunda

[Deleted User] wrote: »

I notice Ficheall that your posts are always on the negative side of the situation. How are you finding the restrictions? Do you have hope for normal life to return in 2022 if not this year?

How is acknowledging that the majority keeping to restrictions and helping keep the infection rate low "negative"?

Ficheall

Deleted User wrote: »

I notice Ficheall that your posts are always on the negative side of the situation. How are you finding the restrictions? Do you have hope for normal life to return in 2022 if not this year?

That wasn't negative - I think people's behaviour has had more of a positive impact since Christmas than the vaccines have had (so far).


My precautions have been in response to the pandemic, as opposed to in response to the "restrictions", which haven't really had much extra impact on top. Covid is the "baddie", as opposed to the government/Tony/whatever (even if they are grossly incompetent in some regards).

But yes, covid has been poor incomewise and I'll be glad when the pandemic is under control so I can travel again, and I'll be really glad when my parents are vaccinated.


Barring something awful stemming from India etc, I'm hoping that summer will be reasonably normal because there's not so much need to go inside, and then hopefully vaccines will have calmed things down thereafter. I'm looking at trips abroad from Sept/October onwards, but won't book anything just yet.

Ficheall

WoollyRedHat wrote: »

Is that Salthill in Galway?

Yep. (I will admit I didn't venture out to the insane part recently, so it's possible any photos I saw tweeted were cherry-picked).

thebronze14

robbiezero wrote: »

I had a scatter of pints with a gang on the clontarf sea front on friday night and the same in howth yesterday evening.
Both mobbed with groups of people drinking and enjoying themselves.
Great to see. I imagine its happening all over the country.

As an aside, a bit of outdoor drinking in howth is something i will do again even when pubs are open normally. Great views over the pier and the irish sea, made the pints taste even nicer in spite of the heat and plastic glasses.

I live near Clontarf and walk the seafront at least once a week...Where the feck do ya go for a pee when you are drinking there I want to know? Could be a game changer for me:D

gozunda

gozunda wrote: »

How is acknowledging that the majority keeping to restrictions and helping keep the infection rate low "negative"?

I notice themes in some of the posting styles here. It's interesting to me and I'm always curious as to how others are handling things and if there's anything I can learn.

My question wasn't intended to offend (thanks for responding Ficheall).

Dickie10

i hear simon coveney refer to dr tony holohan as "tony" today on rte radio , sounds like mr holohan has got himself nicely imbedded with the government. thats certainly worrying for pubs to be open at all this year. i fear it could be january 2022