Covid 19 Part XXXV-956,720 ROI (5,952 deaths) 452,946 NI (3,002 deaths) (08/01) Read OP

Well, the government plan is to continue to ease restrictions and get things back to as close to normal as possible, however this virus keeps throwing spanners into the works, so who knows. There's absolutely no point whatsoever in making fixed political promises that may not be deliverable if this suddenly blows up in our faces again.

The vaccines should be doing something and the uptake has been huge, so that's certainly a major game changer.

However, it's a live situation and I think we'll have to just accept that it's going to be a case of ride it out and see where it goes.

Intended to achieve. If, for example, the vaccines subsequently don’t work very well (which hopefully will not be a scenario we have to face), but it’s still not beyond the realms of possibility, things will change.

We are basing our strategy on one weapon only at the moment and hopefully it remains effective.

You’re asking for cast iron guarantees about unknowable unknowns. We are very much in best guess mode at the moment. We’ve a fair idea of what might happen, but you can’t sit down and have a political negotiation with a coronavirus and ask it to firmly lay out its intentions and a roadmap for how it intends to interact with immune systems over the next 12 months and if it has escape variants planned.

The unpalatable reality is that this is a rather serious pandemic, a force of nature, and the responses are being developed on the fly as we go. Flexibility is needed, as there is no alternative.

Hopefully things go smoothly, but you might as well be angry about earthquake or lightening strikes. There’s only so much can be predicted.

Until we have a couple of months of restored activity with high vaccination levels, I don’t think it would be very sensible to be locking anyone into anything. We simply do not know where this will be in 3 months time there isn’t enough data points or experience to accurately model it yet, so until then it’s all about flexibility and adaptability until we know it’s genuinely controlled.

It doesn’t mean we can’t open up or restore normality in the meantime, but it shouldn’t mean we go into the next phase with iron clad guarantees of Boris Johnson, tabloid headline “freedom day” type stuff either. It’s how you set yourself up for unrealistic expectations.

Personally, I would rather see COVID for what it is and deal with it as it comes, rather than burying my head in the sand about it and pretending political promises can be made.

What we need in place are contingencies to ensure maximum economic activity can happen and can be sustained and to know that there are adequate systems and strategies there to deal with any potential eventuality.

It’s all fine and well to be a total optimist but it’s a government's duty to plan for less than optimal scenarios and worst case scenarios when you’re dealing with something with high risks.

They shouldn’t be over cautious but they also can’t just drop their guard either.

It also doesn’t mean that we need to be so conservative that we can’t move. There’s a realistic level of caution and a pragmatic and realistic approach needs to be taken here and at this juncture, I can’t see how locking things into fixed dates and roadmaps is going to be very helpful.

There is a cautiously optimistic number of weeks that need to be gotten through before making any fixed promises and that applies to anyone in planning anything, be they private organisations and businesses or governments.

It hasn't made any difference in terms of restrictions, unfortunately.

Germany limiting to 50% and 25k max no matter how big the ground is.

Serie A starting at 50% and only for those with Covid pass

France - fans need Covid pass

Glad to see this is still an alternate reality with no knowledge of the real world

I understand that people want to be positive and hopeful, and that's good, but it's true to say that hardly anything has changed in terms of restrictions. There's no comparison between Ireland and England, for example. Life is 99% normal in England.