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

You're right. But people think I'm crazy for saying that they are very popular. But I reckon they definitely are. The country is obsessed with them. So many people love that they can call out a person for not wearing one. That's why I don't see them ever going.

No, no, don't worry, they're just temporary. Just for a few weeks.

Yep. That's it. And they keep saying 'semblance of normality'.

I honestly think we continuously underestimate cultural differences in terms of how people socialise and interact.

For example, some countries are just more much more gregarious and use public spaces and events much more than others and others just aren’t. I’ve lived in a few European countries and there are huge differences in that regard.

Ireland, Britain, some of the Benelux, definitely Spain, Portugal, Italy etc are all highly focused on things like bars, eating out, live music, and big public connected regular outings.

Some other countries are a more more focused on inviting people home and that’s where it’s spreading in France for example.

There are also differences in climate. In somewhere like Ireland but also much of the northwest of Europe it’s too wet and cold to just have terrace dining and drinking most of the time. It will be challenging beyond September and indoors will fill up.

There are also travel patterns of travel connecting some countries much more than others, which is why you’ll see things happen on the U.K., Ireland, Spain, Portugal and France in quite rapidly connected sweeps, much more so than say an outbreak in the U.K. leading to one in Norway or Germany.

There are also aspects of societies you can’t change as they’re deeply cultural and there are limits to how long people will be able to just not interact.

I’m honestly at the stage that I don’t know what the outcome of this is. The vaccines are a massive step forward, but they’re not likely to end it, only dampen its impact. It’s a disease that has hit upon our fundamental need to be social and live in communities and that’s why the infection chain is difficult to break.

The only solutions I can see to this are going to have to be technical and medical : develop a next generation of better vaccines, find effective antivirals etc, as we’re not going to be able to keep social and extreme hygiene measures in place forever and we’re also not looking like we’re going to be able to achieve natural herd immunity anytime soon.

We’re also not doing enough about ventilation and air filtration. It’s expensive, but relative to a lockdown it’s money very well spent. We could be lashing in the HEPA filters and serious air quality monitoring on a big scale into classrooms, bars, restaurants etc but we’re not because we are a political culture that is reactive, often lacking in any engineering or technical prowess and frequently penny pinching in all the wrong areas.

We should be using widespread, cheap antigen testing but we are clearly caught up in some medico legal deer in headlights that tests must be utterly perfect or not done. I’m sure that’s at the core of the anti-antigen thing here.

It just seems to me like 1950s to 2019 was the golden age of an expectation of a developed world that was largely free of any dangerous, highly communicable diseases. SARS-CoV-2 has driven a bus through that utopia most of us grew up in and is incredibly frustrating and depressing to realise that’s our reality now.

This is how life was before the 1950s and 60s and what’s worse is we’re taking things like the magical ability of antibiotics to control and cure common illnesses for granted and wasting those too and making little effort to find or develop new ones. So there’s plenty more potential for bubbles of certainty to burst in the years ahead