Relaxation of Restrictions, Part XII *Read OP For Mod Warnings*

I've him down as more of a David Brent. A nice enough bloke, but utterly spineless, runs away from any blame or responsibility, would sell his soul for a position of power (Brent tried to sell his employees into redundancy to become the manager of the merged branches, Martin agreed to potentially put a final nail in the existence of FF to avoid the ignominy of his name on the Leaders section of the Wikipedia FF page having an asterisk beside it as being the only leader never to be Taoiseach)

I still can't fathom how the media let him off on his nonsense before the last restriction lift.

In the evening time,, Mehole stated that the increase in Delta would not impact the next phase of the reopening, specifically pubs.

Not 12 hours later I woke up for work at 530am, opened the Indo app on the phone, lo and behold indoor pub reopening is looking unlikely because of the increase in Delta (this was the initial date they didn't reopen- it was after this NPHET shot themselves in the foot by saying reopen only with vaccine passes, they suggested this only because they thought the government wouldn't actually follow through on it, they must be absolutely kicking themselves that 80% of adults are now actually legally allowed enjoy themselves in a pub, absolutely sick about it they are)

Joe Biden gets eviscerated for saying two months ago Kabul wouldn't fall like Saigon did, the clown in charge here gets a free pass for flip flopping within 12 hours. It's staggering.

I keep hearing this one, yet from my day to day interactions it is only those of my parents generation and above, those who just read the paper and watch the evening news and who don't read any alternative news sources, who still believe in it.

Most people fully bought into it until about August, September last year. Since then people have done their research- deaths within 28 days being a Covid death regardless, the NPHET report that blamed a September surge on re opened pubs but ignored schools and colleges, the media being full of stories about the tiny minority of fit and healthy young people who die or suffer Long Covid when most people in real life know of nobody young who has suffered either of these and thus can deduce that the media are hyping up outlier cases, constant manipulation of stats i.e. the amount of people "hospitalised with Covid" counting people who catch it in hospital or test positive on admission, NPHET last summer claiming only 3% of cases were travel related, lies about 10% of infected children developing long Covid when studies show it is as low as 2% if even that, deliberately vague stats from NPHET about exactly how many people can expect an adverse vaccine reaction, the shift from "protect the health system" to "protect the elderly" (both fair enough) to where we are now- well, the elderly and the hospital system are now protected but we still have to isolate to prevent teenagers catching long covid apparently.

You tell that many lies and half truths and any population that can be bothered educating itself isn't going to listen to you.

I have not met a single soul in real life under the age of 60 who

a- believes the government has told the entire truth throughout this crisis

b- believes that the government and NPHET hasn't used the crisis as cover to further its own agenda (fast forward the end of cash, artificially inflate house prices, stifle the right to protest, attempt to permanently change Ireland's cultural relationship with the pub in favour of the European meal and three drinks culture)

c- Think the masks are about anything more than control and subservience. I'm personally on the brink of ditching mine

I know a few women who sort of shy away from these questions, don't like to get involved types- they are sort of torn between thinking that believing this stuff puts you in the kill the elderly brigade, but deep down they know it has all been exaggerated nonsense.

Men tend to be more vocal about it.

In the world I live in, anybody preaching Hold Firm, anybody worried about Long Covid, anybody who thinks people like Holohan are worth listening to, would be laughed at, abused, mocked.

Micheal Martin knew that in the London area in the weeks prior to Christmas 1 in 30 residents were carrying the Kent variant at any given time.

He decided to let the ex pats come home anyway, told them to stay in their bedrooms for their entire trip and seemed to believe that they would.

This decision set us back five months, if the ex pats had not been allowed to return home we would never have went into another lockdown. Seal the Northern border to stop them coming in that way and deny them entry at southern airports. It was that simple but he couldn't be bothered.

With travel restrictions and MHQ, the Kent variant would have crept in by about March or April, by which time our vulnerable were all single jabbed, and one jab was enough to resist the Kent variant.

Sweden.

Martin said if we took the Swedish approach we would have suffered 2245 additional "Covid deaths".

Given the age profile and general health of the average "Covid death", the vast majority of these people have since died of other conditions. We, on the other hand, will have copped more missed cancer screenings and more suicides than Sweden did.

I crunched the numbers in some detail on this thread.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/2058202740/micheal-martin-we-saved-2245-lives-apparently/p1

The grey vote is important, but young people are more political than ever. 15 years ago most people in their teens and 20s wouldn't have even been registered to vote, now they vote for SF en masse. Which considering how staggeringly complicated it is to even get yourself added to the electoral register these days is a statement in itself.

FF know they are finished as a major party, at this stage you would expect MM himself to lose his own seat he has been so shockingly inept, it's probably at the stage where his own wife, his own twin brother, his own kids wouldn't vote for him. Their best hope is to get into coalition with SF next time around.

FG will never in a million years go into coalition with SF- they know their best hope is to let FF and SF go at it next time around and hope they make an absolute hames of things.

Two years and billions spent to fight something that cannot be beat

War on Covid will go on for years