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

The amount of people I know that don’t want to go back to the office/work is scary

they want this to drag out

Yes, vaccine passes and masks seems to be our future. Very normal.

Probably because Jack Lambert likes to hear Jack Lambert talk and also because of where they selected members from - Department of Health (DOH), Health Service Executive (HSE), Health Protection Surveillance Centre (HPSC), Health Information and Quality Authority (HIQA) and Health Products Regulatory Authority (HPRA)

In regards to the actual title of this thread, today should be the biggest day so far, looking forward to some good news out of the leaks and hopefully not too much BS.

Leaks will be starting today, I'd say. Official tomorrow, yep.

There seems to be a lot of guessing already and quite a few titbits have been thrown out, almost that we will be fully open in 3 weeks. It may leak or it could be one thing they manage to keep mostly under wraps.

Jesus

So it's not, "effectively a cold," then. Thanks.

Where does it say that?

@bear1 wrote:

Now, I'm not going to "told you so" over this whole thread 😜 but functionally it comes down to, "What else can you do". Once the vaccination rollout is done, we've effectively don't everything that can be done, and restrictions on individual freedoms should come to an end. Nothing will end overnight; we know that's not a great idea, it should all come down in phases to limit the impact of any single change. If nothing else, the government have at least done their best to ensure that when business can open, they can do so in a practical way. In the interests of saving money, many other countries (like Spain) allowed businesses to reopen, but with restrictions that functionally made it impossible to run a business.

We never told nightclubs to open but with masks and social distancing enforced. Because they would be insane. So we're not going to do it now. When nightclubs reopen, there will be some guidelines, perhaps a requirement to have HVAC (no bad thing, recalling all the smelly nights in tiny basements during my youth), etc.

I expect there will be some form of ramping up period for the remaining sectors, where their capacity or their guidelines will initially be slightly restrictive, and then will lift as time goes on. There was a suggestion that nightclubs, for example, would have the option of a lower capacity with no checks, or a higher capacity with vaccine checks. That might realistically apply from the the start of October for a month. Give maximum time for the nightclub-going group to get vaccinated. Then it could be gone completely.

Mandatory masks will be gone from the start of November, at the very latest. That's when the legislation expires. That's not to say they'll be gone-gone. Individual businesses will always have the right to insist people wear them, if thats what they want. Hospitals and other vulnerable areas will likely continue to enforce mask-wearing for visitors well into next year.

I'd be very surprised if Public transport operators didn't introduce bye-laws which permitted them to put some statutory footing on masks - such as passengers who are clearly ill being required to wear masks, or being able to introduce a network-wide mask mandate in the event.

They're two different things, to be fair. Plenty of us have no interest in going back to the office, because it suits not to. The property companies and big multinationals are sh1tting themselves though because of how much money they have invested in commercial property. Look out for plenty of suspicious paid articles in the coming months claiming that remote working doesn't work, costs too much, or "inspirational" pieces from some managing director about how he just couldn't stay out of the office and, "We get all our best work done when we're together". Don't forget the pop-science articles that will say that, "Collaboration works best when people are in the same office", that will be based on a survey conducted on 500 sales people, commissioned by AIB or Goldman Sachs.

As another poster has said here before, it's silly season for them at the moment.

To be honest, they can simply lengthen the mask legislation from November.

I didn't know that though, if they do nothing then from November theoretically indoor mask wearing becomes suggested rather than law?

Well to be fair, that was your experience, but it appears from what we know now that your experience was the exception rather than the rule! For the vast majority of people it’s simply “just a cold” if even that. That’s of course not to say it is for everyone.

your anecdote is your experience and is as valid as anyone else’s experience. My own anecdote is of the few people I know who had it, two experienced mild symptoms and described it as a cold, the rest had to be told via a test result that the had it and the biggest symptom was bewilderment.

I could give a personal experience from Feb 2020 before covid was a thing, I’ll never know it if was covid because we weren’t testing everything that moved at the time, but if it was then my own experience is that it was a bad cold but nothing like the flu! Again, that’s just a personal anecdote no more or less valid than yours! Glad your on the mend 💪🏼

It's not as simple as them just extending it, it requires the Dail and Seanad to approve.

Once they allow it to lapse, then from early November mask-wearing becomes official HSE public health advice and not a legal requirement. As I say, this gives enough balance between personal choice and public protection. Businesses or premises which want/need to insist on mask-wearing will have a basis on which they can choose to deny entry to unmasked individuals, but there will be no legal basis to require it.

The media organisations are all looking to get a jump over each other and be the first to break the news that this is happening or that is happening and it is not going to change, it is the nature of the news media to be the first with a story. What does need to changes is the government "leaking" this information to sources in the media or using the media so that they can gauge what the response of the decision is and depending on the results of that response decide to go with the decision or not. The government here seem to be afraid to make a decision incase it doesn't look well for them.