Will there be another lockdown?

Virus doesn't care about timelines or plans and all that

With this lot in charge anything is possible

Ireland has so little unvaccinated people that introducing any restrictions or lockdown would be "bad for business" for any other country which is trying to increase vaccination. Like how do you convince 20-50% people to take a vaccine if they will see countries like Israel, Ireland and few more locking down and reintroducing restrictions despite nearly 100% of population vaccinated. The narrative that 5% of unvaccinated are somehow responsible for everything now is pure garbage. That number is much lower due to simple fact that quite a lot of people are not taking vaccine because they already had covid and recovered.

And even though you may be able to somehow convince some hesitating people to take one jab or two you will have a hard time to convince them they got to come back for another one every 8 months. Good luck with that, about half of vaccinated people are not intending to take the booster anyway.

Nothing beats natural immunity. In my case the first one was mild with just 3 days of temperature and second one nearly 20 months after I did not even felt anything apart from being little tired for few days. Oh, and it seems I got it from a colleague who did not have to test himself or isolate or whatever even though he was sick like puppy because he was fully vaccinated lol.

The virus doesn't care about timelines and cultural events, but governments do.

They tried to push it until after Christmas for the sake if a cultural event last year. And it almost worked. I'd say they'll aim for the same this year - relatively normal Christmas and then apply more harsh restrictionsif necessary. Just my opinion, of course.

You are joking, aren’t you?

Someone could become anti vax over time?

Like you could be vegetarian now but have ate meat in the past.

He said in around 2 weeks or so. He didn't give a date.

So correct IMHO on both counts.

Whatever the outcome, its a personal choice. I respect that, but the madness of punishing everyone with the decisions made by Government is unjust.

Have we a breakdown of the age of people in Icu.

I would guess the majority deemed as non vaccinated were too old or sick to get a vaccine.

I think the perspective of looking for a reward for getting vaccinated is a bit backwards tbh. The reward is you've a higher level of protection from Covid.

Re; the demoralised public. I completely agree with that. My own mental health has taken a battering over the last few days; facing into another winter of lockdowns is a sh*tty prospect.

My frustration comes though when people are digging their heels in and saying 'f*ck it, there's no point anymore'. If this approach is taken by the public we will be in a much worse place, with much harsher restrictions come January.

Other countries with far better health care systems than us are looking at lockdowns or restrictions / curfews, either across the board or for the unvaccinated.

We did better on vaccine rollout, which is something tractable they government could focus on and get done in 12 -18 months, rather than long term plans to hugley boost ICU that may never see fruition and wouldn't be in place today.

But there's only so many severe cases a country can handle which is a factor of hospital capacity & vaccination rate.

If we hadn't got such high vaccination rates, we'd already be in lockdown & may well make the difference between the shape of what comes next being 'Level 3' or 'Level 5'.

To say we've been treated like dirt is absolute delusional BS.

Encouraging the unvaccinated to get vaccinated is the single most effective thing than can be done right now to reduce pressure on hospitals, that will have impact in the timeframes needed.

let it run through the younger population the more that are exposed the better now the vulnerable are vaxxed 3 times over, we can do no more, just move on with literally living with it, get more icu capacity, we have lots of private hospitals to take over yet so i dont acyually think hospitals are that close to full.