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

Personally I think the damage has already been done to both retail and Hospitality sectors.

Massive cancellations of events widely reported, Retail limping along and lots of other businesses seriously impacted by not just the numbers but such uncertainty not helped by quite astonishing ineptitude in government.

It's just beggar's belief after almost 2 years, messaging is so bad. Gov still harping on about the unvaccinated, now they bizzarely think antigen testing is the answer. Absolute denial of the facts re schools and the most astonishing thing of all, their dependency on the population to reduce social interaction and being scared withless by silly incoherent messages from THE CMO.

Clearly alot of the concern is the Health system being over run but anyone including myself dependent on the heath system knows full well its been dysfunctional for years.

This morning senior ministers discussing supports yet again for the hospitality sector, extending the wage subsidy schemes etc. The dogs on the street know full well the Hospitality sector was weak in availing of wage subsidy schemes, preferring to drop staff like bad habits, those staff no longer have the PUP option so extending EWSS for hospitality staff utterly meaningless and the same applies to retail staff.

I've spoken to and know many retail business owners, they are and have been struggling, not just with enormous reduction in business levels, they've yet to deal with substantial rent arrears, warehoused tax debt and still fighting with insurance companies re business interruption claims.

Whilst some seem to focus on short term lockdowns, restrictions etc few if anyone discussing the appalling damage that has been done to both retail and hospitality sectors. Economic forecasts, predictions utterly meaningless for 1000's of businesses that will close in 2022.

An absolute Cluster****

So much so that people are being forced to boost their immunity system under threat.

mind blowing stuff indeed, could you have seen this two years ago?

were there mandatory vaccinations when that dreadful ‘Aussie’ flu was rampant during the winter of 2017/18? Why not? It was a LOT worse than covid.

Holohans whole job is to despise the public. He has always been Mr Nanny State. When he went for his Master's in Public Health, he would have been conditioned into the thought of that the public are stupid and need their health choices taken from them.

We are stupid and he will make our decisions for us because we are incapable.

I don’t think I’ve ever come across anyone as fcuking arrogant as that man. A deeply, deeply unlikeable human being.

Being? Maybe. Human? No. An egomaniac to the core. I wonder how many cases, hospitalisations, deaths and mentally affected people he has caused by his illogical opposition to masks and antigen testing not to mention a litany of inconsistent and nonsense restrictions.

I think his ultimate problem with antigen testing is that if people use them and only use them then it does nothing for the official Covid stats.

I did an anti-gen test about a month ago. I had the sniffles. Tested negative, rolled on as normal. Maybe I had the virus, who knows. But if my anti-gen said I was positive, I still wasn't going to go for the official HSE test. I would just isolate for a week. I Work from home, so don't need tests to keep me off work.

If more people had that mindset, we'd have a couple of hundred cases a day. And they wouldn't be able to justify restrictions.

Has everyone gone insane? We have 92% of all eligible people vaccinated, we are now in year 2 of this 'pandemic' and the sky has not yet fallen in, but there are people who think that closing everything at 9pm, cutting Public transport to 50% and only having people from 2 other households at yours MAX is not "drastic".

Christ above, there is a pandemic of delusion in this country thats what.

He also doesn't believe that the riff raff should get subsidized antigen tests.. they'd only stockpile them

no doubt to sell them at a premium down on Moore Street

Agree 100%. If everyone used antigen then official numbers would fall off a cliff. Instead of heading down to Lansdowne Rd or wherever they do tests these days pop into Circle K and buy an antigen…. If it’s negative great if it’s positive sit at home for a week… if you feel sick call a doctor, it’s not hard!

I’d bet a lot of the people who feel grand but are still getting PCR tests and bumping the numbers up are the very same people who’ll be in the pub later giving out about unvaxxed filth being the cause of us still being under restrictions!

Sure didn’t that walking potato Stephen Donnelley say the other day the government couldn’t send them out for free because they cost too much?? PCR’s are 10 times the price for Christ sake!!!

Holohan fully admitted that he doesn't believe closing pubs or clubs earlier wll have much of an impact.

Well why the do it then.

He didn't, and he's the 100th medical person to say the same since thing in the last 7 days. That decision was made by the same man who created our dysfuctional health service so that might explain the decision a bit better

Sounds like the schools have turned into a **** show

It's been a S***show for months, the only people who failed to understand, grasp or acknowledge it was those in Gov, Public Health & NPHET but most noticeably the Minister actually responsible for education.

Everybody including the Minister for Education knows how bad the schools must be.

However all agree that they can't close again. Especially now that we have had such a successful vaccine roll out.

A colleague of mine, her husband was the weekend on call consultant in a local hospital. He was in from 6am to 10pm Saturday and Sunday. They've no more beds so they were transferring out patients to other local hospitals. She said there was a lot of people in their 40s unfortunately, either unvaccinated or with underlying conditions. He felt that they will shortly have to start making decisions on who gets ventilated. This could get very grim.

I'm certainly not proposing closing schools just questioning the outrageous denial of the facts, the removal of contract tracing and appalling lack of support Schools, principals ,Parents seem to have got.

Bad enough the Denials but some of the excuses given by Norma Foley were frankly breathtaking .