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

Hospitality owners are never happy with the rate of infection and dangers associated to omicron they are lucky to be allowed stay open at all!

There are a range of assumptions they make about the disease and they feed them into a model which generates a range of scenarios. So if your assumptions are wrong or faulty the model will be of no use. One example of that is how many will end up in hospital and we know their assumption here is wrong, set at 2%-2.5% when real life data showed that it was about 1%. There is also an estimate of how many cases are undetected and that AFAIK goes from a range of 40%-60%. They haven't taken account of vaccines or booster programmes nor any data on public responses. All told they are not all that useful but they are our only policy tool

Well if they are so effective to contain the spread, that we still we need a lockdown, means they are not effective aren't they? Give me a break with the nurses at their wits end for the relentless pandemic, the hospitalization rate has been from nearly non existent to stable for the past 6 months at least, at this stage I am quite sure you are just trolling

NPHET are not acting independently they are following EU/WHO advice. We’re not on a solo run, Netherlands has a similar approach. China/Asia are even stricter. What is the alternative?

So we have Tony Holohan, who leaving his pre-Covid shenanigans aside, looked at the evidence at the very start of the pandemic and told people it was OK to visit nursing homes.

Philip Nolan, a man who has gathered significant experience over the past 20 years (as a university administrator), who has stated that proper contact tracing is an "academic exercise" and antigen tests are "snake oil". And more recently made allegations about ventilation efficiency which were contradicted by NPHET's own team of ventilation experts (who actually have relevant experience)l.

Cillian de Gascun, who at least does seem to fit the bill of a relevant expert, still stated 18 months ago that we had the infrastructure in place to quickly trace and isolate clusters and should be able to avoid future lockdowns. Which was simply not true, no such infrastructure existed as we found out from Nolan's contract tracing comments in September (which ironically were made while trying again to blame pubs for everything).

These are the experts whose statements you unthinkingly follow?

Also, NPHET certainly do not have to take into account what's politically palatable. Their role is solely to provide medical-based advice to the democratically elected government, whose job it is to determine what measures to actually implement.

Which hasn't stopped NPHET repeatedly showing utter contempt for democracy with leaks designed to try to influence public opinion and force the government to follow a particular course of action.

This time last year I remember people posting about a 'casedemic'. There were lots of cases but not much hospitalisations - or something like that. Then January happened.

Now we have a shiny new ultra-contagious new variant.

What happens if we have a repeat of last year? - What if in January, cases explode?

We could be in a situation where critical infrastructure is at risk if everyone catches this all at once. I would not like to be in a situation where we are getting power cuts because the national grid can't be maintained because half the work force are out sick or isolating. Where shops can't open because of lack of staff. You better not get sick with anything, because there won't be much of a health service operating! - they'll be first hit with staff absences.

So I'd rather go with a 5:00pm closing...

Posturing BS from them. 99% of the whingers and moaners will continue to do just that and no more.

Tbf I'd have to point the finger at myself for that too.

Incorrect. I’ve a friend who owns a number of pubs across the city and we’ve discussed it at length, he largely agrees. He’s been a publican for 40+ years and acknowledges that this is an absolutely unusual situation, he is grateful for the government throughout the year - you probably don’t know a single publican yourself spouting that absolute nonsense.

The pandemic has caused a lot of frustration, anger and hurt to everyone on this island. We have all suffered, publicans are not an exception.

On the radio(Newstalk breakfast) this morning the word was that the 5pm curfew would not apply to hotels so that weddings would not be affected

Maybe not vaccines although I have heard that Moderna is making Omnicron ones but at least we need to see how bad omicron is

Because of their very low vaccination rate of course. Follow the science.