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

You do wonder if government has put any sort of informal long term plan thought together.

Varadkar said the Covid passes would be for a few weeks. Now we are looking at years of Covid variants and years of covid passes. Obviously the vaccines didn't work to their satisfaction, and it's starting to look the same with the boosters. Where every variant is one notch ahead of the last booster.

They got something like 94% vaccinated originally. They won't get 94% on Booster 1. For every booster the take up rate will be lower.

Pubs/Restaurants/Hotels can suck up 6% without passes. I get the feeling that a lot of those 6% are not the types to go to pubs. But what about when it becomes 10%, 20%, 30%. Pubs and Restaurants won't be able to suck up 20-30% of the adult population not being able to avail of their facilities. What will they be doing in 2-3 winters time when 30% of the population at ineligible to go to a pub/restaurant.

And it's not just the 30%, it's the friendship groups, families that come with it. Groups become split, it's harder to get a group to go to a pub for a few drinks. A group of 5 friends. 2 are ineligible. Will the 3 bother going? They might but it wont be as regular.

How long can they keep rolling on restrictions for non-vaccinated/boostered without it having a massive economic consequence?

Well the genie is out of the bottle now I would expect us to be locking down forever more in the winter. Politicians can't be having the numbers on trolleys in the 100's like they were pre-covid. I'd say if they thought they would have got away with locking down pre-covid they would have done it in a heart beat.

I'd question the 94% vaccination rate, the county with the lowest rate is Roscommon where a lot of people got vaccinated over the border... I recon our actual vaccination rate could be closer to 96%-97% considering this

McKenna is an absolute fuckin idiot regardless of what topic he has a hot take on, a moron.

Don't see why people are getting their knickers in a twist over what Varadkar said though, it's just realism. Take a look at what's happening in the rest of the world for comparison. The UK is bringing in a 2 week circuit breaker after Christmas, which is absolutely ridiculous timing given what will happen between now and then.

Pfizer could fix that problem immediately if they wanted. They should be encouraged to make a massive charitable donation of their product for the good of us all.

Even if 100% of the world, including infants and immuno-compromised were triple jabbed, it would not put an end to this pandemic.

It's a potential option for them and is looking more likely.

I like the way when the UK announce they might introduce restrictions it's "look at them what they're doing" but when it's opening up it's "we don't want to be like the UK here"

Unfortunately crystal balls the world over weren't working and failed to tell us about the variants and exactly how they may mutate with their corresponding behaviours.

Questions about our governments intentions/motivation need to be asked at this point. Despite massive disappointments and frustrations over the handling of the pandemic up to now I still believed when its all said and done they want to get us out of this.

I'm no longer certain about that.

Not sure if this has already been posted but this is a very interesting discussion involving Graham Medley the chair of the Sage modelling committee.

In it Medley admits that their models are basically just made up worst case scenarios and little to no science is used and they arent accurate predictions.

Medley is asked

This sort of stuff is data science 101 though. That’s my biggest issue with the modelling, if you presented this stuff in industry without this sort of validation of past results, you’d be laughed out of town. Modelling seems very far beyond state of art data science.

He replies

The point being missed is these scenarios are not predictions. We can’t predict what people are going to do over Christmas (many people themselves are “undecided”). They are made to support a decision to illustrate the possibilities and uncertainty

He then adds

Deepest respect Doug, but we are not predicting. It might be a philosophical stance, but we don’t have the data to make the kind of predictive models that you are thinking of

So the models being produced are not predictions, they are scenarios and they only model scenarios that they are told to model by the Government.

They are modelling worse case scenario but with no probability on it and no best case scenario being produced either.

The Sage and Nphet models have been consistently incorrect over the last 21 months, mostly by huge margins.

The models Sage and Nphet are creating are supposed to be based on probability and likelihood.

Anyone with a scientific, mathematical or analytical qualification can see that the modelling being used is deeply flawed and nonsensical.

It makes you wonder. It was the same at the start of the pandemic in Germany. German government didnt actually go to the RKI and asked what is this what do we do? They asked for models that support/justify restriction and lockdowns. Period. This is not a conspiracy theory or a wild claim. Those communications were leaked at the time. They can be found on google. Now you hear the same about SAGE.

All those emergency public health consultation bodies the governments have like nphet etc. Is their purpose to actually assess and investigate and recommend? Or are they just the science veneer for a course thats already been decided?

I think all of the original "what happens if we have a global pandemic" plans were chucked into the bin early doors. Only Sweden really kept to theirs.

The plans ultimately didn't account for politics. Can you be "The person who let all of those people die?". In March-April the term "herd immunity" was being linked to fascism. Boris Johnson was sticking to the plan and was getting hammered for it. I think even we had intentions but were politically under too much pressure to lockdown after the UK did.

I believe in the long run, we will have been proven wrong to approach it the way we did by prolonging the pain. Cancer detections were down 13% last year. We all know cancer didn't just take a year off. 13% is around 5000 people. That's for 2020, it will be like that for 2021 and 2022. That's 15,000 people getting late diagnosis and that's just cancer. There are many other illnesses going untreated/undetected. The economic ruin. Depression. People who have come down with Covid-Hysteria and won't leave their homes.

If we went and did absolutely nothing from March 2020. There would have been maybe 10,000 deaths instead of 5,000. Maybe it would triple to 15,000. The restrictions trade off, still wouldnt have matched the numbers of lives it has ruined.

But in fairness to Government, if you stick to a plan. You have the media publishing death numbers every day. The Opposition and media are call you murderers. Saying "restrictions will ruin more lives than the deaths" is a tough sell.

Actually surprising that they have allowed "Midnight Mass" to go ahead.

Restrictions on religious ceremonies in this country were a total outlier in a European context in 2021.

Pretty much the only place in Europe you couldn't attend a church service on Easter Sunday.

The Church as an institution is utterly despised by the media/political clique and has been for a few decades now... the State wants it's assets and they want them ASAP and COVID has been a useful tool to cut off it's links to society and financial wellbeing.

Amazing that some people still think the Catholic Church holds any sway over Official Ireland.