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

I believe (rightly or wrongly) ever since that attempt to gag NPHET and government realised very quickly they'd have no political cover for decisions they might make, so Leo, MM and Tony sat down and agreed "Their all in this together ", picked on hospitality again and the love fest started almost immediately with Tony appearing alongside his new best friends at the last Gov press conference, the first time ever in this entire pandemic.

There's a simple strategy at play, let's occasionally pretend to disagree, then compromise and Tony can continue to lecture whilst pointing his finger at the nation, he never minded being the bad cop and not dependent on re election.

As I've said previously, living with covid has commenced, they just don't seem to know how to communicate this message, actually They don't know how to communicate full stop.

Only short of Blizzard, perhaps high winds this week , schools will reopen, that's been governments and in particular NPHETs message to date, I can't see anything especially teaching unions crying and whinging changing Governments intentions.

In essence even Blackadder couldn't come up with a more cunning plan 😆

Not attacking you or anything, and I enjoy your contributions on here, but it might be no harm to turn off RTE from time to time! 😅 Ignorance is bliss and all that!

I did, listening to newstalk

On the topic of schools, I agree with others that the governments response to this could be a harbinger of things to come. If they stand-up to the unions (and complicit media!) for once, and stick to their guns, it could be the catalyst for a more proactive approach to actually living with Covid.

As an aside, the whole school "issue" seems like a complete overreaction to me. Have we lost all sense of perspective. It's abundantly clear at this stage kids do not get sick from this disease. There's no disputing that. Okay, you will have a few outliers, but don't let isolated incidences distort the complete picture. So kids are safe. How can they not be? Why are people even suggesting that "we need to keep kids safe" - when they clearly are. So people will argue that kids can transmit it to vulnerable family members - are these people not vaccinated? Do we not trust the vaccines? Do the vaccines not work? If the vaccines work as expected, and as we are told, then what is the issue here? Again, I fail to see the problem. So, ultimately, the problem I see is staffing - teachers isolating. Relax/reduce the isolation rules, and problem is solved.

Maybe mine is a simplistic viewpoint, but I'd be interested to hear others. Can't help but fell the media are blowing this out of proportion - as usual.

Going a bit off topic, but I find them every bit as bad. Pat Kenny is a zealot. Although Kieran Cuddihy in the evenings is a breath of fresh air, in that he is more pragmatic and doesn't agree with all the hysteria.

O God your right, P Kenny , my god he's obsessed, particularly the Antigen testing and the infamous Riddle me argument with a GP , I genuinely "Move the Dial' when he starts ranting about covid 😁

Apologies, yes I'd forgotten that, I was generally referring to his general absence at Gov press conferences since new Coalition came in. Leo and Tony seemed to have fallen out by then 😏

The head honchos are meeting now...does anyone have high hopes for what they will say? I am flying back to Canada tomorrow and there are groups calling for a large scale lockdown in the province.

Out of the frying pan and into the fire.

The issue with using excess deaths is that developing countries have been hit hard by starvation. A U.N. study estimated that there were 228,000 additional deaths of children under five in South Asia in 2020 due to crucial services, ranging from nutrition benefits to immunisation, being halted because of Covid measures. That doesn't account for any adults that would have been affected by the same things.

While it's fair to say that India's Covid death numbers probably lack accuracy, I think it's a stretch to say that they're out by more than 3.5 times. Even if they were out by that unlikely amount, that would bring India's deaths per million population on a par with Ireland's, which still doesn't paint the catastrophic picture that the other poster was imagining.

3 leaders/sub-committee today, Cabinet tomorrow and NPHET I think is on Thursday.

Yeah and I'm agreeing... I think October was the turning point last year

If two teachers are out sick a class will miss out on 2 classes that day. You don’t get ‘locked in a room for an hour’. You go to the classroom and you catch up on homework and other studies while another teacher supervises. Or else they would print something out 30 times and tell the class to work on it themselves. Its not a big deal

Pat Kenny wants to mask two year olds and I vaguely remember him musing about mandatory vaccinations for all age groups.

He's a lunatic.

If the government cave in to teacher pressure and close the schools then you can right off the first half of the year in Ireland. We'll be all about "abundance of caution" and be ultra slow in reopening schools and other parts of society. This week is critical in how soon we can leave Covid behind. If the "abundance of caution" thinking wins out then it'll be a grim few months.