Covid 19 Part XXXV-956,720 ROI (5,952 deaths) 452,946 NI (3,002 deaths) (08/01) Read OP

It’s created a serious amount of division between families as well! The faster we return to pre pandemic life the better, now albeit a fair section of society like Seamus said the Helen Lovejoys will be banging the drum for a long time to come (mentioning no names) even some won’t let the kids back to school because of long swine flu and long covid along with loads of other stuff!!

Seamus

I agree with some of your earlier stuff but it’s a bit ironic that those who want their normal lives back are being called the “anti everything crew”. You used to live a normal life too and presumably quite enjoyed it, no? You should be thanking these folk among whom I am proud to count myself a fully paid up member (unless you mean anti vaccine).

In England had it not been for Boris’ back bench “anti everything “ crew Boris would probably have brought in all the same stuff and everyone would now be claiming the restrictions worked when in fact they didn’t and now it is Scotland, Wales etc back tracking.

I can assure you that I am not anti everything. I will be going away quietly when things return to 2019 normal. I have no desire to clutch at straws.

But as we sit here today, there is no plan, no vision for the rest of this year. Just the usual bumble babble and rubbish that we will review later in the week. Then we have the tinker around the edges thinking that the adjustments are achieving something.

You'd wonder should the US not be trying to INTRODUCE Omicron at this point, rather than allowing Delta to spread in certain states. For countries that closed borders due to Omicron (albeit without knowing how dangerous it was, but there were immediate views on that from South Africa, that it was milder), they've just delayed, arguably, the saviour of us that is Omicron?

NY Times today.

Most U.S. doctors have no way to determine which variant of the coronavirus a patient is carrying, a distinction that could mean the difference between life and death.High-risk patients carrying the Delta variant could benefit greatly from two particular monoclonal antibody treatments shown to reduce hospitalization and death. But those medications would most likely do nothing for patients with Omicron, who would only respond to a third antibody treatment that is in very short supply.

For the next few weeks, as the country grapples with this uneven mix of both variants, tailoring treatments to each patient will be “extraordinarily difficult,” said Dr. Alex Greninger, assistant director of the clinical virology laboratories at the University of Washington Medical Center.

Dr. Greninger is credited with developing one of the first tests to detect the coronavirus in the United States. But he is pessimistic that health systems can pivot quickly to sort out which patients have Delta or Omicron. And although a shortcut test can detect Omicron, there’s no simple way to report the results in bulk, he said.

What’s more, the genome sequencing used by public health officials takes nearly a week — too long to target the early antibody treatments that have been found to reduce the need for hospitalizations. That makes patient care particularly difficult right now, said Dr. Mark Siedner, an infectious disease clinician and researcher at Massachusetts General Hospital.

In Massachusetts and nearby states, an estimated 44.5 percent of cases are Omicron. Dr. Siedner said his health system has stopped using the Regeneron and Eli Lilly antibodies that are not effective against Omicron and are “anxiously awaiting” more doses of the effective treatment by GlaxoSmithKline and Vir Biotechnology.

https://www.nytimes.com/live/2022/01/03/world/omicron-covid-vaccine-tests

If you're calling for a referendum, it's usually a good idea to know what you'd call the referendum for, but anyway.

Say there's a general election tomorrow, who are you going to vote for to enact all this?

Should we start having a general election for every government decision which already has wide public support? Do you propose moving Ireland to direct democracy?

Anyway, there's 0% chance that an election or referendum will be called for this, there is no pressure on politicians to do so.

The science shows pretty clearly that the vaccines work very well against Omicron, not sure why you would think otherwise.

There's no requirements right now for boosters on COVID certs internally, if there is, then everyone will have had a chance to get a booster before it comes in (I think we'll see them dropped before then). If you're planning on travelling internationally, you'll need a booster sooner rather than later (or keep paying extra for PCR testing).

Front the business post article that I posted earlier!

david Nabarro said

What determines whether something becomes dominant? Answer: it has an evolutionary advantage. An evolutionary advantage for a virus means not killing your host. The moment you kill your host as a virus, your lifetime is suddenly ended, because you depend on the host being alive for your virus to be alive,” he said.

we are at the end game! Omicron is it!

Everyone wants life back to normal.

The anti everything brigade are the ones who were calling for their life back in May 2020 and never stopped .

There's a cohort of people who believe that restrictions and other health measures were either totally unnecessary or were a cover/front for something else.

The same people who were violently protesting on the streets about being allowed to go to the pub when ICUs were jammed with people dying and family members not allowed have proper funerals.

You know, morons.

I never realised we're not allowed complain about things in the past, thanks for letting us know.

And it isn't even in the past yet anyway. The 8pm curfew is still here and will be for another 2 weeks at least even though we were told if Omicron is less severe than expected those restrictions will be reversed sooner. Here we are, Omnicrom a lot milder than we could even have expected and we're keeping the restrictions another 2 weeks for what? Just for the sake of it? That is not how restrictions should be used, they should only be used as a last resort when absolutely needed. What have we gained from these current restrictions? We already currently have the highest rates in Europe at the moment, would they have been any higher if didn't have the 8pm closing? I doubt its made much if any difference.

Were we right to complain about antigen tests or are we not allowed give out about that now either? and we'll pretend that NPHET and government didn't change their stance on that. If it wasn't for the public to take it opne themselves and lead the way with antigen tests we'd still be being told they're useless now.

Or people in ICU for other reasons, no longer testing positive

And yet some people will say there is nothing to complain about...

No Leo, it should not be phased over a number of months. That is unjustifiable bullshit.

To be honest I wouldn't be listening to anything he's spouting until we actually see what comes later this week. I was driving home there and heard part of the interview, fair to say it was a car crash, he got himself all tangled up when discussing the champagne party in the DFA.

Personally I think they'll lift everything bar the certs and masks on buses and other settings through February (there's not alot there to actually phase back in this time around), I dont see them going purely because they're quite easy for the government to leave there to be seen to do something which really isnt much of a burden on most people, but like I say I'm not going to get myself worked up about anything until we see what comes later in the week and next week. How many times have we seen Leo say something and it never happens ? More times than I can count at this stage.

True, he should keep his trap shut. Masks and passes should go as well, I know that they’ll be the last to go but they need to go. I’m sure we’ll see plenty more kites flying over the coming days

I agree there's not much point in passes domestically given the vacciantion rate and infection rate, travel fine because we can't control what other countries do, masks if you want to wear one fire away, if you don't grand.

But they'll be the last to go because realistically despite the varying opinions everyone has on them they're a light touch restriction from a government perspective.

Leo is only out to look after number 1 seeing as he's back in charge later this year.

Personally, I'd put weight in Leo's words and guess that Ireland will do what Ireland has always done and lift restrictions months after it was actually safe to do so.

To think Ireland will do anything different this time, when those in power are suggesting it will take months, is the definition of insanity.