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

The message from the HSE/DoH as the end of the COVID cert was announced is that things are broadly positive. COVID is now on par with flu' and how they approach that. While media outlets continue to have a special COVID 19 section and report case data this will remain in some heads.

https://www.breakingnews.ie/world/researchers-find-dna-differences-that-put-people-at-higher-risk-of-severe-covid-1269933.html

Absolutely. Blatant manipulation and misinformation by a government to control the narrative and justify hitherto unjustifiable actions... Sounds very familiar in present sutuation, doesn't it?

But its not ours.. Because our restriction laws have been repealed as it was said it would be. So by the actions of our elected representatives, our democracy has shown itself to be stronger than the forces against it.

So while I understood your fear and mistrust and I think it is warranted in some instances, I disagree that it is justified presently in Ireland. Maybe at certain times over the last two years it was stretched .

But to describe a pandemic, the like of which our world has not seen in the last 100 years at least as a " fabricated circumstance " is frankly , utterly ridiculous. Millions have died and many more are still unwell , and there are more health complications besides , that are just being discovered. All the variants up to Omicron resulted in much more severe illness and this was lessened only by vaccination and a milder variant.

Those trying to compare with flu now are not talking about the same illness since March 2020.

Even now this variant is many times more infectious.

People still upset over the now vanished restrictions need to move on to using that mistrust and disaffection and putting it to positive use. If you feel so strongly that you and others were ' manipulated ' or coerced, into restrictions and vaccinations , do something about it .

Maybe lobby for clearer public information on financial governance, decision making process used in government and appointed government bodies, and a better system of measuring public approval than opinion polls in the media or just waiting for an election.

Otherwise it is just discounted as " griping and whinging" or " conspiracy theory" and that gives those in power an excuse , if they need it, to ignore.

I cannot understand, for example, how we were led by media who depended on Amárach polls throughout to gauge public satisfaction/dissatisfaction.

Is this a reliable form of research?

We never get a breakdown of how these people are selected and the criteria used.

Certainly wouldn't pass any standard research review on that basis.

And yet it was accepted in the media to justify many restrictios to the public.

At least one would think that government and NPHET would have relied more on data collected by the CSO or other qualified researchers. But was that made public and clear? And were their methods of sampling population made clear?

And the way information was disseminated relied too much on NPHET telling us the bare minimum, badly, and lecturing, instead of giving people the facts and the reasons for each restriction .

This was a mistake , treating the public like children. The UK made mistakes along the way , but their approach to informing the public was far better in this regard. More information given ( some quite graphic ) however bad it was , and the rationale clearly given for each restriction and why it was or wasn't needed .

When ours differed it was too easy for people to look at our neighbour and say "but the UK... " .

The debate in our media was so simplistic as to almost never discuss the differences societally , economically and culturally between the neighbouring countries and jurisdictions that allow for acceptance of higher death rates / or less intensive care beds in some instances in one country and not another, to name just a couple important differences.

We have discussed these subjects on this thread and it has become hot and heavy on both sides at times , so you can see why sound bite media that does no depth cannot engage with these subjects easily .

All of this information should be made available to the public and the difficulty of data protection and privacy needs to be sorted, so that yes, if there is another " emergency " , everyone is as engaged as necessary .

There will always be people who won't be happy but in a healthy democracy if people are empowered to voice their dissatisfaction in constructive protest or through their public representatives then that is what should happen .

If you compare for example water protests to any of those antimask protests the difference in scale and effect is very obvious . The latter barely touched most people really apart from a small subsection of society .

There were times when I certainly felt that there might be a justification for changing some of the regulations or at least balancing the need for information to the public when people were being asked to dispense with important civil liberties.

Usually this information became available either after the fact, or by a leak, neither of which is the way information shoud be given to the public in any mature democracy, we would all agree, I think.

This needs to change. A less paternalistic approach by the public service might at least make future emergency measures if necessary, more acceptable to more people.

All opinion polls, such as they were , did however show that all along the majority of the people were largely in favour of the restrictions, and when it became apparent that people were no longer " with them " they were changed .

If that had not happened then yes, I would be agreeing with you, Calamari.

There will be other times ( hopefully not until the distant future) when emergency measures need to be brought in quickly and yes, I do agree , a precedent has been set .as you and others have said.

But I think the greater good will always trump complete freedom in those situations , and all that we can do is try to ensure that the reasons for measures are clear, that they are necessary to protect society, , and the path out of emergency measures is enshrined in law and protected . Which they were.. . Statutes were debated and voted on and a clear review structure and expiry set .

You can't stop to have a referendum in the midst of a pandemic.

This is where the importance of not voting for numptys who have nothing to offer except for parish pump policies.

And we ensure that by voting for trustworthy and reliable candidates , not just the ones who tell us what we want to hear and shout the loudest , that we have a say and are represented well in this very rare situation .

That is the challenge as we can see across the pond on both sides .

I never felt democracy or freedom in Ireland was threatened , (rightly or wrongly and have been accused of being naive as a result) , but that the communication was poor , and that needs to improve.

I agree you can never assume that democracy will continue without the due diligence of all concerned, but the constant haranguing and assertions of a conspiracy to remove civil liberties on a permanent basis was groundless in the end.

Sorry for the long post .

What’s the isolation rules if a parent is positive? Do children have to isolate?

We've plunged immediately into a new 'war crisis' after this crisis was dropped.

For instance there were posters calling for unvaccinated truckers to be shot dead by the Canadian government and, literally five days later, some of these same posters were accusing people of being Putin-sympathisers and traitors for not rowing in totally behind Zelensky.

So I'm not at all confident that we've returned to 'normal'. We appear to be in a permanent crisis mode with rotating crises - and an 'Emergency' mentality with the least wise of people throwing around accusations, demanding conformity, mandatory boycotts, and putting on fascistic blanket displays of blue and yellow flags.

Who knows whether we will be in 'covid mode' or 'War in Europe mode' next flu season.

The vax passes can be brought back like flipping on a switch.

My guess is the Western powers felt they had overextended themselves with covid mania and are now consolidating power and loyalty with war/patriotism mania.

And as had been said at that time, it was always going to end this way. Temporary looks permanent when your perspective is just 24 hours at a time!

No one said the Austrian government would definitely back down. How could they know that?

You certainly did not say so, is_that_so, and seamus said something like 'The Austrian government don't bluff' iirc

"We need to be more like china" has all of a sudden become unfashionable

If it were clear to everyone that it was an empty threat then it would have had no power to increase vaccinations. So it obviously wasn't clear to some people.

Please quote your posts where you were saying this at the time. I don't recall any poster saying it was purely a ruse until much later.

I agree with you when you word it like that.

No beef, I thought you were saying something slightly different.

I tend to use intemperate language for everything hah

Link or it didn't happen. I probably said something along the lines of, "They're hoping that this will bring vaccination rates up to a higher level so that they never need to really impose fines".

I certainly don't know enough about Austrian politics to make any declarations about whether they bluff or not.

What bigger problem has come along that you are referring to?

Turn on the radio.

The language has changed now to "minimal impact".

I think many of us have been saying this for months but Ukraine has now completely wiped covid worries from Irish minds.