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

You don't really care for maths and statistics?

This is just someone refusing to engage with the scientific evidence because they are incapable of understanding it.

If you can't understand the evidence, then when you make a statement like 'for little benefit', it is a statement with no standing or foundation.

You are basically second guessing the data and expert decisions, while admitting you aren't able to understand the basis for the decisions.

No wonder you come out with nonsense about people going to prisons if that's where you are coming from.

The world didn't collapse because of the restrictions. You're looking around as what protected you, incapable of understanding why it was there, and saying well we didn't need them because it wasn't so bad.

The rest of your post about "the science" and putting people in prisons is a deluded fantasy, an emotional rant not worth engaging with. You may as well rant away to the wind as think anyone serious here will give oxygen to it.

Nobody in Ireland will be going to prison for following international best practice from the WHO, similar measures to the CDC etc in a global pandemic. Cop on.

Firstly we had two people who led the country and both made lots of stupid decisions. There was a multitude of people giving advice to these people. You had scientists and medical professionals who had our and the country's health as their primary concern and you had public relations advisors telling them what was the best thing to do for their careers.

Secondly we seen the horrific scenes in Italy which were frightening and harrowing. Nobody here wanted to see that happening in our country. It was a long time before we knew enough about this virus.

I was against opening up for Christmas 2020 and was proven right. You can go back and check the threads before then and you'll see me predict the number of infections which would occur by opening up for Christmas.

Can you tell me why I still have to wear a mask entering a hospital, my local GP's practice and nearly every medical facility in the country? Are all these medical people stupid?

Can you tell me what qualifications you have in the science and/or medical fields which bring you to the conclusion that these lockdowns were unnecessary?

There were mistskes made, lots of them from not shutting the country down earlier and preventing people entering the country without proper quarantine to continuing with lockdowns when it was not necessary in the eyes of the majority of scientists and medical professionals.

Fact of the matter is that in almost all instances the decisions made were done in good faith to prevent illness and death. Things may not have been much worse if there were no lockdowns but the expert advice at the time was to continue with lockdowns.

Let's not forget that one of the key components in making these decisions was the health service not being able to cope with the numbers if we didn't lock down. As soon as the threat to the health service went away the lockdowns eased off.

I personally have a sister-in-law and niece who still haven't fully recovered from this thing. They contracted it at Christmas 2020.

Looking for people to blame because you were locked down for a while, well I'd perceive it as somebody whose never had a hard day in their lives unlike people who lived through a couple of depressions where we were basically locked down by struggling to survive financially.

We got through it though and it made us stronger and more adepth at dealing with any crisis that came our way. I found the lockdowns easy. In this day and age with video calls, movie and TV streaming services and smartphones it was pretty simple to keep yourself busy and keep your mind off things. I was out every day walking my dogs as I have always done.

The only things you couldn't do were go visiting other people, go to pubs, clubs and restaurants. None of these things are necessary and with video calls it made it easy to stay in touch and see the faces of your family and friends.

It's pretty much over now for the regular person and you should go enjoy your life instead of harping back, being angry and sad about things. Learn from the past but look forward with positivity and intent.

One of the realisations for me from this thing was that I thought, despite not trusting them, politicians were in general pretty intelligent. I realise now that they certainly are not.

I'm quite confident you never had a hard day in your life before COVID. The sense of entitlement in your post is extraordinary.

Do you understand that the vast majority of the country were scared as hell of this thing?

Iirc it was close to 94% that were in favour of the initial lockdown. That number diminished as time went by but it was still a very high number in favour of lockdowns before the first vaccine became generally available.

This is a democracy so the majority rules.

We didn't know in 2020 how bad this thing was and how many people it would kill. We collect data and make educated guesses off of them. We didn't have enough data in six months or nine months to make any sort of prediction about anything. It looked like old people were in more danger but younger people were dying from it too and we had to find out why that was happening.

I'm quite confident you never had a hard day in your life. What you'd consider a hard day wouldn't be anything of the sort to me and most people my age.

I had to live off of noodles, a decent meal was Dunnes Stores pasta and tomato sauce. We always ate well on a Sunday though with a proper dinner of potatoes, veg and normally roast beef. There was no money for the pub or fancy clothes. You bought two pairs of pants and two jumpers and t-shirts and one pair of footwear unless you needed boots or something for work and you stuck with them until they were pretty much worn out. There was no money for the pub anymore than one day per month.

I realise it wasn't that tough for everybody but for young people not long into their careers on crap money it was like that. I was trying to save money to eventually have enough for a mortgage, it was a struggle to save £500 per year.

I experienced all this as a young child too when my parents struggled to get the money to pay the mortgage. The last time I went through this was from about 2010 to 2014 I think but I was in much better shape financially at that stage so it wasn't that difficult.

So I was basically stuck at home for years with no internet, smartphone, Netflix etc. I didn't even have a dog because I couldn't afford to have one. I worked, went home to my two channel TV, slept, rince and repeat.

And you think the lockdown was tough. Lmfao.

Hindsight is an invaluable tool that no one had in 2020. Was it understandable that there was a lockdown at the start? Absolutely. But once it became clear where the threat with Covid lay, particularly with older and vulnerable people, our response should have changed accordingly which it never did. I’ve seen some posters on here mention ‘international best practice’. The fact of the matter is Ireland was an outlier in that regard and locked down for longer, for more prolonged periods and more severe restrictions imposed. If we remember the coveted NPHET and Government ‘levels’, many countries eventually functioned at a level 3 with indoor dining & pubs closed, adapted options re shops & barbers which remained open, schools open & instead of 5km travel limits - county travel limits. The response was solely focused on lessening the spread of Covid, without taking into account the severe societal impacts the restrictions would have, particularly as they dragged on. When the Covid vaccine appeared in 2021, people were offered a way out by taking it. What we know now is it doesn’t prevent transmission or infection but seems to have lessened the impact on hospitals. Multiple boosters should be questioned & vaccine passports for societal participation are criminal in my opinion. Taking a medicine of any kind should be done via informed consent of a medical professional and patient, period. A reflection and evaluation of what went wrong and right during Covid is vital for figure crisis going forward.

What is the advice now in respect to prior infections and the timing in getting a booster vaccine? Is there any point waiting? Better to wait a few months or boost up for the next wave?

Read the linked study above.

When the vaccines were rolled out - that is the data relevant to that period. Vaccinated people two thirds less likely to be infected up to 6 months from vaccination. That translates to many prevented infections and therefore transmissions.

There are other studies showing even if infected you clear the virus faster from your system and infectious for shorter period.

Today we have omicron - the vaccines arent as good a match for it, the infection protection isnt as strong, wanes faster and more time has elapsed since vaccination.

Unclear yet if the new bivalent vaccine will be more effective v Omicron.

An excellent post.

Yeah on learning from it. There should be an emergency setup including a budget and people trained as immediate responders for situations like this. I'm not talking about scientists and medical professionals, I'm talking about organisers and people who set up anything that's needed. An instant response is necessary if we are to have any hope of getting on top of something like this quickly.

A big thing we've learned from this is how transmissible a virus can be. The day of the person attending work, or any activity with lots of people around, with sniffles and a cough can't continue. If this person wants to attend they should be forced to wear a facemask all day. This benefits both the employer and other employees in the workplace.

Nobody should be let into the country during a pandemic without being quarantined until such time as they are cleared. If we had done this from day one we would never have had a large scale spread of this virus. Decisions made like inviting in the Italian rugby fans, our skiers back from northern Italy and letting people off to Cheltenham without any need to even self-isolate contributed greatly to the spread of this virus. I'm personally aware of five places where outbreaks occurred started by people who went to Cheltenham.

There's lots of other stuff but that's just a couple off the top.

Aren't you forgetting the years after 2008, worsening going into the European Debt Crisis in 2011 then slowly getting better from 2012 onwards? Plenty of people lacked spare cash for treats, enjoyment and entertainment.

A lot of people worked on farms in the past. Gyms are popular now because everyone has to sit still for 40 hours a week.

Going to restaurant/cinema was a rare occasion for me growing up as well so what? I wasn't stuck in a room or menaced into getting injected. Lockdowns are a cruel and unusual punishment.

It is not medical misinformation. It is a fact that vaccines do not prevent transmission or infection.

They confer protection to the vaccinated individual for a few months against infection, which has the by-product result of lowering transmission. They also reduce seriousness of illness.

They do not prevent transmission or infection. These are facts, not medical misinformation.

’significant protection’ is not prevention, and that protection waned.

Thankfully vaccination was not mandatory here, although we did have to endure the ridiculous vaccine passport fiasco that did not include a negative test option.

The vaccines do prevent individual infection events. However, when the virus is raging through the population most people get exposed countless times. This is why pretty much everyone, whether vaccinated or unvaccinated, got covid within a short period of time.

The vaccines would need to give high sustained protection to put a dent in the spread of covid, due to the highly infectious nature of the virus.

Yeah fair enough, I was talking about the Omicron wave this year as that affected a nearly fully vaxxed population. I recognise that the vaccines gave much higher protection against infection for the earlier variants. The majority of the population did get Omicron this year, that is clear from the infection rates.