Reflection on the pandemic: questions about the authorities' response.

We lost a colleague to Covid. Given recent events and sensitivities, it's company wide policy that if anyone has any symptoms of anything they remote work where possible (we are all office based). Makes sense and remote-working culture has meant we lose a lot less man-hours.

Pre Covid, people would be in the office with colds and flus. Consequence - only a matter of time before they took out half a team with the same bug.

It was stupid then and in light of covid makes even less sense.

I am convinced one of the reasons Alpha hit Ireland so badly was because by that point the gov't had wasted precious goodwill with all their farting about over "opening-up" plans, and the population as a whole just threw caution out the window over the crumb of normal life that was offered.

Stop with all that sensible thinking

The government and NPHET done us all good remember and we should be all grateful. They 'never meant to do this and that and were always following the trajectory of the disease' etc. We need to forget about the thinking of stuff like 'Antigen Testing been snakeoil, Covid loving alcohol, why aisles were closed in supermarkets, why we could go xxkm far for this but not for that' so on and so on

Were thankfully out the other end and we have to deal with it but the decision makers are doing fine and that all that matters to them.

People were banned from going to the beach. Then the guards were sent to the beach to make Tik Tok videos dancing. Epic trolling of the Irish population. This sort of nastiness should not be forgotten. Let’s not pretend they weren’t intelligent enough to know what they were doing.

When rules and guidelines are made at short notice for an entire population in response to a fluid pandemic, there are always going to be issues. Some of the stuff led to situations that didn't necessarily make sense or were contentious - most rational people understood this.

Multiple countries temporarily asked people to stop going to beaches during the height of the first wave for various reasons.

It's not "nastiness", it's not being done maliciously. Calm down. The level of paranoia required to even think like that is scary.

We should just get over it, suck it up, and worry about the pending catastrophic outcome the planet is facing!!

Most people don't know what a cold is.

Do you stay out of work if you have one of a cough, runny nose or a sore throat?

Because if people took off work for one of those then you would have very few staff at this time of year and that's including chancers who would be faking illness as often as they could.

In some workplaces people don't get paid if they take days off work so paying their mortgage is more of a priority.

If people can work from home then great but in real life in most cases people taking time off for a sniffle is not going to work.

Anyone with the flu or a serious cold won't be going to work Martyr or not unless in the example of they don't get paid and have no choice.

Maybe I should have quoted the poster who complains about someone going to work with a cough or sniffle.

It is something that has always happened and will continue to happen regardless of Covid, because that's how real life works.

Companies can't afford to always allow anyone with a sniffle take a day off work because they would get no work done this time of year.

The one thing Covid has changed is the flexibility for working from home which can help in some workplaces.

We closed the beaches again a year later. This and other measures accelerated spread of the virus by forcing people to congregate indoors. It’s not paranoia despite the efforts to rewrite history.

Flu fair enough. You should stay at home with flu symptoms. Seems a bit of an overreaction to stay at home with a cold if you know it is just a cold though.

People understand.

They simply do not intend to live their goddamn lives in fear.

Pre-covid, as you were discussing, I would still regard staying home because you have a cold an overreaction.

Inquiry to begin in 2023. Also reported in the IT but not much on it anywhere else as yet. I suspect due to the media’s handling of the pandemic, initial reporting will be low-key.

Interestingly in September 21, M Martin did not want it called an inquiry, favoured the term ‘evaluation’.

It seems now it’s expected to be an official inquiry, with some called to testify. Hopefully lessons learned and safeguards put in place to ensure same mistakes are not made again in the future.

The Journal has a different take on it.

AN INQUIRY INTO the handling of the Covid-19 pandemic should not be about “pointing fingers” or “ascribing blame”, the Taoiseach has said. Leo Varadkar also said he wants an inquiry into the response to the virus “up and running” this year.

The Fine Gael leader added that he is conscious that the pandemic is not over and that many of the people who are battling the virus would be the people being asked to give evidence.

Last year then-Taoiseach Micheal Martin said an inquiry would be a comprehensive evaluation so the country would be ready for any further pandemics but it would not involve health chiefs being called as witnesses.

“It’s not going to be about pointing fingers or ascribing blame,” Varadkar said. “It’s going to be about getting to the truths, understanding what happened. What we did well, what we did badly, what could have been done better, because we can’t assume that this is going to be the last major pandemic in our lifetime.

https://www.thejournal.ie/leo-varadkar-covid-19-inquiry-5959295-Jan2023/