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

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118002736#Comment_118002736

Had dinner yesterday evening in a pub in Cork and a quick glance of the cert was all that was checked. Nothing scanned. Most places have been very lax lately especially when these certs are coming to an end soon.

timmyntc

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118004644#Comment_118004644

No, an unvaccinated child would come ahead of vaccinated 80 year old, an unvaccinated 30 something would come ahead of a vaccinated 60year old with heart trouble.

There are tonnes of criteria that are taken into account to assess a situation, but it ultimately comes down to who has the best chance of survival given the treatment that is available. Not who got the jab or who didnt, only insofar as that affects potential survival rates.

I am against our implementation of those taxes, yes. If they were ringfenced to treat obese/alcoholics etc then I would be less opposed to them. Were we to mirror that with covid vaccines, it would mean extra monies levied to pay for treatment of unvaccinated - but I doubt you'd be okay with that, since your stance seems to be that we should deny unvaccinated people medical treatment and punish them for their decision.

timmyntc

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118004647#Comment_118004647

Where does the government tax people based on their health status?

Healio

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118004149#Comment_118004149

So you're ok with letting unvaccinated taxpayers pay for the public hospitals; but its not ok for them to use that service should they need it.

Red Silurian

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118004384#Comment_118004384

They could always do both, but one easy and quick way to bolster bed numbers is remove the fools who won't be vaccinated from our hospital and ICU beds

Red Silurian

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118004766#Comment_118004766

Yes

charlie14

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118004710#Comment_118004710

It taxes people already, and has been doing so for a long time, on the lifestyle choices they make that are related to healthcare costs. Successive governments have stated that as a reason for increasing tax on a range of products.

is_that_so

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118004782#Comment_118004782

Apart from being morally repugnant it's quite probably illegal anyway. A far bigger annual problem are the so-called bed blockers, people who have no places in the community to go to.

timmyntc

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118004803#Comment_118004803

A tax on products is not the same as a tax on people.

darconio

In that case they should also deny a bed whenever somebody is hospitalized as a direct consequence of their personal choice from getting vaccinated (myocarditis, blood cloths for example). Then maybe depending on their skin color or their social status, or god forbid, if they got involved into an accident: they decided to drive a car only by their own will, they should have used the public transport instead. Very dangerous way of thinking, we all know where this is going if we don't stop it now

charlie14

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118004891#Comment_118004891

The tax on certain products is directly related to the lifestyle choice some people make. The need tax revenues from those products have been justified by successive governments as being due to the cost of those lifestyle choices to the health service.

There haven`t just been tax costs for those that made those lifestyle choices. There has also been legislation governing the lifestyle choice of being a smoker with fines and prosecution for doing so on public transport, indoor setting, public buildings and even hotel and guesthouse bedrooms etc. because of the potential danger to others. The same could be said for those making the lifestyle choice of refusing to take a vaccine

bucketybuck

We should consider linking government benefits, grants and handouts to vaccination status as well. For example, any Mica redress scheme should only be available to vaccinated people, after all why should people get to take our money if they won't play by the rules? Since Donegal is such a covid hotspot such measures could only be for the common good.

After that we should move onto other groups of people we can interfere with.

astrofool

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118004706#Comment_118004706

That was not my stance (as I stated earlier), a vaccinated 80 year old would be seen to ahead of an unvaccinated 80 year old (why change the other parameters?).

I can understand your position more now given you are against the current tobacco taxes (for example).

Taxes are used to adjust people's behavior, not to be ringfenced to mitigate the problem people cause to themselves, that is one of the founding principles of taxation.

However, you have now come to the conclusion that we should tax the unvaccinated to pay for their treatment as long as it was ring-fenced. What level of taxation should that be? The unvaccinated costs in ICU would be pretty horrendous given the cost per day and level of attention they require, it could be a couple of thousand a year each given the minority that are still unvaccinated having to share that burden among themselves.

bloopy

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118005260#Comment_118005260

Can we go after the poor and downtrodden.

Think that they're all that, those guys. Always looking for something to whinge about.

timmyntc

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118005281#Comment_118005281

If that's your stance, that the users of a resource should have to pay 100% of the cost for said resource, then maybe just get rid of taxes altogether and have everything private? Because that sure sounds like what you're suggesting.

timmyntc

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118005252#Comment_118005252

The tax is on the products, not the people.

Proposed taxes on unvaccinated people are fundamentally different to a sugar tax or cigarette tax

Snooker Loopy

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118004274#Comment_118004274

There are 400 Covid hospitalisations now. That's the highest since March 8th.

So, yeah, yes.

astrofool

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118005215#Comment_118005215

That is a nonsense statement and not based in reality. The goal is to encourage people to get vaccinated, if anything, the government should be highlighting the care and attention the vaccinated will get if they encounter the vanishingly rare side effect from a vaccine and because they're so rare, there's almost no cost to providing this care, unlike the cost of all the ICU beds currently occupied by the unvaccinated.

The rest is just some sort of 1984 fever dream you're having, the fact that you immediately went to segregation by skin colour is a reflection on your psyche and not others.

If you're willfully unvaccinated, you're the reason for the restrictions, get jabbed and the hospital numbers will take a nosedive.

astrofool

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118005298#Comment_118005298

That was what you were suggesting, but again, how much should we charge the unvaccinated as you have suggested? €2000 each might cover the ICU beds they're costing everyone else between them.

Red Silurian

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118005299#Comment_118005299

Products don't pay taxes, people do

timmyntc

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118005398#Comment_118005398

Charge them as much as provision of healthcare costs, and make them exempt from all healthcare related taxes instead.

If I knew I could get away without wasting taxes on the HSE I'd not have gotten a vaccine certainly.

TomTomTim

God almighty. I thought that the zealots were bad a few months back, but they've seriously taken it up a few notches in the last while it seems. I honestly thought that some of the post here were satire at first, but sadly they are completely serious.

SupplyandDemandZone

Some peoples true colours really shining through now. Ugly stuff.

bloopy

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118005419#Comment_118005419

Check out Reddit Ireland or the Journal commenters.

Not much difference between the two. Even twitter is looking more reasonable than them these days.

TomTomTim

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118005442#Comment_118005442

The Journal is particularly bleak. It's not organic either, they simply remove posts that they don't like, so you only get to see the same lunatics posting the same nonsense time and time again.

mohawk

The authoritarian views expressed on this thread are mad. When you think about it there is a large amount of hospital admissions that are a result of individual choices. Many cancers and other health conditions can be caused by lifestyle choices such as drinking, smoking, obesity etc. Lack of exercise can have a huge impact in your health. Failing to manage your stress levels can have a very negative impact on your health. Then of course things like accidents can be caused by speeding, poor decision making, showing off etc. How about when an accident arrives in A&E they wait and see whose fault it is before they treat the patient? Some people make poor decisions in life, this is not new. I think healthcare staff are there to treat their patients not there to pass moral judgement on their patients and withdraw or withhold treatment from those deemed unworthy.

A huge percentage of the adults in this country are vaccinated, many others have caught Covid already. The hospitals in this country are poorly managed and easily overwhelmed. Instead of asking for government to make changes people are taking the easier way out and going down to blaming individuals instead of the decades of mismanagement of the health system by managers and governments.

astrofool

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118005418#Comment_118005418

In this case, getting vaccinated is the behaviour to encourage, all other costs are still the same (so the young subsidise the healthcare costs of the old effectively), so, just as you highlighted with the sugar tax, the unvaccinated should be taxed extra based on the extra costs of treating them for COVID-19.

This is the conclusion you have reached with your posting, I personally don't see such measures as needed, but it's interesting to see if you will have the courage of your convictions (or if you have argued yourself into a logical fallacy that you can't back down from which I think is the more likely case).

is_that_so

There seems to be a level of otherness or "othering" (terrible word!) at work on this thread.

https://www.verywellmind.com/what-is-othering-5084425

darconio

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118005391#Comment_118005391

Instead you are suggesting that whoever is unvaccinated will definitely get covid and will undoubtfully need hospital care. At the same time you are suggesting that whoever is vaccinated won't get covid and, in the remote possibility they get it, they won't need hospital care: I mean we should certainly deny a hospital bed to somebody vaccinated that caught covid because, despite the immunization provided by the jab, they obviously didn't observe the health protocols and did something wrong. Ah then of course, you believe that the infection is spreading because 10% of the population is unvaccinated: this 10% must run around spitting on everything and everywhere 24/7 in order to spread the infection at the current rate.

Number in hospital with Covid hits 7-month high as pregnant women continue to suffer ‘disproportionately’ from virus (msn.com)

"Four in ten people who were hospitalised in recent weeks were unvaccinated, and nearly 70pc of those in ICU have not had a vaccine, the HSE has said."

Who's paying for the beds occupied by those 6 in 10 people or the 30% in icu?

Should we deny a bed for the unvaccinated 70% pregnant women?

ZX7R

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118005487#Comment_118005487

Surreal ,that's what it's like reading some of the posts.

Like reading the script for a bad b movie sequel