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

charlie14

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118071714#Comment_118071714

My post was in reference to a posters remarks of his local choosing not to allow anyone indoor if they wished not being much of a business plan. That. is far removed from what you are saying. If what you are saying is such a goer commercially I`m surprised it is not more obvious in those country pubs. In my experience they would have more access to open outdoor spaces than urban pubs.

You may indeed be correct on your observations. Especially on those under 40, but have you considered that this camaraderie may not all be down to Covid passes ? Many pubs when only outdoor service was allowed did major upgrades of their outdoor areas. One group that would have benefited from that are smokers. 2018 a HSE analysis of the Healthy Ireland Survey found that 1 in 5 adults were daily smokers with the 25 - 34 year age group being the most prevalent.

Based on that is it not highly likely that those choosing to use pub outdoor spaces, by a margin of over 2 to 1, are doing so because of the no smoking ban rather than because of Covid passes ?

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118072344#Comment_118072344

I'd like to think he's not insane and would stand up for personal/medical freedoms in a democratic country 😄

But who knows, when you have the likes of Pat Kenny on Newstalk spewing hate and division re: the 9% or so unvaccinated, then maybe some people in this country will be brainwashed into that narrative.

Crazy times.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118072367#Comment_118072367

Boards QA director Growleaves

growleaves

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118072398#Comment_118072398

I think there are multiple reasons including the one you mentioned. Golden girl had another reason as well.

I've been out loads lately and sociable people mostly aren't interested in politics (in my experience) and won't go somewhere where 2 or 3 people can't get in. People don't dump their friends for medico-regulatory reasons except in internet fantasy land.

In Portugal there are bars with the front facade missing so the whole place is an outdoor-indoor mixture, making it very easy to be flexible around these rules.

growleaves

Smoking areas were always popular in Dublin pubs but prior to 2020 I don't recall seeing e.g. an empty indoor section yet the outdoor is packed in one big place that does a good trade seven nights a week.

I haven't been down the country much lately so pure speculation from me about what it's like.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118072457#Comment_118072457

The reason people are still socialising outdoors when the venue suits is not to do with concern for the feelings of their chronically uninformed friends, or fear of the virus. It’s just more flexible for mingling and larger groups

growleaves

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118072433#Comment_118072433

Do you want your tombstone to read "Educated. Vaccinated."?

Micky 32

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118072308#Comment_118072308

So lets add fuel to the fire then by not getting vaccinated. I really don’t give a **** about the excuses from the antivaxxers why they won’t take it unless you genuinely can’t. My gripe isn’t toward people who can’t take it.

If you won’t take it just make sure you have your pass ready at the door thank you.

astrofool

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118072344#Comment_118072344

I'm pointing the idiocy of the 2 of them agreeing with each other while one says it's fascist and the other saying it's communist, es ever, the point has eluded you.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118072367#Comment_118072367

So you have no suggested improvements for Lithuania while 30 people die daily and cases keep on increasing? Really? I posit that the reason you don't is that your only response would be to drop all mandates and restrictions and "let it rip" and that you care more about people receiving government money than people dying.

No one should be forced to get a vaccine, valid medical exemptions should be allowed but there is a vanishingly small number of people who can't get one of the vaccines. Those people are who we are protecting by getting vaccinated ourselves.

Quit the pearl clutching, lay out your plan and see if others are dismayed by it or not.

growleaves

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118072520#Comment_118072520

If you have friends you will know that people do care about the feelings of their friends, and yes it can be a factor in where to go.

You are a classic politics bore* so you naturally think people can more about 'being informed' or whatever the day's news story is than about being social. That's not how it works for many, many people.

*So am I, clearly.

charlie14

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118072438#Comment_118072438

I`m not sure that is entirely true.

People will stick with their friends as long as it does not greatly affect their own comforts. When there were no comfortable outdoor pubs spaces they didn`t stay outside with there friends who smoked.

That was brought home to me years ago that pubs were losing out by not having comfortable outdoor spaces on a visit to Carrick-on-Shannon where one pub had an extensive outdoor section for smokers with it`s own bar and heating which was packed each night. Portugal would be different due to climate.

Parachutes

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118071938#Comment_118071938

Anyone who doesn’t fall in line with the narrative? Conspiracy Theorist.

growleaves

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118072554#Comment_118072554

We're almost talking past each other. I absolutely do not need or want to layout some sort of bureaucratic plan, I was responding to the morally outrageous behaviour of the Lithuanian government.

It would be very easy to find a middle ground between no restrictions and forced vax, bans from employment and supermarkets etc.

There's a false assumption that more ramping up of 'restrictions' is being tougher on the virus because of a total unthinking assumption that all restrictions work and the more the better.

Lithuania is being turned into a prison and yet their deaths skyrocket. They're talking about giving five boosters in a few months, that's seven injections in a year. That's crazy.

Will their deaths fall to zero when they do this? No, because no one really has any idea how to stop deaths and has to make excuses for the discrepancies between different countries' death rates (e.g. Scandanavians are outwith normal human nature).

I predict many will embrace transhumanism soon based on what covid has shown us about attitudes to dying.

growleaves

I advise you to read the Gospel of John, that's my "plan", since it sets out a different, better way of living and thinking to dead-letter bureaucracy and gives a balanced perspective on life and death.

Bums with guns and pass-scanners guarding cafe entrances against 'vectors' (formerly known as people) is not a plan I'm prepared to greenlight sorry. No interest in sci-fi B movies brought to life.

astrofool

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118072619#Comment_118072619

You're being a hurler from the ditch, it doesn't work. I would drop the "forced" vaccination (you've said this hasn't happened) and would keep the medical exemptions (I don't understand what benefit banning this would have as it will be like 0.01% of the population). I'd be looking closely at further restrictions for the unvaccinated all the way back to March 2020 lockdowns if the hospitalizations and daily deaths didn't start decreasing, if that didn't work, then it would be back to lockdowns for everyone, the numbers difference with Lithuania really shows what Ireland has got right and how we're benefiting from our high vaccination rates. It's also very easy to dismiss deaths due to lack of action then to have to bring in restrictions which require action and even easier to be "aghast" at them when you're not the one making decisions that are leading to ~30 deaths on a daily basis.

astrofool

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118072668#Comment_118072668

How does the "gospel of John" stop 30 people a day dying in Lithuania?

growleaves

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118072676#Comment_118072676

If it were up to me I would have something like the Swedish approach.

I would not be paniced into lockdowns by deaths and 'cases' because I don't assume that lockdowns are a salve.

charlie14

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118072619#Comment_118072619

Nobody knows how to stop deaths, but with Covid we know that with vaccines they are greatly reduced.

On boosters and your mention of Scandinavia, Sweden are providing booster shots for their vulnerable this Autumn and are planning to provide booster shots for the majority of their population in 2022.

Good luck with the transhumanism idea. It does not sound like something anyone that refuses to take a vaccine will be that eager to be involved in.

growleaves

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118072703#Comment_118072703

I haven't told people not to take vaccines or even boosters.

I question giving someone two injections then another five boosters all within a few months. What's that about?

I'm against the awful, evil regime of force and arm-twisting and exclusion.

When these vaccines were being developed in December 2020 nobody said "Oh and people who don't take them won't have equal rights". That came about much later, and you took to it like a duck to water but it's wrong.

I'm not in favour of transhumanism, it repulses me. I used to know a guy who was interested in it.

I predict it will become popular because people are looking for a way to extend biological lifespan and apparently that is more important than anything else.

astrofool

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118072695#Comment_118072695

Surely you would go with the Danish approach? Much less excess deaths and they're basically fully open now?

(I mean, the approach you take is going to be mandated by the social customs in the country and capacity of the health system, so it's a bit moot, we would probably have had a much higher death count with the Swedish approach, cases and hospitalisations drive the restrictions not the other way around).

astrofool

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118072727#Comment_118072727

I predict it will become popular because people are looking for a way to extend biological lifespan and apparently that is more important than anything else.

Elaborate.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118072555#Comment_118072555

They do care about the feelings of friends, but 9.2 out of 10 are vaccinated, some I find most people just assume their social circle is vaccinated

charlie14

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118072695#Comment_118072695

Then I for one am glad it was not up to you when you see Sweden`s deaths compared to their neighbours who went the same route we did. Even after all that Sweden are going the same vaccination route as we are. Maybe even more-so where boosters are concerned.

growleaves

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118072739#Comment_118072739

Well there are physicists saying people will be able to upload their consciousness onto a computer in the near future. Sounds horrible to me.

In most societies in human history people had a cosmological or religious view of life and a whole society using all its resources to prevent the very old from passing away would have been an absurdity.

Right now people believe they are annihilated at the point of death and fear that annihilation (obviously not everyone is an atheist but I think it is now the default).

That puts people in a quandary, and they increasingly see mortality (and everything else in fact) as a technical-scientific problem to be solved so...

charlie14

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118072727#Comment_118072727

I have said before that how so many could make references to flu in relation to Covid, and then appear shocked that one round of vaccines would not somehow eliminate Covid just defies logic that those doing such comparisons know so little about the flu

People have been attempting to extent lifespans since time began and vaccines have played a large part in extending lifespans.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117977333#Comment_117977333

It has been mine but different locations will of course have different experiences. I'm up north at the minute and it's mostly far more relaxed and regular compared to home. Covid just isn't a thing. People don't talk about it and many a shop and pub are operating as if its 2019.

I'm in heaven.

growleaves

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118072795#Comment_118072795

Never with this much thuggery and moral compromises.

In Greek myth, Odysseus is dodging offers of immortality with conditions. Calypso wants to confine him to an island and if he never leaves he will never die. He escapes.

In another Greek myth there are travellers who are granted immortal life but after centuries they have gone blind and their bodies have decayed and they are stuck in place. They cry out for others to join them in a never-ending diminished existence.

Lumen

tbh I'm surprised it took this long for the atheists to be blamed and the Bible references to start coming out. 😀

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118073198#Comment_118073198

...

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118072857#Comment_118072857

The true meaning of those myths is that what may sometimes seem like an easy way out is seldom that, and taking the harder path will lead to a better future.