What I learnt from COVID

justmehere

Random UNFOUNDED thoughts most with no backup evidence whatsoever, and some observations based on DOCUMENTED incidents, in no particular order.

Please feel free to add your own!

01) I can survive without seeing or talking to people in person for weeks at a time

02) The vast majority of managers are not needed, except maybe for civil service (see #8)

03) Working from an office is not required for many jobs, and only serve to keep people managers in a job

04) Politicans believe they are above the law and rules do not apply to them

05) It's good to be a Traveller as the law does not apply to you, or at least the Gardai will just sit around and watch hundreds of them break the law time and again

06) There is a core of people who do not give a damn about anyone else and do what they feel like

07) People should bow to nurses and doctors as they pass, and kiss the ground they walk on

08) Many civil servants have been taking the pi$$ while "working" from home

09) There is a minority of people in any population who will not check the source of information, and some will believe crazy ideas

10) Lockdowns reduced civil liberities but made our cities incredibly safe and reduced crime during those periods

11) Incredibly important to have strong leadership in these circumstances. Debatable whether than comes from our elected politicans, or the medical classes

12) The world is incredibly susceptible to the spread of infection

13) The mortality rate from COVID has been estimated between 0% to a little over 14% (ourworldindata.org). One estimate of the Black Death is around 50%: given the state of many of the world's health systems highlighted by COVID, if a Black Death COVID variant emerges, many millions of people will die

14) Rich countries fare better in pandemics

15) People are resilient as they adapted to new ways of working and keeping healthy, however mental health is just as important as peopel come to terms with "the new normal"

16) Many businesses are irrelevant to daily life

17) Misinformation, especially at the start of the pandemic, cause people to go crazy - scenes of supermarket frenzies from March 2020 are still fresh in my mind

18) Technology is essential to life - both work and personal

19) The vast majority of people do obey the law and live under restrictions when it is clearly explained why and for how long

20) Global response to pandemics is critical - from vaccine delivery to virus information sharing to protection information

21) People will still try to make money out of any situation

BuboBubo

The workers who are essential to the functioning of society are the worst treated and lowest paid

E.g., shop employees, drivers, food services, cleaners etc.

alchemist33

Agree on point 13. If a more lethal comes along we're screwed, unless we isolate the country early on

Mister Vain

There's absolutely nothing to do within 5k of my house.

justmehere

https://boards.ie/discussion/comment/117648217#Comment_117648217

🤣

Montage of Feck

While some of the loudest whingers are in the public service, teachers I'm looking at ye. Well their union reps don't do their reputation any favours at minimum.

Atlantic Dawn

There's many people living in this country I would not like to be in a sinking ship with from their attitude with q jumping for vaccines they would take a lifeboat for themselves and another as a spare.

22) Younger folks really don't give a toss and will place having a party over the lives of many

23) The world really was a better place before social media

SimonTemplar

I'll add two more:

There are loads of people (myself included) who are paid a lot more than nurses despite nurses having a much tougher and more stressful job.

Some people easily cry "oppression" or "dictatorship" without having the slightest notion of what's its really like to live under an oppressive dictatorship.

Potential-Monke

https://boards.ie/discussion/comment/117648209#Comment_117648209

Thing is, researchers are saying that this would have been as bad as, or even worse, than the Spanish flu, but modern medicine, science and hygiene prevented that. If covid19 was around back then, it would have been far more lethal.

I'd add that more and more people are re-evaluating what's important in life, and the old way of hard work is not the only way to enjoy life now.

18) Technology is essential to life - both work and personal

Err... no. Depends on your lifestyle. It certainly makes life more convenient, but it's also easily replaced with other things. I've been using far less social media, and other online activities since Covid happened. More contact with family, and outdoor activities. TBH Covid showed me just how superficial and unnecessary the internet/technology is...

NovemberWren

What I learned just now, if that 5 African Presidents have been 'assassinated'? (Well, 4, one is Haiti). They seem mostly to have been against vaccination.

Burundi. President aged 55 yrs. "took ill" and died, June, 2020. He had expelled the WHO from the country. Swaziland. President - 52 yrs. Died of Covid December, 2020. (he was ambiguous about vaccines). yipes! Tanzania. President - 61 yrs. Died March '21. A Coronavirus sceptic. Ivory Coast. President - 56 yrs. Cancer. In Germany. and? the Prime Minister 61 yrs. Died July '20. Haiti. President, 53 yrs. Assassinated. Shot. July '21.

Looks dodgy to me.

Potential-Monke

Something dodgy about politics in Africa? Never!

https://boards.ie/discussion/comment/117649595#Comment_117649595

You seem to be mentioning specifically the social media side of things. Remember, your phone is technology, even if it's still a Nokia 3310, best of luck getting about in this modern world without one. No doubt some outdoor activities have been helped by tech too, not to mention tech via sciene and medicine has potentially saved millions of lives from a covid death. I agree, how much you use is personal, but to call it superficial and unnecessary is just silly, sorry!

Zaph

https://boards.ie/discussion/comment/117649595#Comment_117649595

It's more than a convenience. Without technology many people, myself included, would simply be out of a job as the office has been shut for so long. With technology I've been able to do my job from home without the pain of a commute at either end of the day.

Lord Nikon

Some people are more dependent on drink than I've realized, and shout with every breath "Open the pubs". Has anyone told them the off-licence is open.

I've learned that groupthink is not just something out of 1984 or North Korea. Plenty of dissenting voices, yet, strangely not many in the "entertainment industry" appear to have a contrary opinion to the narrative 😏

And, according to the Love Hate cat killer "We've all got skin in the game" ,,,

In a year or so time, I think I'll have learnt even more..... When some phd researcher or some pseudo sociological/anthropological scientist comes out with some bs study about how we interact/ed while wearing masks vs how we used to before this sh1tsh0w began; and luvvies like Maura Derrane lapping it up 😒..

We're all guinea pigs in yet another social experiment.. Even saw a thread on here about how to 'laminate' the C/HSE passport ffs.. Seems people are happy to live in a society/country where they're required to "show their papers"... 😓

Strumms

https://boards.ie/discussion/comment/117649283#Comment_117649283

Look in every cemetery in this fûcking country and there will be headstone after headstone inscribed with the the names of hard workers...

work smart, not hard.

Dr. Kenneth Noisewater

https://boards.ie/discussion/comment/117649760#Comment_117649760

I like your hat, what brand of tin foil do you use?

Wibbs

https://boards.ie/discussion/comment/117649283#Comment_117649283

I'm not so sure it would have been near the 1918 virus. I'd go so far as to say covid 19 has been overblown in some respects. EG the median age of death for covid 19 depending on country runs between 75 and 85, the median age of death for the 1918 flu virus was between 25 and 35. There were isolated communities where after it passed through and outsiders visited the population demographic had shifted to more kids and elderly left. That's a huge difference right there. It was an extremely virulent and nasty virus that targetted those in the prime of life*. My maternal grandmother lived through it and her mum was one of those women who the community turned to to help with laying out of the dead and there was a run of funerals on a weekly sometimes daily basis in her area of Dublin. Even in her old age the memory of it was strong and she grew up in a time before much of the medical miracles we take for granted, where most families had lost at least one child in childhood and there were more widows around.

I would bet that if covid instead of Spanish flu had been around in 1918 it could well have been missed or seen as a small blip in a seasonal viral infection. Fewer people over 75, so fewer deaths. The death rate of covid 19 in the under 40's even the under 60's is very low. If you look in the early days of covid before effective treatments and vaccines in closed systems like cruise ships, the death toll was tragic of course but low. And cruise ships tend to be stocked with more elderly.

And that's stuff like flus. If something like smallpox came out of the wilds again and hit a cruise ship, you're looking at a death toll more like a third of those infected dying, with another third being fecked for life. It would completely overwhelm the modern world. Something with the virulence of the Black Death and what we think of modern society would almost certainly collapse. It nearly did when the Plague was doing its thing back in the day, the difference being that societies were ordered in a very different way and one that was more resilient to such things compared to today.

• a pretty strong theory goes that it was "engineered" by mistake because of the Great War. The first wave was a normal flu, mostly only killing the very weak or very old. Meanwhile in the trenches of Europe, only the truly sick dead on their feet were sent to field hospitals, the milder walking wounded with the dose were kept at their posts. It reversed the usual flu trend, where the milder type transmits more because people aren't as sick and keep moving around in the community. The Great War selected for the deadliest strain.

fun loving criminal

What I learnt from covid: people are dirty and people can't follow step by step instructions on posters on how to wash their hands.

https://boards.ie/discussion/comment/117649696#Comment_117649696

I focused on social media and phones because the term "technology" is so broad to cover just about anything, including the chair you're sitting on, or plumbing system in your home.

As for the importance of a phone, my current phone is Chinese with a Chinese service, which I didn't get international access for before I returned to Ireland (since I thought I'd be returning to China two weeks later). I haven't had any use of my phone for the last 1.5 years. Oh, I could get a new phone which could fit an Irish sim card, but I couldn't be bothered. It hasn't made that much difference to my life.

I'm not saying that technology isn't important. Covid didn't reinforce or reveal any greater reliance on "technology" that didn't exist before.

https://boards.ie/discussion/comment/117649698#Comment_117649698

Which is why I said "Depends on your lifestyle"

I’ve learned a lot about other people in this supposed society and how it’s all basically suit yourself. The rest of my life, however short or long that may be, will be as removed from others as it possibly can be.

freshpopcorn

In the past week I learnt we’ve an Ice Hockey team because of the anti vaccine guy resigning!

Alot of people without structure of work in their lives will quickly loose motivation,interest and drive to get stuff done

People can be hyped into buying anything from toliet paper to cryptocurrency,and will willingly pay over odds for something,if they have more money in their pocket

Randy Archer

1. people are incredibly stupid and act like children when they are told that they are not allowed to do things like go to the pub
2. Said people proudly express such stupidity in public with no embarrassment or shame
3. Virtual signalling brings out the hypocrites ; one minute clapping for frontline workers and putting up stupid slogans in their social media pages, the next minute hurling abuse at said front line workers and refusing to wear masks , upon request of said front line workers
4. The home is no place to do office work
5. people are weak, self centred pathetic morons who can’t go a few days without the pub. They should be shunned by proper members of society

magicbastarder

https://boards.ie/discussion/comment/117648264#Comment_117648264

22a) people generalise waaaay too much.

https://boards.ie/discussion/comment/117650660#Comment_117650660

You could substitute in the word ‘gym’ or ‘sporting event’ for pub in a couple of those and it’s equally as true.

Randy Archer

https://boards.ie/discussion/comment/117650674#Comment_117650674

Not really.

At least the two examples you provided are healthy constructive activities . Doubt gym users were throwing private house party / indoor get togethers to pump iron etc .

TefalBrain

People like to have a go and moan at teachers but yet they went back to work in the middle of a pandemic in small rooms with 30 other people whilst office workers in big offices with 10-15 people hid at home behind their laptops.

https://boards.ie/discussion/comment/117650697#Comment_117650697

You’ve just basically summed up what I said above about showing people up as being completely selfish nowadays.

“What I like should be allowed but what I don’t like shouldn’t be”.

“Everyone should be doing what I want them to”.

”The restrictions shouldn’t apply to the things I like, just to what I don’t approve of”.

And on and on. Covid has proven Irish people to be rotten.

I won't name a specific industry...more adverts in the printed media about 'business investment opportunity':

Minimum investment: €x,000

piss rate of return per annum

C'mon roll up roll up

Yeah right. :c

BENDYBINN

A dog is worth 2000 euro....

quazzy1

https://boards.ie/discussion/comment/117649712#Comment_117649712

Plenty of people are also dependant on the jobs in these pubs and would just like the chance to get back to work after 16 months, so they can afford to pay their bills and look after their families.

https://boards.ie/discussion/comment/117650660#Comment_117650660

Good points, except for 4.

freshpopcorn

People are stupid. They’ll make a whole issue out of wearing masks or washing hands correctly and they’ll do the wrong thing themselves.

People will break restrictions and moan about others braking them.

Some people never question anything the government says.

Some people are terrified of everything and have really bad anxiety about things.

2lazytogetup

nice list OP.

also confirmed that older people are hold in so much more regard than younger people, especially children. Feel really sorry for children over laste year. one person one vote doesnt really bring democracy when u18s cant vote and really only old people that vote.

when this happens again when im in my 70s or 80s, ill go on national radio (or whatever equivalent in 30 yeras time) and tell people that they need to live life and us oldies can look after ourselves.

yagan

It confirmed a lot of things for me, individuals can be smart, bright, thoughtful and considerate. But people can be stupid.

Also it confirmed that's there's a much more deadly obesity epidemic growing that I believe will see Irish life expectancy start to decline in the coming decades.

bucketybuck

This past 18 months has made it very clear that the Irish people are pissy little cowards that do not deserve respect.

Capt'n Midnight

Entitled people are a burden on society.

Dr. Bre

I learnt that covid wouldn’t have had the same hysteria if it occurred in the 1990s. So many ways to get the fear out and so much misinformation. I doubt even lockdowns would have happened if covid started in the 90s. People wouldn’t have been given the platform to shout shut this and shut that etc..

This is the first social media pandemic

The pandemic of self entitlement is here, as long as the fallout from covid 19 continues, and then for a decade after.

Randy Archer

https://boards.ie/discussion/comment/117650728#Comment_117650728

Fair point , I suppose. Just didn’t really hear those wingers or pay any heed to them

https://boards.ie/discussion/comment/117651048#Comment_117651048

You’re one of them. You’ve just done it in a post above.

Randy Archer

https://boards.ie/discussion/comment/117650775#Comment_117650775

Just my experience. Things move too slowly. Depends on the sector one is in . I prefer to leave work at the front door when I go home .

yagan

https://boards.ie/discussion/comment/117650908#Comment_117650908

I agree about the social media virus, but also must add that in 1990 half of the population was under 25 and obesity was rare compared to now.

Randy Archer

https://boards.ie/discussion/comment/117651051#Comment_117651051

one of what ? If you have reading and comprehension issues , that’s you in chief .

The issue was booze and the pub, I only humoured your laughable equivalent (thats to put it politely) in the hope you’d stop talking muck

Now you are trying to claim that I was a person who had issues with lockdowns regarding gym and attendance at sport events … despite no evidence of such a claim . So, I have done nothing . Whether it’s your dishonest or down right stupidity, that’s on you . Get your facts in order before you make false claims !

No one with an ounce of intelligence would compare the lockdown and the whinging about pubs closure to the closure of gyms and attendance of sporting events .

Do you actually have any evidence of gym users whinging about lock down , by the way ?

I’m pretty certain to most people with even the most basic grasp of reading and writing , the issue was whingers boozing and wanting the pubs to open, and ignoring the rules by holding house parties .

Don’t recall any stories about secret gym sessions of ordinary people (there were stories about sports teams doing illegal sessions) or people attending sports events when they should not have , but the floor is open for you to show the contrary

seamus

https://boards.ie/discussion/comment/117649712#Comment_117649712

The essentialness of the rural pub is something some politicians have banged on about for years. I always assumed it was mostly just Healy-Rae types trying to protect their profits.

But no, it really does seem like there are some individuals hopelessly wedded to the pub as a personal hobby. I can understand the frustration; it would be like an avid golfer seeing that golf courses are still closed and people telling them, "Just go to the driving range you eejit". It's not the same thing.

But the willingness of some to fight for their own personal desires against the good of society has been an eye-opener. I knew some people would step on their own mother for profit, but I didn't think that level of selfishness extended to being able to engage in their hobbies.

bucketybuck

You have completely missed the point being made.

freshpopcorn

https://boards.ie/discussion/comment/117650728#Comment_117650728

Didn’t what you mention happen in most counties in the World and not just Ireland tough?