Covid cert and public pool and gym

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118329121#Comment_118329121

The characterisation of people who are against cover certs, lockdowns, mandatory vaccinations and the vast erosion of personal liberty that entails - as, unpatriotic or not being a "team player", is really something that should be met head on. I completely reject the notion that being against getting injected with something against my will makes me a bad citizen.

Can we get this clear. Knowing someone else's vaccine status DOES NOT protect you. What protects YOU is choosing to have YOUR vaccine. Once you have had that, you are supposed to be protected & can go about your business without demanding the confidential health records of another person. If you don’t agree with that statement then you must question the efficacy of the vaccination strategy which means you are also forced to question the official narrative that you’ve been fed for the last 18 months

But those who would force this upon us are defending the indefensible all the while hiding behind a cloak of faux patriotism and safety.

bokale

And the gym don't care about your vaccine status.

Your covid cert will do them.

Thinkingaboutit

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118345217#Comment_118345217

Irish people are by and large comformists and groupthinkers, who regard any dissent as a mortal offence, with the offender shunned. It explains a good deal about Irish history and the present. Gyms do not necessarily care, or only care as far their business could be penalised by bureaucrats. I think of some that don't, and they probably won't change, except maybe at a nominal level, as their custom is drawn from people who tend to be vax holdouts. Holy Joe sneeds aren't their custom base.

Jim2007

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118345217#Comment_118345217

The moment your rights as an individual comes into conflict with society as a whole, it is no longer about you. It’s a game of large numbers and a vaccinated crowd represents a lower risk than an unvaccinated one. You are free to remain unvaccinated if you wish, but don’t expect that society will continue to accept your behavior in contributing to raising the overall risk position going forward, they will not. That is how it has always been.

Mrs OBumble

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118345353#Comment_118345353

If that is how it has always been, then why don't we have vaccine certs for flu, Hep B, Tb, measles, diphtheria, etc?

I've carried a vaccine cert for yellow fever before, but never needed one for the others

Markus Antonius

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118345353#Comment_118345353

Outside things like employment policy, there has never been a situation where your health status was anyone elses business.

Strumms

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118345217#Comment_118345217

Personal liberty ? :)

you cannot enjoy and nobody can enjoy personal liberty if sick with covid or dead from it.

do you believe other regulations in society that are designed for the safety and wellbeing of people are an attack on personal liberty ? Being asked for ID to get into a pub ?

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118345353#Comment_118345353

So rights are assigned collectively rather than to the individual. Interesting development.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118345393#Comment_118345393

I don't believe that liberty is an absolute value, I think that there are circumstances where it is necessary to override it. But we have to be very careful to reserve that for extreme cases. I do not regard an disease which has at least a 99.8% recovery rate as an extreme case. I cannot regard a crisis which has resulted in a small increase in risk sufficient to lock people up in their homes and to exclude a cohort of people from civic life for merely exercising their choice to bodily autonomy.

Strumms

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118345454#Comment_118345454

I don’t think any restrictions have required people to be locked up in their home.

people have excluded themselves.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118345217#Comment_118345217

Just to be clear, vaccination in Ireland is not, nor has it ever been mandatory. Your right to decide whether you take the vaccine is absolute, so please stop stating otherwise.

Like most, I am completely indifferent as to whether you personally have taken a vaccine or have a cert. Like most, I am indifferent as to whether you suffer as a result of your decision, it is yours to make. But, like most I support the decision to deny entry to you to many indoor activities and aircraft. You see that as curtailing your liberties, but as most of these establishments are privately owned or public amenities with entry policies, there was never a time when everyone was entitled to entry.

My issue is not YOUR health per say, if you get sick and stay at home, I’d say good for you on your decision relating to vaccines, but as long as unvaxed like yourself provide a hugely disproportionate number of hospital/ICU admissions as a result of your choice, then it should come as no surprise that people are annoyed with you. I’d get used to it if I were you, it’s going to get worse.

You said 99.8% recover, was it not pointed out to you earlier that stats show 2% of those infected died? The issue here presently is not the death rate, that has not been an issue for some time. It is the volume of people infected at the same time, hospitalisations and the effect on treatments of people with other illnesses, effects on schools/workplaces and society in general.

It is a credit to the Irish people, though we have small concerns for ourselves dying/needing hospital treatments, we think more about what others dying/needing treatment and the effect our choices have on them. That is why vax rate is so high, that is why we accept restrictions even though we hate them. And that is why the opinion on the unvaxed is so strong.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118345570#Comment_118345570

I think the term you are looking for is "compulsory but not mandatory" i.e. mandates by the back door. We're not making it mandatory, were just making it a compulsory requirement to participate in civic life.

The 2% death rate has already been asked and answered, you can read the response here. What you are referring to is the Case Fatality Rate, the true rate is the Infection Fatality Rate (IFR) which is closer to .02% i.e. less than half of one percent.

As for hospitalisations, Irish hospitals have been "overwhelmed" for as long as I can remember. The fact is that even if we had 100% vaccination rate, Irish hospitals would still be "overwhelmed". The real issue should be, why is it that despite ever increased budgets and emergency top-ups every year, the HSE can't provide a service that's fit for purpose and meets the increased and expected demand every winter?

But the fundamental issue around the covid pass is this, it does nothing to protect YOU and does nothing to prevent the transmission of this disease. You can still get and transmit the disease from a vaccinated person just as likely as you could from an un-vaccinated. So when you say that you support these measures, and considering that there is not a scintilla of evidence that covid passes reduce the transmission of the virus - what exactly are you supporting, are you annoyed that you chose to take the vaccine and others didn't, that it is now obvious that the vaccines are not as effective as you were led to believe and that you feel you bought into the narrative and "took one for the team" and it's becoming clearer as we are well into the third vaccine and talk about a fourth in February that you were mislead?

Irish people's compliance has nothing to do with their concern for their neighbour, it's because they have been coerced into getting a vaccine for fear of losing certain privileges and anything that is built on misleading people, on exploiting fear, on choices that are no choices at all, it does not deserve our praise it deserves reform.

Despite all of this and even if you accept none of the points I just made, at some point I'm sure that even you will accept that banishing a large part of the citizenry from participating in civic life, obtaining medical treatment, and entering public spaces seems likely to produce bad outcomes...

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118353024#Comment_118353024

Vaccinations are neither mandatory, (I was quoting you, so I wasn’t “looking” for a term), nor compulsory, please stop saying they are. If you don’t want a vaccine, you do not have to have one.

If hospitals were overwhelmed as you say, before Covid, surely you then understand the importance of avoiding further stress on hospitals? Again, this is not a new nor difficult concept to understand. If hospitals are at capacity, more patients suffering from Covid means someone cannot be treated.

Has anyone said Covid passes reduce transmissions? And no, I reject utterly the notion that restricting access of those not vaccinated will be detrimental to society. If they cannot see why vaccination is important, if they continue to provide a hugely disproportionate number of hospitalisations/ICU admissions, I am certain society can do without their attendance inside buildings other than their own.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118353159#Comment_118353159

But it's mandate by the back door, the effect is the same. One is overt the other is coercive.

If your health system is at risk of being overrun then we increase capacity not imprison the entire population and conduct epidemiological experiments which have no way of being verified.

If you accept that vaccine passes don't reduce transmission then what exactly is their purpose other than as a coercive tool to compel people to get a vaccine, the efficacy of which is clearly questionable i.e. mandate by the back door?

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118353211#Comment_118353211

I don’t want to get bogged down in semantics, it is wrong to say something is compulsory or required by law, which it clearly is not. There is absolutely no legal requirement for you to have a vaccine if you do not want one, not through the front door, not through the back. So please, stop saying there is, claiming there is when no such law exists just makes you look foolish.

The purpose of the cert is to prevent people such as yourself from going into settings where the risk of you becoming infected is higher. In the hope that you are less likely to become ill and need hospitalisation. People who are vaccinated are less likely to become seriously ill, studies also suggest that vaccinated people are less likely to spread the virus as levels of nasal virus drop faster than those of unvaccinated infected people.

As I said to you earlier, few people care if you personally get sick, hopefully it wouldn’t be too serious, hopefully you would stay at home. But when 7% of the population accounts for 62% of ICU admissions, that becomes a problem for all those other people who need those beds unrelated to Covid illness.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118353308#Comment_118353308

Just to clarify, the are you saying that the purpose of the covid pass is to protect the un-vaccinated? You do realise that the 62% you refer to is about 50 people out of a population of circa 5 million i.e. 0.001%?

You also don't know why those people are unvaccinated. There's a probability that they are already too old, infirm and or co-morbid to receive the vaccine and that they contracted it while in hospital.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118353344#Comment_118353344

Firstly, there is no medical contraindication to vaccination.

The purpose of the Covid certificate is that it is document confirming the vaccination status of the recipient.

The 62% referred to relates to the number of people in ICU from April 1st to November 31st, not today. If you google, you will find the data. And the figures must be considered in context, a very tiny percentage of the population need ICU beds at any one time, surely you can understand that of those people who need them, if 62% are unvaxed Covid cases from a group that accounts for 7% of the population, that is a cause for concern.

Shilock

I'm vaccinated myself, but I stand by my principals and will not darken any door which requires a Covid pass.

I was enjoying the cinema until they had to join the club, so in support of my friends who are not vaccinated I said no way the cinema can get fecked. I'm not missing out on anything because I live rurally and am interested in the outdoors, bushcraft hiking, surfing and fishing etc I took it because I was protecting myself and others who I could come into contact with. But when they decided to cut people out of participation in indoor dining and theatres etc and I said to myself that's not the world I want to live in. It's no skin off my back, and it's probably healthier being away from the vaccinated who look like they're spreading it like wildfire. Drinking and huddling in small spaces, breathing in on top of each other.... yeuch and the unvaccinated are probably much safer at this stage.

What happens if the vaccines are creating a super varient which has to mutate in order to evade the potency of the vaccines. That's a fear of mine, or if my immune system forgets about other infections and just running around looking for spike proteins.

I had an awful infection recently from a thorn from a hawthorn hedge, it wasn't a whitethorn thankfully because they're worse. Usually I don't get any reactions, I was a bit worried but hopefully it was just a once off.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118353406#Comment_118353406

What happens if a super variant happened anyway in say a place where there is low vaccination rates, like say a southern African country, and while we waited for that variant, lots of people died here either directly from Covid, or indirectly because they were unable to access treatment for other illnesses, and we hadn't vaccinated because we were worried about the super variant? Ridiculous, I know.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118353402#Comment_118353402

As I said, if you don't have enough ICU beds then you increase capacity not shut down the country, close businesses and balkanise a section of society who have broken no law or committed no crime all because there are 50 people in ICU that are too old or already too sick to receive a vaccine for a disease that already has a 99.8% survival rate.

Shilock

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118353430#Comment_118353430

The only response I can give is , hopefully nothing like that would happen.

It's a serious virus and I wish it never happened. It seems to be able to outmanoeuvre any treatment thrown at it, the vaccine stops it from becoming more lethal but then again I never met anyone who had acquired measles, hepatitis or other illnesses they were vaccinated against. But covid seems to be a tough one to stop. Unless they come up with a more traditional vaccine rather than the mRNA gene therapy, an old fashioned vaccine mixed up with unfertilised egg's etc like the flu vaccine. Because there's More than enough Covid out there now to implement the traditional inoculation.

I know a lot of mRNA vaccine hesitant people would have no problem with taking a traditional type of vaccination against covid.

Maybe they take longer to make, I don't know

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118353455#Comment_118353455

Again, the mortality rate is no longer the concern it once was due to vaccination and the survival rate has no doubt been helped by those same vaccines.

No one has said you commited a crime, nor that you have broken a law by not getting vaccinated. This again goes back to you’re misinformed opinion that vaccination is a legal requirement/mandatory/compulsory, it is not, nor has it ever been. It really is the height of stupidity to keep saying vaccination is required by law when no such law exists. That is not an opinion, you can literally check legislation online.

There have always been restrictions on entry, there had never been a time when there has been an absolute right of entry to a public or private building.

And again, there is no age limit, nor medical contraindication to vaccination so can you please stop with this tripe.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118345456#Comment_118345456

We had a Level 5 lockdown for six months...

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118353497#Comment_118353497

You understand that the vaccine has been incredibly successful in preventing serious illness? It may not give immunity from infection but it has reduced the severity of the illness and mortality.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118353514#Comment_118353514

Why haven’t we needed that since vaccination levels began to rise?

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118353513#Comment_118353513

Nice straw man, if you can show me where I said that vaccination was a legal requirement I'll take it back but since I didn't, you won't. Fair enough, you don't want to address the substance of the argument and try to rely on literal legal definitions.

The fact is that you cannot say why you support covid passes if you also agree that they don't prevent transmission.

Here's the big question, what will you say if Ireland introduces mandatory vaccination as they have in other EU countries?

Shilock

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118353525#Comment_118353525

It says that in the post above, yes but it doesn't stop people from getting sick from it either or spreading the virus. That's why they realise that in order to stop the spread and people from getting sick etc they have to have curfews. It's plane to see that if we were at 100% vaccination rate people would still be getting sick and possibly end up in ICU. My biggest concern is that the likes of me don't end up with a mutation that supersedes the ability of the vaccine to keep me from getting sick or need a hospital bed. And for the life of me I don't know many vaccinated people who are worried about that happening, I'm told they're just going out to bar's, restaurants and the theatre coughing and spluttering and not giving a toss. I'd say most people have sniffles at some stage during the week. And when I used to go to the gym there was always a cough somewhere in the background or someone sniffling.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118353569#Comment_118353569

You always know someone is spoofing when they break out the aul “straw man” line.

When you post about “mandatory vaccination”, “compulsory” or “crime” relating to vaccination, you are straying into the legal domain, so don’t go there if you don’t want to be called out on your interpretation of what is legally required.

A Covid cert is a certificate confirming your vaccination status, most people have them on their phones. Does an picture on your phone prevent transmission of Covid? of course not. But policies which include the requirement to produce that certificate to enter a premises are designed to reduce infection of unvaccinated and spread of infection by people who MAY have higher virus concentrations in nasal droplets than vaccinated people. I support the policy because of that.

Would I support mandating of vaccines? No, I firmly believe that every individuals right to be an idiot should be protected.

Strumms

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118353514#Comment_118353514

At which at no point was anybody required to be locked up, locked away… lockdown was simply an all encompassing term for restrictions.

Strumms

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118353455#Comment_118353455

Where do you get the qualified people to staff said beds, departments ?