Relaxation of Restrictions, Part V - **Read OP for Mod Warnings**

Tenzor07 wrote: »

I would say that Sam McConkey, Tomas Ryan, Anthony Staines, Luke O'Neill are all millionaires by now with all the appearances on RTE, VM1 etc, and it was NPHET listening to them which has swayed their strategy on directing Ireland's covid response...

Its an example of how groupthink and conformation bias can bring you to a very bad place.

Deleted User wrote: »

Hysteria has taken over the world over the last few years in particular. Especially since social media.

We can't even have a bad day of weather anymore without multiple headlines of a "Doomsday" storm coming. People rushing out and buying food, water, candles, toilet paper. Then the actual bad weather arrives and people see that it is nothing we haven't experienced before.

The same applies to Covid. People were saying the death rate was 10%, millions would die etc. Everyone panicked. Countries all jumped into lockdown, crashing the economy for years to come and all the other consequences.

The actual reality is a very mild illness that didn't even cause death in the majority of nursing home cases. Death rate will probably eventually be 0.1%.

We don't need restrictions. People need to take personal responsibility based on their own health and circumstances. As a country, we need to accept that around 0.1% of cases may die. Yes thats right, I said the word die. A word that makes people very uncomfortable these days when mentioned alongside Covid.

Excellent comment.

Social media seems to have removed all coping skills from society.

Seemingly only deaths notified on social media are worthy of sympathy, and the people that type RIP on comment sections of those websites appear to have no concept of the statistics behind death numbers.

lee_baby_simms wrote: »

Its an example of how groupthink and conformation bias can bring you to a very bad place.

There was an Infamous War criminal back in the 1940's who said:

Never allow the public to cool off, never admit a fault or wrong.
Never accept blame, concentrate on one enemy at a time and blame him for everything that goes wrong...

It is a problem though that someone like MadYaker wouldnt even entertain the idea that this may be true. Off the deep end. Nutters. But would you even pause and think hold on for a minute could there be something to this?

Tenzor07 wrote: »

I would say that Sam McConkey, Tomas Ryan, Anthony Staines, Luke O'Neill are all millionaires by now with all the appearances on RTE, VM1 etc, and it was NPHET listening to them which has swayed their strategy on directing Ireland's covid response...

I think you might be overestimating fees for media appearances just a tad

_Kaiser_ wrote: »

But I'll ask you an open, honest question (and to anyone else who is "pro" restrictions)

I'm not 'pro' restrictions but I think they have served a purpose.

What is the basis for your stance?

- Are you personally in that most vulnerable group? No.
- Are you genuinely fearful of catching the virus? No.
- Are you happy to let the experts decide what's best for you? No.
- Is is that you resent others who don't fit one of the above categories? No.

I'm being serious here. I cannot understand how someone would look at the (thankfully) very low numbers of deaths, very low number of serious outcomes (forget case numbers - outcomes are the key metric), serious economic damage and social division, and yet still be here brow-beating and outright insulting people who are instead saying "hang on a minute"

As I've said up there with the emboldened text ^^^ I'm not pro-restrictions. It may surprise many of you that I've only worn a mask once since this all started. That was only because I couldn't get my hair cut without wearing one.
What I've spent most of my time doing on this thread is calling out the factually inaccurate or misleading statements from the open everything up contingent. That doesn't make me pro-lockdown or pro-restrictions. It's an anti-bullshíte stance. Most of the hysteria that I see generated in here comes from the open everything camp.
I'm at peace with what the government have decided. I don't necessarily agree with it, especially the latest moves since the new government was formed but I'm not getting too worked up about it like some people on here. Why worry about something that you have absolutely no control over. That's a waste of time and energy.

No restrictions on activities that are proven to increase risk to physical health regarding the coronavirus.

More restrictions on people doing things that are stupid and childish on social media.

I don't share the same priorities but to each their own. Personally I can watch stupid things happening all day long, I have a tolerance for it, I've been watching it all my life.

LuckyLloyd wrote: »

Which bit? That covid is somewhere between a cold and a flu in severity (Fintan) or has a 0.1% death rate (jacdaniel) that NPHET need to be 'stood up to' by the government (krusty) or the cross thread celebrations now that New Zealand has a couple of cases again or whatever? No, it's not worth pausing to consider these things.

It's a hot house of extremism with everyone pushing everyone else to boiling point and beyond. Quite an incredible (and grimly entertaining) read.

That's an ironic post considering some of the posts from the "pro" restrictions crowd.

Rather than trying to take pot-shots, care to take a swing at the questions I asked earlier:

But I'll ask you an open, honest question (and to anyone else who is "pro" restrictions)

What is the basis for your stance?

- Are you personally in that most vulnerable group?
- Are you genuinely fearful of catching the virus?
- Are you happy to let the experts decide what's best for you?
- Is is that you resent others who don't fit one of the above categories?

I'm being serious here. I cannot understand how someone would look at the (thankfully) very low numbers of deaths, very low number of serious outcomes (forget case numbers - outcomes are the key metric), serious economic damage and social division, and yet still be here brow-beating and outright insulting people who are instead saying "hang on a minute"

The constant advocacy for more restrictions and refusal to acknowledge that the actual impact is very low to the vast majority is honestly something I can't get my head around.

It almost seems as though some are actually disappointed that the trends of thousands in hospital/dead hasn't borne out.

Deleted User wrote: »

I think a large part of this is that the people that got sucked in by the hysteria and believed that this would happen, really don't want to be so wrong... Sadly, no matter what evidence is presented, I think some people will always believe that lockdown saved us all from certain death.

That's a pretty big hysterical strawman you just made there.
If you can find a single genuine post on boards on this forum where someone says that the lockdown saved us all from certain death, I'll retract the hysterical strawman claim.
I don't take any post seriously that shouts "hysteria" and then uses weak words like "some people". It's shotgun posting.

I hope I can illustrate some breadth in my perspective here , I am pro-some restriction(the problem is that most people are on a spectrum of restriction its almost never all or none). Your four questions seem to assume that people can be categorized by only two camps.

I believe for example, that having children in school should be the top priority because of the multiplicative effect that will have for the workforce and general mental health and the long term health of the nation(we don't need uneducated citizens).

I believe that social distancing, no large gatherings and mask wearing should be enforced because these things are minor inconveniences in my opinion that just require effort and they help prevent the spread of disease.


Your four questions:

What is the basis for your stance?

- Are you personally in that most vulnerable group? No

- Are you genuinely fearful of catching the virus? Yes

Virus is still novel as I've stated elsewhere death is not the only negative outcome. I cannot predict my outcome with any certainty.

- Are you happy to let the experts decide what's best for you? Yes

I trust experts, though I know they are often incorrect(none experts are more often incorrect), they are best placed to provide guidance, specialization is a key stone of the technological advancement of the human race. I trust in peer review also, I do not see a conflict of interest large enough that would make me suspicious of some kind of conspiracy theory.

- Is it that you resent others who don't fit one of the above categories? No


I have one question for you:

Given that the hospital/death toll hasn't been as high as was predicted before control measures were introduced, do you believe that those control measures were not at least partially responsible for that outcome?


There are some measures I don't agree with.

Example: distance and travel limitation - ineffective I believe, we should focus on breaking community transmission through hygiene,distance and large gathering measure

EDIT: this is confusing, I should say the 2km/5km radius limitation were ineffective, I believe in 2m social disancing

And despite all this, by far our biggest problem is testing, if we had capacity for 100k tests/day available and 24 hour turnaround, we would have control. If that cost 5 billion to set up it would be worth the cost. It appears to be impossible somehow.

Deleted User wrote: »

The bolded part is a question that comes up again and again.

Did Lockdown save lives? Well, there is no doubt it saved SOME lives. We could lockdown at any point in time and it would prevent some deaths. Sweden didn't lockdown at all and there death toll is not much higher than ours, considering they have a larger elderly population.

But we didn't go into lockdown to save just some lives. We went into lockdown based on models and predictions that huge numbers of people were going to die. Some suggesting 30000 deaths for Ireland. That is what lockdown was originally based on.

In hindsight, crashing the economy and our huge overreaction now looks very disproportionate to the threat we face.

One example I've posted previously to provide context was the flu season of 2014/2015 in the UK.

Deaths from the flu were estimated at around 30,000. Obviously most were attributed to the elderly but 104 children died from the flu. From newborn to age 14.

Now were many of these deaths actually preventable? Technically yes. Lockdown everything and everyone for 6 months and spend billions on a vaccine and immunise everyone.

A crazy notion in 2015 but not so mad in 2020.

Deleted User wrote: »

The bolded part is a question that comes up again and again.
Did Lockdown save lives? Well, there is no doubt it saved SOME lives. We could lockdown at any point in time and it would prevent some deaths. Sweden didn't lockdown at all and there death toll is not much higher than ours, considering they have a larger elderly population.
But we didn't go into lockdown to save just some lives. We went into lockdown based on models and predictions that huge numbers of people were going to die. Some suggesting 30000 deaths for Ireland. That is what lockdown was originally based on.
In hindsight, crashing the economy and our huge overreaction now looks very disproportionate to the threat we face.

30,000 deaths were what would have happened had we just treated this as a flu for which we had no vaccine and continued on as normal.
And by we, I mean not just government restrictions, but the behaviour of companies, individuals etc

We went into lockdown to prevent the health service from being overwhelmed.
Had the health service been overwhelmed, we would have had far more deaths than we had, and far more deaths than Sweden had.
The Swedish approach was not viable for us, we did not have the health service capacity to run the gamble.
https://www.rte.ie/news/coronavirus/2020/0511/1137763-what-can-we-learn-from-swedens-covid-19-icu-figures/

Sweden did not have a laissez faire approach either, they did not continue on as normal, either as a government or individually.
They did not lockdown but they did have restrictions.
They closed schools. People were working from home.
Strict social distancing was enforced in bars. No large concerts, sporting events etc.
I assume they had virtually no inbound tourism either.


So the lockdown here saved far more lives than the raw figures of Ireland v Sweden suggests. If we hadn't screwed up in nursing homes, those figures would be even more divergent.

https://twitter.com/garvangrant/status/1296464592252669952?s=20

joseywhales wrote: »

I hope I can illustrate some breadth in my perspective here , I am pro-some restriction(the problem is that most people are on a spectrum of restriction its almost never all or none). Your four questions seem to assume that people can be categorized by only two camps.

I believe for example, that having children in school should be the top priority because of the multiplicative effect that will have for the workforce and general mental health and the long term health of the nation(we don't need uneducated citizens).

I believe that social distancing, no large gatherings and mask wearing should be enforced because these things are minor inconveniences in my opinion that just require effort and they help prevent the spread of disease.


Your four questions:

What is the basis for your stance?

- Are you personally in that most vulnerable group? No

- Are you genuinely fearful of catching the virus? Yes

Virus is still novel as I've stated elsewhere death is not the only negative outcome. I cannot predict my outcome with any certainty.

- Are you happy to let the experts decide what's best for you? Yes

I trust experts, though I know they are often incorrect(none experts are more often incorrect), they are best placed to provide guidance, specialization is a key stone of the technological advancement of the human race. I trust in peer review also, I do not see a conflict of interest large enough that would make me suspicious of some kind of conspiracy theory.

- Is it that you resent others who don't fit one of the above categories? No


I have one question for you:

Given that the hospital/death toll hasn't been as high as was predicted before control measures were introduced, do you believe that those control measures were not at least partially responsible for that outcome?


There are some measures I don't agree with.

Example: distance and travel limitation - ineffective I believe, we should focus on breaking community transmission through hygiene,distance and large gathering measure

EDIT: this is confusing, I should say the 2km/5km radius limitation were ineffective, I believe in 2m social disancing

And despite all this, by far our biggest problem is testing, if we had capacity for 100k tests/day available and 24 hour turnaround, we would have control. If that cost 5 billion to set up it would be worth the cost. It appears to be impossible somehow.

First, want to thank you for your reply and the time you put into it. Genuinely appreciated

I would broadly agree with most of the points you make, but to answer your specific question - yes, the initial responses in March were entirely appropriate and correct given the circumstances and what we knew at that point.

We needed to urgently get people's attention as to the seriousness of the situation and the risk (as we understood it at that point), and buy time for the HSE to ramp up to respond.

The problems started when that latter activity took FAR longer than it should have (and as you say, still isn't where it needs to be today) and the relaxation of the measures was dragged out because of that and the serious mistakes made in the nursing homes (I do think there will be a Tribunal into all this when it's finally over).

As a result the response didn't keep pace with the new information that emerged, the observed impact in Ireland, and the consequences to the rest of our social, (other) medical and economic well-being. This was compounded by the previous Government's decision to effectively turn all the key decisions over to NPHET. A body who are looking at solely from one very-conservative medicak perspective (as is their remit).

So yes, the measures did help to save lives - but the question and point of contention remains as to whether they were necessary at the level they were imposed at after those first few weeks, and whether they continue to be appropriate and proportional now.

Given what we know now about the impact of the virus, who is worst affected, and the outcome of cases, I and others here are arguing that NO - they are in fact disproportionate to the level of risk posed to the vast majority of those who are impacted by them and this is borne out by the numbers dead and outcomes of cases (and it's worth highlighting here again that yes, I have the greatest sympathy for those who've died, but deaths were unfortunately inevitable and in the context of a pandemic that suggested tens of thousands dead at the start, we're actually in a relatively good place).

The outcome is that we are not only causing further social division, mental health concerns, and economic damage - we are in fact hampering our ability to target our not-infinite resources towards those who actually need help and support the most.

The division within Government isn't helping this and the latest round of restrictions should in fact be entirely reversed until such time as a consensus and logic is established to them. Again, we're actually doing more harm than good - and it's also eroding the support and buy-in from the general public (something without which we really COULD have a problem).

So, as I've said before... it comes down to perspective, balancing the medical needs of the (thankfully) few vs the needs of the healthy/minimal risk majority, and most importantly remaining calm and consistent in the messaging, approach and adjustments that are necessary.

In my view, we're not getting this right at the moment, and it's not helped by the divisive stances taken on platforms such as this with "sides"/"camps"/"pro vs anti" etc etc. All that does is create a level of noise and frustration that closes minds to the actual message that really DOES need to be heard and reasonably debated.
After all we are ALL on the same "side" here. No-one wants to get sick or die from CV-19, or see friends or loved ones get sick or die. No-one wants to lose their jobs or see others lose theirs etc.
This is (as I referred to in a post earlier) the very real problem with a lot of social media currently and the damaging effect that it's having on our ability to discuss and debate, and society in general.

So, with that last point in mind I do genuinely thank you for the above reply and hope this helps clarify my own stance.