Covid 19 Part XXV-44,159 ROI (1,830 deaths) 21,898 NI (598 deaths) (13/10) Read OP

In the light of the news from Scotland, is there any hope that all the complaints about Ireland being more locked down that anywhere else will finally be stopped.

Scotland has introduced bans very similar or stronger than here, and closure between 6 pm and 6 am for pubs retaurants and similar, and there's talk of similar in parts of England.

Shutting down most businesses is not going to help much, more effective would be what was used in Melbourne, an overnight curfew, with strong enforcement and penalties, which would stop "house parties", and help by getting the 25 to 24 year olds that "have" to congregate in groups on street corners to not do so, and it might also help reduce the problems with teens going out at night terrorising neighbourhoods with fireworks.

It's going to be hard to cope with a scenario that's been a laugh on places like Facebook, where it's been a joke that things are getting bad if all you wear is work clothes or night clothes, but that's the unfortunate reality for the next while, mixing with large groups is a guarantee for spreading Covid, we're seeing it in the cluster, or whatever else you call them of the professional football clubs, and in the GAA groups, and that's without the stupidity of the "winner celebrations".

It's hard not to see family and friends, it's hard not to be able to go to places like cinemas or live music shows, or matches of whatever floats your boat, but the alternatives are harder, this airy fairy idea of "sheltering the vulnerable" sounds wonderful, but the practicality of doing that has not been thought through, are we going to introduce free delivery of everything to such groups, how do the vulnerable get access to things like hospitals, and other services, even getting a haircut poses a risk, not from the people running the business, as they are taking precautions, but there are risks because an unacceptable percentage of people are not doing things like masks and hand sanitising properly.

As for social media, including some of the threads/posts/posters here, maybe they need to be shut down for a while too, the level of trolling that's happening because people can hide behind the supposed anonymity of their handles is only depressing, the signal to noise ratio here now means that most days, I'm skipping several hundred posts, because I'm not prepared to waste the time reading yet another rehash of failed arguments, there's so little real discussion here now, and my ignore list is growing on a regular basis, but unfortunately, there's no "ignore" for quotes of people on the ignore list, so the simplest solution is to become a LOT more selective about what I read.

Closing the schools will cause all manner of problems, because we've become a society that can't function without both parents working all hours of the day and night to put a roof over their heads, and if the schools close and grand parents can't travel to look after children, that causes all manner of problems.

Shutting down "non essential" retail is only a very small part of the overall economy, and guess what, we NEED a significant part of the economy to continue to function if we're not going to degenerate into total chaos, with essentials like food becoming rationed.

That may sound third world, but it is very much a possibility if things are not correctly managed, so we are going to have to live with a managed number of Covid cases if we want to avoid even bigger problems than we're facing now, and I'm not even going to start to look at the long term financial implications of some of this, if we thought the last time through the sausage machine was bad, the potential of the IMF coming in again would be far worse for some groups, as next time, there will be no sacred cows that can't be touched, nothing will be untouchable next time, and a massive shake up of the way we live as a society could be very challenging, but it is a very real possibility if we don't recognise that we ALL have to do as much as we can to limit the damage from Covid.

And yes, the experts are struggling at the moment, simply because where Covid is concerned, there are NO experts, there are only people with experience in similar areas who are a page ahead of the rest of us in terms of reading the Covid manual, and it's still being written, so they can't turn to the last chapter and see how it all works out in the end.

We can only hope that a viable vaccine becomes a reality soon, and that it works without problems, in the meantime, all of us have to change how we live in order to mimimise the damage that Covid is inflicting on every aspect of our lives.