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

Jim_Hodge wrote: »

You really would benefit from seeing first-hand what "only 37" in ICU means on the ground. You haven't a clue.
Thankfully we haven't more in ICU and that is because of the restrictions.

Can you even contemplate the long term cost and affect on our society and economy if we let this virus just rip through?

Can you?

The night before lockdown Dublin was very busy. The restrictions are causing our economic and societal collapse, not the virus. Im sorry to break it to you but if all restrictions were lifted tomorrow, every pub and shop would be full and normal life would go on.

You can obviously hide away if you prefer, nobody is stopping you.

Jim_Hodge wrote: »

That's not what I said and you know it.

But carry on.....

It’s exactly what you said, that ‘letting it rip’ would be worse for our economy and society.

So which is it?

nofools wrote: »

Have you seen the number of deaths around Europe this week.........

An appropriate level of fear is needed.

Once again, it seems being ‘European’ suits when Europe’s case numbers are high. However over the summer it didn’t suit at all when they had restaurant, bars & services open. NPHET went against the advice of the ECDC continuously. Europe entered into an EU wide travel system while we were the last to even reopen at all with the lowest cases. Why is that? People took a much needed break from Covid hysteria on the continent. Meanwhile here in Ireland, we lambasted the public with fear filled ‘experts’.

Also Tomás Ryan wrongly claimed on Prime Time TV that ‘hundreds of children would die’ if Covid was let circulate here. He said this when discussing approaches to Covid with Dr Gupta on Prime Time. There is no evidence anywhere that this is the case. There are also plenty of tweets and quotes from McConkey filled with his ‘projections’ before Level 5 was implemented. None of which came to pass as we are only in Level 5 for two & a half weeks. Level 3 plus household ban on visits had already made the impact.

Pubs in Dublin have been closed since before St Patrick’s day and it’s unclear as to whether they’ll reopen at any point this year.
You could enjoy a pint in a pub in Europe almost two months before you could get your dog groomed or buy some non essential retail here, and that really puts it into perspective how ridiculous our roadmap to get out of lockdown round 1 was.

During the summer, when we had 0 deaths and less than 5 cases per day, the government still wouldn’t entertain the idea of speeding up the roadmap that was paralysing several industries, while our European neighbours enjoyed a summer of relative normality where all of their industries were open, albeit with rules in place.

The point is that they had breathing room, they had a chance to mentally and financially recover a bit before lockdown 2.0 was imposed on them.
The pubs here were open for all of 2 WEEKS before we shut them again, they were open in Italy since May and they’re the covid ground zero of Europe, for goodness sake.

That’s why people are annoyed. They are fatigued and tired, they are financially and mentally suffering under the weight of these severe restrictions and have had no respite since early March.

So it’s not really relevant that other European countries are going back into lockdown, because they didn’t suffer through the most restrictive and strict lockdown in the whole of Europe throughout the summer.
We were told we weren’t ‘quite where we needed to be’, to hang tough and that we’re nearly there, to enjoy just two weeks of all industries being open before they shut it all again?

The government seem extremely trigger happy when it comes to imposing these lockdowns but they’re like headless chickens trying to get us back out of them.
The severe lack of confident leadership is what caused us to have the slowest, most drawn out easing of restrictions in the world first time around.
The fear is that they’ll do the same this time.
I have absolutely no faith that they’ll let us go back to level 2/3 in December, and if they do, it will be done so under the clear impression that we’ll be back to level 5 in January again.
Stephen Donnelly made it clear that rolling full lockdowns are going to be in place for at least another 9 months, and that’s absolutely terrifying.
This isn’t living with covid, and the human cost for this is going to be astronomical.

I have no doubt that the inevitable tribunals in a few years time will confirm what we already know: that these restrictions/lockdowns are causing more indirect deaths than those who are dying of the virus.

SusieBlue wrote: »

Pubs in Dublin have been closed since before St Patrick’s day and it’s unclear as to whether they’ll reopen at any point this year.
You could enjoy a pint in a pub in Europe almost two months before you could get your dog groomed or buy some non essential retail here, and that really puts it into perspective how ridiculous our roadmap to get out of lockdown round 1 was.

During the summer, when we had 0 deaths and less than 5 cases per day, the government still wouldn’t entertain the idea of speeding up the roadmap that was paralysing several industries, while our European neighbours enjoyed a summer of relative normality where all of their industries were open, albeit with rules in place.

The point is that they had breathing room, they had a chance to mentally and financially recover a bit before lockdown 2.0 was imposed on them.
The pubs here were open for all of 2 WEEKS before we shut them again, they were open in Italy since May and they’re the covid ground zero of Europe, for goodness sake.

That’s why people are annoyed. They are fatigued and tired, they are financially and mentally suffering under the weight of these severe restrictions and have had no respite since early March.

So it’s not really relevant that other European countries are going back into lockdown, because they didn’t suffer through the most restrictive and strict lockdown in the whole of Europe throughout the summer.
We were told we weren’t ‘quite where we needed to be’, to hang tough and that we’re nearly there, to enjoy just two weeks of all industries being open before they shut it all again?

The government seem extremely trigger happy when it comes to imposing these lockdowns but they’re like headless chickens trying to get us back out of them.
The severe lack of confident leadership is what caused us to have the slowest, most drawn out easing of restrictions in the world first time around.
The fear is that they’ll do the same this time.
I have absolutely no faith that they’ll let us go back to level 2/3 in December, and if they do, it will be done so under the clear impression that we’ll be back to level 5 in January again.
Stephen Donnelly made it clear that rolling full lockdowns are going to be in place for at least another 9 months, and that’s absolutely terrifying.
This isn’t living with covid, and the human cost for this is going to be astronomical.

I have no doubt that the inevitable tribunals in a few years time will confirm what we already know: that these restrictions/lockdowns are causing more indirect deaths than those who are dying of the virus.

Well said. The Irish reaction has been beyond ridiculous since the start. I know that the government will not get everything right but their unquestioning servitude to Tony The Holy is quite frankly disgusting.

Its the governments job to consider all factors and, in their own words, "learn to live with the virus". This is not living with it. Varadkar seemed to be the only one to openly question Holohan on Level 5 and for that he was absolutely hounded by the media and their pro-lockdown-at-all-cost agenda.

These restrictions are causing and will cause deaths, significant mental health issues for significant numbers of people, job losses, enormous debt and many other quality of life issues for millions of people. We cannot continue like this but no one in government has the balls to say NO to NPHET.

As Varadkar said himself its easy to go into Level 5, not so easy to come out of it. You can be damn sure there'll be some other excuse as we near D day.

joeguevara wrote: »

Bs. Us stopped all travel from Europe. Stop taking lies.

We're talking about the EU, you were the one who brought it up. With your stupid denial of the fact that our restrictions since March have been the harshest.

You're the one posting lies, bs and utter fabrication. What planet are you on?? Clearly not the same one as most of the posters here.

Penfailed wrote: »

...and you can't see the connection between this and the higher numbers in Europe?

And you can't see the connection between this and their much bigger populations?

Ginger n Lemon wrote: »

Do you know of another EU country that kept pubs closed for 6 months + and when allowed to re open shut them down within 2 weeks?

Unless ofcourse this is within your definition of "something similar". and thats just 1 of many, many examples.

I am not sure why you bring Sweden or Trump into this, unless ofcourse you have very little to say about our biggest banks letting staff go?

I know right, back in May and June posters like you were telling me "high street was on the way out even before covid" when hundreds of retailers were going into administration. I suppose I am thankful you havent said "banking was on the way out even before covid"

banking isn't on the way out, but the offline methods of doing it have been slowly declining since long before covid hence branch closures etc.

Deleted User wrote: »

We are most certainly an outlier.

Pubs haven’t been open in our capital since March. No other country felt the need to impose such draconian measures for such a long period. It could be a full year or longer before they are allowed open.

We’ve used every excuse in the book to stay as locked down as possible. The latest one is to save Christmas.

non-food serving pubs being closed because they were unable to meet the requirements of opening actually doesn't make us an outlier at all, far from it.
remember different countries had the odd slightly different restriction to each other depending on local requirements and specifics, however we all followed the same basic approach meaning we are in no way an outlier.
this lock down is only going to be 6 weeks, the original lock down was around 3 months, we have actually been open more then we have been closed, and the pubs which you keep talking about have been on a slow decline for years anyway.
facts and necessities aren't excuses but simple realities as to why we have to have restrictions to minimise the spread of the virus and protect as much of our country as we can, socially, economically, and all else.

Deleted User wrote: »

Nobody is lying. You just don’t want to face the truth.

Name a country in Europe that has closed pubs for over half a year?

Name a country that had a 5KM travel limit in place for several weeks during the summer and again now?

Most of Europe were back to a level of normal between May and September.

Look at sporting events. I’ve seen stadiums all over Europe with lots of fans. In Ireland we didn’t want parents to go see their child play GAA.

The reality is we are a country that imposed the harshest and longest restrictions on its citizens in all of Europe. Our Taoiseach admitted this on live TV as he added to our restrictions.

oh we are happy to face the truth, and have been doing so since this began.
the actual truth now that is, not what you claim to be the truth, but isn't in reality.

Deleted User wrote: »

Lockdown is never the correct option. We have only 37 in ICU in a country of 5M.

We’ve had months now to get contact tracing up to speed and we failed.

We’ve had months to set up proper quarantine areas, increase ICU capacity etc.

We don’t bother with that though. Easier to just borrow billions and put 20% of the workforce out of work, then blame pubs that are closed and house parties for cases...

We are paying billions to do nothing and we’ll be the ones asked to pay the bill.

the fact we have only 37 people in ICU shows that our approach for all of it's faults is somewhat working, however when cases rise to a number that puts our capacity and economy at risk then a lock down for a short period is the correct approach to get those numbers down quickly.
even with contact tracing lock down is not off the table, it's just less likely, and it does take time, even for the best health systems to get capacity increased to a sufficient level.
even then controling and minimising the spread of the virus still remains vital so that the capacity even at a high rate can cope.
most european countries are engaging in borrowing of some sort, this is not unique to ireland, and we would have had to do it even if we threw open the doors as you would like because the economy would function even less eventually or collapse altogether as the health system collapses,
more people are out of the work force at a time due to isolation and being at higher risk of effects.
house parties were a factor in terms of numbers, pubs are a higher risk environment due to the fact alcohol and social distancing don't exactly mix very well, pubs could have of course diversified such as doing deals with food establishments or even perhapse doing home deliveries of pints, not to mention that there were food serving pubs open.
we are paying billions regardless because of this and we will be paying for it whatever approach was taken, there was no damage free covid.