Why are so many people still going to work

Paxton Great Mirage wrote: »

No one's saying it can be. But official advice is that unless your work is absolutely essential and can't be done from home then don't go into work. But obviously many people are ignoring that and covid cases are going up.

The vast majority of work is considered essential according to current guidelines, the essential list looks small enough but it’s actually enormous.

SuperRabbit wrote: »

Why do people insist on spreading lies? What exactly is your source on that, Donald Trump? You think north Brazil is cold in July (winter) and that's why they have so many cases and deaths?

A rise in temperature slightly lowers the death rates and slightly slows the spread. Slightly. We saw few cases and deaths in the summer because we locked down and locking down works.

Locking down does nothing except cause a lot of other issues - economic, social, physical and mental health, and of course other medical issues that aren't caught in time because of the fear factor. As soon as you open up again, the cases start to rise. It's not realistic nor desirable to lock a population down indefinitely.

I'll say it again. Out of a population of 5 million, after 9 months, we have seen only 2000-ish deaths when compared to initial predictions of several times that.
Despite the significantly increased case numbers since the start of autumn, ICU admissions continue to be extremely low, and actual deaths even lower.
Many people don't even realise that they have CV-19 until they're told they've tested positive, that's how little risk it is to them.

In other words, this virus is nowhere near as deadly as was first feared and Ireland has, on the whole, come through it very well. Yes, the deaths that have occurred are sad and a loss to their families and loved ones, but let's not forget many of those deaths have been the direct result of the scandalous decisions made regarding elderly patients and nursing homes in the early phases, and the continued inability of the HSE to manage hospitals and treatment generally.

It's a fallacy to believe that people won't die, and indeed are dying, regardless of CV-19 and it's very likely that many more will die because of the negative effects that all this has had on other essential care like cancer screenings and treatment.

The other thing lockdown has done is cause significant social issues in this country with "we're all in this together" rapidly changing to "you're with us or you're against us" and "everyone is in this with me".

We've seen it very evident on this site alone where battle lines are drawn between those who are in agreement with the restrictions and those who question the need and proportionality of the decisions, but it's rife amongst social and mainstream media platforms generally and more concerning is the targeting and shouting down (to the point of hounding them out of their jobs in some cases) of other medical professionals and experts who are not "on message" with the accepted narrative on those platforms. Whatever your views on restrictions, this is a dangerous turn for free speech and debate in a society.

Just as worrying is the apparent relegation of our elected Government in favour of the edicts of the same group of medical professionals and civil servants who have mismanaged the response and health service generally. That's not healthy for our democracy as a whole.

The bottom line is that all lockdown has ultimately done in Ireland is make the situation worse.

_Kaiser_ wrote: »

Locking down does nothing except cause a lot of other issues - economic, social, physical and mental health, and of course other medical issues that aren't caught in time because of the fear factor. As soon as you open up again, the cases start to rise. It's not realistic nor desirable to lock a population down indefinitely.

I'll say it again. Out of a population of 5 million, after 9 months, we have seen only 2000-ish deaths when compared to initial predictions of several times that.
Despite the significantly increased case numbers since the start of autumn, ICU admissions continue to be extremely low, and actual deaths even lower.
Many people don't even realise that they have CV-19 until they're told they've tested positive, that's how little risk it is to them.

In other words, this virus is nowhere near as deadly as was first feared and Ireland has, on the whole, come through it very well. Yes, the deaths that have occurred are sad and a loss to their families and loved ones, but let's not forget many of those deaths have been the direct result of the scandalous decisions made regarding elderly patients and nursing homes in the early phases, and the continued inability of the HSE to manage hospitals and treatment generally.


The other thing lockdown has done is cause significant social issues in this country with "we're all in this together" rapidly changing to "you're with us or you're against us" and "everyone is in this with me".


.

That number of deaths shows lockdown might have worked.

I'm astounded that people who generally don't give a **** about real mental health issues are all of a sudden experts.

Society has ways been like that.

Paxton Great Mirage wrote: »

Yes but how much is essential and cannot be done from home?

I know in my workplace there are people regularly going in and everyone else is wondering why as their presence in the office isn't essential. They just prefer to go in.

This is where it becomes difficult, I've and managed (usually) to work remotely quite often, a very recent example: an essential medical customer had a line down issue due to a computer failure on one of their machines, new computer sourced, software loaded and of course it still didn't work, traced to a software driver issue, if you work with software you'll understand that a driver update is literally a 5 minute job (no exaggeration) BUT with their engineers and myself all working remotely it suddenly became complicated, especially as they cannot allow outside access to their internal network - cue IT managers, line managers, myself and some poor unfortunate picked from those present at the factory - eventually done but it took nearly a full day to do, it would have been quicker for me to jump in the car and drive from Dublin to Galway, do the job and head back.
In future I'd be very unlikely to try to do that remotely again due to hassle, cost etc.

(sorry that looks a bit long winded)

cdeb wrote: »

I'm not asking you to compare your medical qualifications to mine though.

I'm asking you to compare your medical qualifications to the medically qualified experts in infectious diseases whose opinion you are so dismissive of us having "blind faith" in.

I'm happy to follow said medical experts - across the world, not just in Ireland - over a random punter on the internet if you have nothing to show in response. Which evidently you don't, or you wouldn't have answered a different question to the one I asked.

Just like the financial experts who promised us the cheapest bank bailout in history.