Covid 19 Part XXX-113,332 ROI(2,282 deaths) 81,251 NI (1,384 deaths) (05/01) Read OP

I suspect that I will be wasting my time, but I am going to express the thought that it's time there was some serious discussion about the way forward, with emphasis on things like what is regarded as essential retail compared to non essential retail, which seems to have been ignored for a long time.

In the same vein, what do people regard as "appropriate" restrictions on things like movement, and visiting other households, as well as aspects of "working from home", which is still very vague, and not really well defined or discussed.

It's becoming clear that the whole Covid scenario is balanced on a knife edge, between the arrival and delivery of vaccines, and the arrival, and rapid spread of the "UK" variant, which seems to be spreading like wildfire, it's very unclear to me if "the system" will be able to cope, if the UK figures are to be believed, the hospitals are going to be even more stressed very soon, and if we want to get on top of the numbers and get the R number down again, there also needs to be a discussion about the validity and importance of keeping all schools open or not.

A much more transparent and open discussion needs to happen urgently about the whole aspect of information, there are reams of data being thrown around, regular pages of information being posted on sites like this, but making real sense of some of the figures is becoming increasingly hard, as an example, constantly repeating the increasing number of people that have had covid from Day 1 is now only fuelling a "lots have had it so reopen the restaurants and pubs for them" concept. I'm not going to be definitive about my feelings on that, as there will be a cohort of people that will immediately launch into yet another circular diatribe about the relevance or otherwise of their pet theory.

Then there's the whole aspect of how the HSE are performing, at all levels, and while we might not be able to immediately influence changes there, I can't help thinking that it is long overdue for a lot of people to start bending the ears of their elected representatives to make it clear that we expect some much more strident leadership from the political parties, and allowing the current mess to continue to operate as it does is no longer acceptable. The people working very hard at the front line of health deserve better, in terms of support, finance, buildings, both in terms of quality and location, and much more, there are way too many services and facilities that are operating in locations that are just not suitable, and way too many delays in delivering new services that have been promised, but then nothing is happening about delivering those services. Covid has served to highlight so many areas that are not functioning as they are supposed to, long delays that have significant impact on the eventual delivery of a service have become even worse as a result of people being redeployed to other areas, and all that has done is make a bad situation worse, without a real benefit being seen in things like track and trace, which seems to be completely non functional at the moment, and not delivering.

On the aspects of travel, it's become very clear in recent days just how many cases of Covid are happening as a result of international travel, there have been more than a few reports over the last 48 hours of cases across the globe that have been traced back to incoming travellers from the UK. We can be sure that a significant number of the 30,000+ people that came home for Christmas carried some unwelcome presents with them, and that die is now well and truly cast, so why is it proving so hard to get on top of having a functional testing and checking system for people coming in to the country? And yes, I am well aware of the problems of a very leaky and porous border that is a major problem with getting things under control.

We're in trouble, deep trouble, and the way out is very much not clear, and it's going to need some very clear speaking, and very brave decisions to get back out of the mess that's now in danger of engulfing the system. To those who would say "but, but, the numbers are small", that's because the total population of the island is less than most large cities across the globe, so if the numbers become large, we're beyond in trouble.

In a nutshell, we're beyond the point where "I want my local wet pub open again", or " I need my favourite local gym to stay open", if that's the level of your thinking, you are part of the problem, and we need everyone to become part of the solution, urgently.

It's going to be interesting to see what the response to this is, I'm not hopeful, given the way this and other related threads have gone in recent weeks.