Relaxation of Restrictions, Part VIII *Read OP For Mod Warnings*

Arghus wrote: »

Graham covered a lot of stuff in his response that I would agree with.

I don't think these levels of restrictions are likely to last until mid Summer.

I think doing away with the 5km limit will eventually occur, but right at this moment the numbers are too high.

You already can exercise outside, unless I'm seeing things out there.

What should be done about schools? Pubs? Retail?

Construction early March. Schools maybe a few weeks later. Click and collect around the same time. Non essential retail end March. Outdoor dining after Easter. Indoor dining after the over 65’s are all vaccinated (hopefully mid May). Pubs (Gastro and dry) will have to wait a while yet. Concerts and nightclubs by December.

Martin telling FF party meeting that lockdown likely to last until May.

Article on Irish times

FintanMcluskey wrote: »

The first part in bold, that’s just your opinion. Are you basing your complete outlook on what you think will happen?

Because Leo said differently, and he’s likely more informed.

What is a safe number of cases to relax the 5km limit?

Schools need to get back ASAP.

I want pubs all banned and the licences removed for eternity as the argument always ends up here.

Retail, realistically within weeks as well

Where did Leo say that these levels of restrictions are likely to last until mid Summer?

Are you sure you aren't basing your outlook on something you think he said, rather than what he did say?

D.Q wrote: »

Martin telling FF party meeting that lockdown likely to last until May.

Article on Irish times

Wouldn't surprise me in the slightest. We'll go back to Level 5 on March 5th, construction open and maybe some schools. 4 weeks later the remainder of schools. 4 weeks after that gyms, hairdressers, retail. Can see this easily getting to May. Might even be longer with the Uber slow rollout of vaccines.

Arghus wrote: »

Where did Leo say that these levels of restrictions are likely to last until mid Summer?

Are you sure you aren't basing your outlook on something you think he said, rather than what he did say?

The priority for MM and Co is to do exactly what NPHET tell him. Everything they committed to pre Christmas is in the bin. Schools are not the number 1 priority anymore.

Good short interview with Lord Sumption.

"Smallpox took two centuries after the invention of a totally effective vaccine to disappear. Simply saying we want to eliminate the virus altogether or reduce it below 1000 cases I think is a completely unbalanced and fanatical approach."

"The policy of lockdown is a thoroughly inhumane policy which is due to one track minds that can only think about deaths but not about life."

FintanMcluskey wrote: »

There is lots of sound bites

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.irishexaminer.com/news/arid-40223681.html%3ftype=amp



That’s from today in fact

What have I imagined

I think his quotes are open to interpretation. You are assuming that he means current level five restrictions until June, I think it's not as clear cut as that. There's literally no direct quote from him there that says level five will continue until mid Summer - you're making an assumption that it is what he means, I disagree with that assumption.

It all highly dependant on case numbers of course, but I certainly don't think we'll still be in the current level of restrictions by June.

Just chill, resistance is futile.

To those who have been ill and may have lost relatives dear to them I am sorry.

We all want to get back to some normality, but we are not China, Malaysia, Korea or Antipodese.

I’m disappointed for sure with the procurement and rollout of vaccines in EU. But nothing I can say will change that for 500 odd million members either. That was a big fail. But never mind, Von Der Leyden won’t be sacked.

Graham wrote: »

Is this a later tweet?

https://twitter.com/FergalBowers/status/1359599539368456194?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw

Same one?

Over 70s vaccinated by mid June

Deleted User wrote: »

The honest answer is, nobody knows for sure. Especially not any 1 person. But this prolonged lockdown is really not working well at all in my opinion. And there are many areas that should be investigated/explored/discussed.

1) Why is Antigen testing still not happening? Could have been really useful and prevented lots of nursing home and hospital cases/deaths. But Tony still believes there is NOTHING we can do in those settings.

2) Why are we mass testing? We’ve conceded that our tracing is not up to scratch and local restrictions is not our approach. So why bother testing healthy people?

3) Why have we not done everything in our power to significantly increase ICU capacity? We have a magic money tree for everything else.

4) Can we ever actually give restrictions a chance to work so we can gauge what might actually help? Or will we constantly s*it the bed and just full lockdown when cases start rising.

5) Airports - We’ve been letting people fly in from all around the globe since this started as long as they pinky promise they’re isolating. Not good enough when actual citizens are getting fines for walking on a beach.

6) Have we actually considered the bigger picture? The economy, cancer screenings, suicides, children education, mental health. I’m not sure we have.

This is just a few points off the top of my head. I’m sure I could think of many more if I put my mind to it for an hour.

I don’t believe for one second that retail, hairdressers and construction need to be closed.

I could probably make peace with hospitality been closed right now, but again, not until late summer.

Nicely set out — and while I agree with this — I think it’s important to tease out the nuance in Point 4 versus Point 5.

The way I see it, as long as Point 4 remains the case — as in, we leap to the flamethrower approach of lockdowns at the first sign of cases rising — then Point 5 is obsolete. There seems very little point to me in extolling the virtues of [effectively] closing the airport if, ultimately, even if it allowed us to reduce cases to such a level that the government feel comfortable to let us loose (relatively speaking), the subsequent rise in cases from the population having more relative freedom will seemingly drag us back to lockdown regardless. So we would end up back in lockdown and now even more moral / political thresholds would have been set as regards the airport, which the government will struggle to climb down from. I take the point made last night by guys like HattrickPatrick that the justification for a climbdown from this precedent would be the vaccination of the vulnerable, but I think the government will find it difficult to climb down even at that point — or will faff around the point for weeks on end and potentially months.

Put simply, your Point 4 is absolutely correct, and I feel that Point 5 can only have its proper value if and when the government musters the willpower and courage to promote the message in 4. I just can’t see it happening though — the phenomenon of people seeing friends and older relatives at Christmas has largely been ignored in favour of a mantra of (to use your words) sh*tting the bed and just closing everything, followed by Uber-caution to reopen even building sites. So I think the sh*t-the-bed-strategy is here to stay, which to me suggests that people might find themselves disappointed even if the government goes down hard on the airport.