Are we there yet? Your second Travel Megathread (threadbans in OP}

I haven't been back in Ireland for a few years now and recently came back. I was in the States and Germany and both places had their ups and downs in terms of how people were adhering to things on a practical level.

I have been trying to follow the Irish rules and regs and facts and figures since I got back so If I say something incorrect then don't dogpile on me.


Pros
- People seem to be wearing masks and distancing where I am from. Family pods are keeping to themselves (I personally don't know any people flaunting rules)

- numbers are lowering

- Its not raining as much as I expected...silver lining

Cons
- National messaging is very pessimistic. It seems to be deliberate to only focus on the numbers that suit them to keep us worried. I think Leo has said that 'we should be worried'. This constant fear mongering and selective news has an impact on people that are not living but merely surviving through this. My dad has zero clue and hes just locked up at home because hes much older.

- Lots of jobs for healthcare assistants and caregivers are advertised.

- I haven't seen any advertising for public mental health for people. Maybe it isn't broadcasted on the media I watch but the mental health bill are the end of all of this is going to be one that we did not account for. We talk about the toll it is taking. We hear about it from the people that govern but I think they underestimate it. They are working. They are busy. Their day is moving pretty fast and they are able to see the process from getting from thought A to legislation B. Time passes much more slowly for the majority of people in limbo. It makes sense that they are breaking up the lockdowns into dates that they will reevaluate after a few weeks or months because psychologically it is much easier to accept for people when you have a time frame. I still think the bitter medicine we have to take now could be sweetened up. Talk about the things that are going well a little more.

- Making travel harder for people doesn't do much other than limit it for people that are willing to pay the fine or have some essential reason for going. The hotel quarantine ideas are fine. There just seems to be a reactive decision making process to everything. I was watching the Korean quarantine situation since April and was set to go over there but for some flight cancellation. We had such a relaxed travel policy that when I was coming back here in the Summer that I had a harder time getting into the bank than a non Irish person did getting through Dublin. The PCR testing should have been a given as early as we could implement it. Paying 2k for hotels or fines is a scare tactic to stop people from travel. If they wanted people not to travel then banning travel would be the play. The monetary fines are just stronger suggestions than something more concrete. Maybe we could have tracking apps for people that will be quarantining at home like in Korea? That way irish returning from home can be accounted for while non nationals can stay in the hotel.

- The numbers for contractions of Covid in hospitals seem pretty high. I know that even now not all doctors are even vaccinated. Surely they would have been the first to get the jab. A lot of healthcare workers out sick or being asked to work with pending covid tests.

- Regarding travel which is the main point of the thread. I think travel is not the main cause of the spread as much as the lack of system in place for when people return. We demonize people that want to leave but its only because its strongly advised not to. If people had to test and quarantine and retest then they are of no danger to anyone when they enter the country no? I am open to differing opinions of course. The thread is for discourse and discussion.

Sorry about the block of text...

Niner leprauchan wrote: »

Are you serious? This is exactly what you said:




Your words. So do you take that back? Was it just a lie?

Taken from old thread because I would really like an answer from mr Trump

Jesus Christ. I already explained it to you https://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showpost.php?p=116237363&postcount=9862


If you are still having issues then you better point out what I said that has your knickers in a twist.



This is the sentence that you highlighted and so I presume this is the knickers tightening one

A person being vaccinated only means that if they get infected with the virus, their symptoms will be less

Please feel free to fill in the blank

A person being vaccinated only means that if they get infected with the virus, their symptoms will be _______

A) Less
Greater
C) Equal


What do you think the purpose of a vaccination is? To enhance the symptoms? To make no change to them? You seem to have fierce difficulty with the apparently revolutionary statement that a vaccination would lead to less symptoms in future.


As for the taking it and passive aggressively copying and pasting the post again, after I had already responded to it on the old thread, just because there is a new thread with a fresh front page, all I can advise is to get a life for yourself.

Niner leprauchan wrote: »

To provide immunity, which is exactly what these ones are designed to do

Why you insist on repeating the lie that vaccinations wont provide immunity but will only reduce symptoms, is beyond me.

So, again, you agree that vaccinations provide immunity in the vast majorty of recipients, yes?

Listen, I had to have this conversation with you before I think. Where you pretend that I said something and then "disprove" it and then try to shift some goalposts. I don't get the point of it. What are you getting out of doing it?



I never said the word immunity in the post you are getting your knickers in a twist about. I pointed this out to you in the old thread. You might have imagined that I said it, or that I said getting corona will make you immune from AIDS or make you able to fly, but I didn't say any of those things.



I only said

A person being vaccinated only means that if they get infected with the virus, their symptoms will be less.

So what is your problem with that? If someone tells you that they are vaccinated, that is all that you know about them - that if they get infected with the virus, their symptoms will be less.

What are you trying to say - that their symptoms will be more? Or that everyone who gets a vaccine will be immune? Or that nobody that gets a vaccine will be immune. None of the three preceding statements are strictly true. Whereas what I said is true. And again, I never said anything about immunity or not. (At the risk of allowing you to play your game of shifting the goalposts, you might want to look up the definition of immunity there btw. You know that if a person becomes "immune", then their symptoms will be less? Which is still perfectly consistent with my statement)



Is it a reading comprehension thing? Or did you really just want an angry-man post on the front of a probably long-running thread? In the latest post, now you say I said that vaccines don't provide immunity. As I said, I don't know what you get out of making stuff up. The ironic thing is that you are accusing me of lies!

gansi wrote: »

What?? Any link

https://www.dfa.ie/passports/

Until level 5 is lifted at least.

Plumbthedepths wrote: »

Passport issue and renewal suspended until travel restrictions lifted.

An absolute disgrace.

Between this and the begrudgery tax it just shows how the government have completely lost it.

Bare in mind that every traveller needs a negative test in fly anyway, a common sense measure that wasn't in place for the often sited numbers that landed in Ireland at Christmas.

All this is to deter healthy, covid free people from travelling. Utterly ridiculous.

faceman wrote: »

Thought I'd give you yet another update from Spain's Costa Blanca region. We are in a de facto lockdown of sorts now for a few weeks. 10pm curfew is still in place, hospitality is closed bar take away as are gyms and leisure. All retail is open including hairdressers and barbers but non essential retail must close at 6pm each day. All retail is closed on Sundays. Masks now have to be worn on beaches and while exercising outdoors between 10am and 7pm. No social house visits are permitted and you can only meet 1 person from outside your household in public.

At weekends, you cannot leave your municipality (for most people this means their city) from 3pm to 6am Monday morning. This means if your girlfriend/boyfriend lives in another city you cannot visit them at the weekend during those times unless children are involved. No one is allowed to enter or leave the Valencia region by car or train.

All of this is due to last till February 15th but the government indicated this week it will likely extend to March 1st. All the regional governments are doing their best to be ready for a summer season.

So what does all this look like?
As always with Spain, these measures are checked and enforced. The masks while exercising is a whore. I went for a run once during those hours and never did it again. I am doing all my exercise and training outdoors because the weather permits it. Its a small consolation.

Cases are dropping rapidly, its odd that the plateau that ireland sees during a lockdown isn't seen here. I dont know why that is, the Spanish are divils for family gatherings.

I cant emphasise this enough, there is no international tourism at all. I haven't met any Irish tourists since Christmas. (British tourists are still banned from entering Spain). The coastal towns are that usually popular with tourists all year round are empty. I dont know for sure but I guess the age profile in my town averages with older people so people are well behaved. There is a reluctance from people to be welcoming tourists at this point, particular Irish tourists given the rates at Christmas. The current messaging on fines in Ireland etc is giving an impression to people that Ireland is a dangerous place.

The media is less doom and gloom than Ireland. Focus and anger is squarely on the vaccine rollout. There is rarely a mention of the impact of international travel in the media. While the government is singing the Sound of Music during their press briefings they tend to line their briefings with messages of hope.

dunno how right you are on the plateau,



but looking at worldometers.info cases in spain peaking at say just 30-35k and are now around 20k



and in ireland they peaked at say 5-6k (ignore the backlog) and are now around 800 across similar tie periods mid jan to now



other than that, it seems pretty similar in terms of the lockdown

faceman wrote: »

Spain has a population of 50m Ireland has a population of less than 5m

By plateau I was referring to Ireland’s daily cases currently sticking around the 1,000 mark

what has the population of Spain go to do with it

you said the case numbers are falling rapidly


irelands aren't


but the opposite is true, they are higher than the end of jan



i mean 50/5 is 10



20,000 / 1000(rounding up our figures) is 20

they are higher per person right, is that what you were trying to get at?