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

Lundstram wrote: »

Seen some dopey journalist asking Glynn earlier what was the idea behind the 5km limit.

"because we felt last year's 2km limit was overly restrictive".

Unbelievable.

Why not post his full answer & explanation ?

Deleted User wrote: »

If you are not aware of the disinformation being spread you have probably fallen for it.

Here is a handy link where a lot of in can be found

https://touch.boards.ie/thread/2058162042/1/#post116352789

Haha, I got a good laugh out of that in fairness

https://www.breakingnews.ie/ireland/public-health-measures-still-needed-at-year-end-1089426.html?fbclid=IwAR2obR7uyjN0nSb2VS1JiCCA1YsU-dLIhWjXdYcZqKatujQKhSDvuPgtewA

Lundstram wrote: »

Should have all returned once cases went under 1k per day.

It's the case right across Europe but why not here? What makes us so special?

Our governance are actually listening to public health advice and science.

Several countries in Europe who didn't and eased restrictions against advice are now entering their 3rd wave and are U-Turning and reintroducing mitigation measures.

Silly rabbits.

Boggles wrote: »

Our governance are actually listening to public health advice and science.

Several countries in Europe who didn't and eased restrictions against advice are now entering their 3rd wave and are U-Turning and reintroducing mitigation measures.

Silly rabbits.

Nostalgic for reading stuff like this in August 2020 with bright evenings on my holidays in Baltimore in Cork

Any time a poster questioned effectiveness of Europe’s strictest and longest mitigation measures the counter was if we relax we may need to unrelax

walus wrote: »

https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanchi/article/PIIS2352-4642(21)00030-4/fulltext

"Importantly, we have found no evidence of more severe disease having occurred in children and young people during the second wave, suggesting that infection with the B.1.1.7 variant does not result in an appreciably different clinical course to the original strain. These findings are in keeping with early national data. Severe acute respiratory COVID-19 remains an uncommon occurrence in children and young people."

Not concerned with severe disease but that they are vectors for transmission of the disease.

Cases determine easing of restrictions. 1,400 children tested positive in past two weeks. Schools are now back open. Number of cases is only going one way now. Look forward to MM speech start of April.

Boggles wrote: »

Our governance are actually listening to public health advice and science.

Several countries in Europe who didn't and eased restrictions against advice are now entering their 3rd wave and are U-Turning and reintroducing mitigation measures.

Silly rabbits.

Governance now that's a laugh... Tracing, antigen testing, masks, quarantine all a complete mess. Nphet and the government are basically 'Anything to be said for another lockdown Ted' governance what a laugh

Something's just dawned on me about the doom and gloom, lockdown for years commentary we've been discussing recently. This may sound like a silly analogy, but does anyone remember the episode of Friends in which Phoebe briefly dated a health inspector? It went pear shaped because every time they went out for dinner or drinks he'd find something wrong with the place and get it shut down, so that by the end of the episode, the gang have nowhere left except the coffee house, and he's just about to shut that down as well when Phoebe finally loses it and tells him to knock it off.

That's the problem with having literally every bit of decision making and every bit of social commentary on this issue come from doctors, public health experts, immunologists, etc as RTE have been doing. Many here are looking at the #ZeroLeaks and claiming there's nothing malicious or agenda driven on RTE's part. Now I don't personally believe that for an instant, I think they know exactly what they're doing and they're getting exactly what they want in that it's caused users here and surely elsewhere on the internet to share the sh!t out of their tweets and website links, but regardless. Let's assume there's no agenda.

The problem with only hearing about a particular issue from experts in a particular field is the classic "if all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail" problem. It's the cause of a lot of the issues around public commentary in lockdown actually, from last summer's anti-alcohol zealotry to the whole "we need to keep the lockdown to avoid the normal, annual run on A&E next Winter when flu season hits" line, and everything in between.

The public health lobby will always push for a perfect world scenario from their own point of view, in which everything else in society is sacrificed in order to meet their own requirements for perfection. For instance, if the public health lobby got their way on issues such as alcohol licensing, alcohol would be banned overnight - because to them, it's nothing more than a problem which specifically targets their own area of expertise. Same with tobacco, same with fast food, etc. However, these things are not illegal, because other parts of government have over time recognised issues such as tax revenue and freedom of choice as being of similar importance to public health, and, crucially, that the different, often competing factors involved in potentially dangerous things from a public health point of view must be balanced when making policy.

If you take the alcohol issue for example. As we've seen from the extensive lobbying over the Public Health Alcohol Act and minimum pricing in particular, there is an extensive, extremist lobby who see the very concept of alcohol as all bad, no good, and would absolutely ban it entirely if they could get a government to go along with that. This has come from the public health sector, from lobby groups such as AAI, and various other angles. However, on the other side of that, there's the entire hospitality sector which would obviously collapse overnight if alcohol was made illegal, not to mention the extreme loss of tax revenue not only from the sale of alcoholic products, but from a loss of tourism, etc.

Now, we can argue about the way in which recent laws on this have been implemented - many have argued that they've been too far in the direction of the zealotry lobby even with balance involved, and personally I'd put some of that down to Leo himself being a doctor and therefore pushing very very hard for that lobby's agenda during the bill's negotiations - but regardless, there was balance, because these competing factors were all taken into account.

The problem with RTE and indeed most of the mainstream media in Ireland, and it would appear more and more also our politicians, is that they have abdicated this idea of balance entirely. The entire political and media establishment has united around the medical lobby as the ultimate arbiters of good vs bad policymaking in this pandemic, and seem absolutely intent on silencing, ignoring, or even shaming any other voices which would normally form part of a balanced public debate during a gigantic, seismic event such as this one.

This, IMO, is why things have become so dire over the last few weeks with regard to messaging and public morale - essentially, the kind of people who sit on NPHET and who are involved in ISAG, etc, are the kind of people who would probably advocate for social distancing and masks every winter even without COVID, if it was politically palatable. From their point of view, they've been lobbying on the basis of the annual A&E crisis for years if not decades, and so therefore now that we have something in place which effectively reduced that, their attitude will be one of "great! That's fantastic! Can we do this every year?"

The problem is that this lobby is being listened to, to the absolute exclusion of literally everybody else. All other voices are apparently unwelcome in the mainstream debate at the moment (hence why their only recourse is the likes of Gript) and therefore these mypoic, one dimensional actors are commanding the entire stage. Why this happened is anyone's guess, personally I reckon the post-Christmas spike led to a sentiment of "Ah, you see, NPHET was right! We should defer to them in every way on every issue from now on" in both government and media circles. And I still reckon that the media is partly hamming it up a la Claire Byrne's frankly ridiculous "new normal" gimmicks because it contributes to organic viral exposure - in other words, clickbait.

I don't have a solution to this, but it's just occurred to me that this is the most obvious explanation for what's been going on lately, messaging wise.

I'm reminded of a quote from Yes Minister about a proposal to outlaw smoking:

"I think we ought to raise some questions about your minister - Doctor Peter Thorne, I mean he's only a doctor - his sole purpose is keeping people alive. Seeing your patients die must emotionally cloud your judgment - very understandable, but a significant handicap to cool decision taking".

Obviously that quote is from a satirical TV show and is entirely tongue in cheek, but I do think that's partly what's fuelling this latest uproar.

If I could give an analogy from a different government department's perspective, it's as if we had a serious epidemic of violent gun violence and as such we set up an emergency justice committee made up of cops, judges, barriesters, Dept. of Justice officials, etc to deal with it. They argue for a temporary curfew in order to at least put a time limit on the potential for violence as well as robbing the would-be gangsters of the cover of darkness - but, in so doing, they discover that public order offenses also plummet seeing as nobody is going on nights out anymore.

From the point of view of that justice lobby specifically, that means the curfew is a gigantic success and something they'd love to hold on to, considering it's achieved something they've been fighting for for years - an end to night time street rowdiness. Of course, they wouldn't consider the effect on hospitality, the arts, national mental health, etc - because it's not their job to consider those issues, their job is very specifically to look at it from the criminal justice point of view. Ordinarily of course there'd be opposing stakeholders to point out why their perfect utopia is a dystopian hellscape from the other side of the argument, the hospitality industry etc, but because it's an emergency situation, those stakeholders are never asked for their opinion. And pretty soon, because of this, the "nightlife should be done away with permanently, look how much less crime there is now that we've shut down all the clubs and made sure people are in bed by sundown" argument becomes the only viewpoint to be found in any "official" capacity.

All of this being said, that is 100% an irresponsible abdication of responsibility by the media. Their job was never to publish stories which don't earn them any criticism from the public or the government, it was never to pick a right and wrong "side" in an issue and report only the voices from one of those two sides - the media is supposed to provide a balanced viewpoint no matter what the issue under discussion, and in this particular case, on this particular issue, they have fundamentally and entirely chosen to sh!t all over that principle of journalistic integrity.