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

According to Gavan Reilly masks in primary schools will be mandatory from 3rd class up.

Could you get a PCR or Antigen before you leave Ireland on that timeline?

Why is your username on the list on the first page then?

Or they'll just get someone they are travelling with to do a negative test and pass it off as their own.

Aren't those parents and grandparents supposed to be vaccinated?

What I think people have continuously failed to grasp throughout this entire pandemic (not saying you), is that it has never really been a question — at least in the realm of reasonable people — to ask whether the epidemiologists or immunologists are “wrong”. The appropriate question should always have been what weight should be given to measures arising from their advice versus the need to safeguard the whole plurality of other interests across society.

Because the wrong question is being asked — people split into two extreme camps, either absolutely refuse to accept the views of the doctors or hold their advice up as the divine word of God and a template for governing society. What has transpired therefore is a kind of faux-intellectualism about the whole thing, whereby it is seen that the intellectual approach is to never really question the Holohans and Glynns. But this only works so long as their expertise and advice is viewed in the context that all the other facets of the mass complexity of life, social science, politics, economics should also be given due weight.

Ultimately, someone like Tony Holohan has expertise in his field. But he is ultimately not an expert in the many, many other fields of things which impact and instruct our understanding of how society works. Tony Holohan, or any doctor or epidemiologist or immunologist or whatever else, may well have the expertise to see a need for measures to restrict a virus — but he is no more an expert on the vast myriad of ways such measures can damage society than any randomer on here, because that is not his field. That’s not a criticism of him, because it would be ludicrous to blame the man for not being God — but it is to say that he doesn’t have to be wrong For the measures he advocates to be criticised. This is the critical point.

Oh no another dig at “big pharma”, how original. I hope you are sticking various leaves up your hole when you get a headache and not taking anything like paracetamol or over the counter pain relief? That would just be laughably hypocritical wouldn’t it?

Yes, but when that advice translates into measures which go beyond the advisor’s field of expertise, this question becomes more complicated and goes beyond a simple binary question of whether the advisor is right or wrong in the advice they are giving.

We aren’t simply talking about a doctor being asked to give a medical opinion here, or some other limited thing like an architect being asked to certify a building project, or a solicitor giving a client some advice. What we are talking about here are two years of the most significant and sustained curbs on personal and commercial freedoms in the history of the State. These measures and the effects they have had, have reverberated into almost every facet of society and will continue to reverberate for years to come in political, socioeconomic and many other terms.

My point is that Tony Holohan, and NPHET more broadly, may well have the expertise to say that a certain suite of restrictions will curb the virus — but ultimately it is neither their field nor their job to assess the massive constellation of ramifications the measures they advocate will have. Nor should it be of course, but that is the moment you expect society — including the media and the political establishment — to fill that void and provide the challenge.

Instead, it has all simply become a parroting exercise — and to question any of it still seems to attract the ironic accusation of being anti-intellectual.

What happens to Children who refuse to wear a mask?

Throw them in Juvenile? Let them do some hard time? Principal give them lines on the blackboard?

And then what? Parents will force their child to wear one?

Counsellors and Psychotherapists will be in the money in about 10 years from now

Yep.... Just like somebody who is meant to be isolating could be down the pub right now spreading the virus

Now there's probably technology you can use to make it more stringent, like if you have the user take a video of themselves doing the test for example - there's obviously ways around faking that as well though

My point is a level of trust would be needed and I'd like to think somebody coming home for christmas on a faked antigen test result would at least stay away from their grandparents while home

You make a fair point, but I'd honestly say the seeming reluctance of anyone to challenge is either they largely agree with what governments are doing, and/or nobody wants to be the one to try to place a "value" (for want of a better expression) on lives or on X number of lives. It might be what some are thinking, but I doubt there's a journalist anywhere who'd suggest out loud that an additional XXX number of deaths is ok as long as YYY is open.

And if its cold on the way home, id advice putting a mask on it keeps the face warm, same as a hat keeps head warm!!!! Get a grip and wear a mask for gods sake!!!!!