Covid 19 Part XXXV-956,720 ROI (5,952 deaths) 452,946 NI (3,002 deaths) (08/01) Read OP

I'm not sure I agree with this. We have one of the highest vaccination rates in Europe, and our hospital numbers are relatively stable now. Therefore vaccines are clearly working, and I'm in favour of vaccinating as many as possible. But the vaccination rates are lower in the countries you mentioned and that's why they've had to reintroduce restrictions. I'm not convinced that the remaining unvaccinated numbers in Ireland are causing such a drain on hospital resources. And I also believe they shouldn't, i.e. in a rich first world country with the high level of vaccination we have, and with what we know about the dangers Covid poses to various age groups, we should be able to cope better.

Does anyone here know ICU nurses ? I do . A huge percentage of our unvaxxed in ICU are non nationals. They don't read the Indo, watch prime time or Claire Byrne .

Covid certs aren't going to make them get vaccinated.

Looking to increase our vaccine uptake is a pointless argument

It was always going to be very slow once we achieved close to maximum vaccination. Over time they will pick off some more but probably not that many. I believe there are now specific campaigns in certain communities to try to encourage them to get vaccinated. In some of those communities the vaccination rates are very low so it makes sense to target them. 

COVID certs for anything other than travel are a NPHET invention. If the government could drop them tomorrow they would as they have no great fondness for them.

The argument is open-ended. I noticed I wrote "need", when I meant, "If we wanted to access these spaces, we would need...". I didn't mean that that they would be necessary from a control perspective.

I've said before there is considerable value is restricting access to high-risk spaces such as hospitals and nursing homes, to the fully vaccinated only. But I'm less sold on anywhere else.

All COVID test centers closed in Cork tomorrow because of the red warning.

That's a weird framing, as if Sweden have simply willed their ICU numbers lower.

If we had those ICU levels we could be "just getting on with it" too.

Their success is probably down to strong immunity from infection and vaccination, which combine potently.

The countries across Europe have harsher restrictions because they have more people in hospital. If we had their hospital/ICU capacity with our current numbers of patients we wouldn't need restrictions.

It's just down to waves occurring at different times. As always, people pick a country doing well and highlight it. A few weeks later they start their wave and they are quickly forgotten about. We had this weeks ago when Western Europe was increasing and Eastern Europe were doing very well. It's a pattern that has been happening all though out this pandemic.

What do you mean if they "could drop them they would"? The government brought them in so why can't they drop them?

Well then we're back to who is actually calling the shots - NPHET or the government.

MM not happy with NPHET

Well, they did go back to them on hospitality and were told it wouldn't be modified and in the absence of a better idea from government it's the advice that wins here. They did fob them off on the gym/hairdresser thing for the nonsense that it is but the fear of Omicron leaves us back with 100% acceptance of any advice.

What happens in these next 3-4 weeks will probably dictate how they deal with 2022.

Be hard pushed to name any politician in that job here who did well!