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

It's a proposed "hospitality curfew" - which is still a curfew.

I think the most effective solution is full lockdown however the other options you gave, vaccination, covid passes, hospitality lockdown etc. are less effective measures that are still designed to contain the spread and reduce hospitalisations/pressure on the hospital system. There were interviews yesterday on RTE with ICU nurses who are at their wits end, this pandemic has been relentless, they need to be protected. The covid passes will be here to at least the end of next year and I would say there will be a few more long term measures put in place, so forget 2019 that's not coming back anytime soon.

So is his highness speaking at 6?

Hospitality owners are never happy with the rate of infection and dangers associated to omicron they are lucky to be allowed stay open at all!

There are a range of assumptions they make about the disease and they feed them into a model which generates a range of scenarios. So if your assumptions are wrong or faulty the model will be of no use. One example of that is how many will end up in hospital and we know their assumption here is wrong, set at 2%-2.5% when real life data showed that it was about 1%. There is also an estimate of how many cases are undetected and that AFAIK goes from a range of 40%-60%. They haven't taken account of vaccines or booster programmes nor any data on public responses. All told they are not all that useful but they are our only policy tool

Well if they are so effective to contain the spread, that we still we need a lockdown, means they are not effective aren't they? Give me a break with the nurses at their wits end for the relentless pandemic, the hospitalization rate has been from nearly non existent to stable for the past 6 months at least, at this stage I am quite sure you are just trolling

NPHET are not acting independently they are following EU/WHO advice. We’re not on a solo run, Netherlands has a similar approach. China/Asia are even stricter. What is the alternative?

So we have Tony Holohan, who leaving his pre-Covid shenanigans aside, looked at the evidence at the very start of the pandemic and told people it was OK to visit nursing homes.

Philip Nolan, a man who has gathered significant experience over the past 20 years (as a university administrator), who has stated that proper contact tracing is an "academic exercise" and antigen tests are "snake oil". And more recently made allegations about ventilation efficiency which were contradicted by NPHET's own team of ventilation experts (who actually have relevant experience)l.

Cillian de Gascun, who at least does seem to fit the bill of a relevant expert, still stated 18 months ago that we had the infrastructure in place to quickly trace and isolate clusters and should be able to avoid future lockdowns. Which was simply not true, no such infrastructure existed as we found out from Nolan's contract tracing comments in September (which ironically were made while trying again to blame pubs for everything).

These are the experts whose statements you unthinkingly follow?

Also, NPHET certainly do not have to take into account what's politically palatable. Their role is solely to provide medical-based advice to the democratically elected government, whose job it is to determine what measures to actually implement.

Which hasn't stopped NPHET repeatedly showing utter contempt for democracy with leaks designed to try to influence public opinion and force the government to follow a particular course of action.

The WHO recommend using restrictions only in order bulk up public health services, the EMA recommend HEPA filters in classrooms

Seems to me NPHET pick and choose what advice to follow, meaning they act independently

Lol, you’re just living in a fantasy world. I suppose all those nurses were just lying? I saw a 21 year old girl who was missing her birthday due to short staff and forced to work in this pandemic.

they’re not perfect but they bring extra time to find better vaccines.

Thank you. It will really sting if so. I hope clarity is delivered soon.

So now it's lockdown until there are better vaccines? When will that be? Any in the pipeline?