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

It's still not got through to many that those in authority imposing restrictions are wealthy, middle aged men with families and wives.

They are affected in no way whatsoever by the restrictions imposed

Penny for the thoughts of the South African doctors and experts. A scandalous over reaction from the EU when they had data to go by. They were Africans though.

Their data was very early days. The travel bans were absolutely an over-reaction. But at the time all we had was very solid data on how insanely infectious it was, but only loose data on how virulent it was. Plenty of people quite correctly point out that SA had some unique features compared to the EU, such as a population with recently very high Delta infections and low vaccination rates.

Some things you can't just take a risk on. You can certainly understand when your modelling is predicting a wave 3 times the height of January 2021 and you don't have solid data on the virulence of the data, how you might be inclined to take a more cautious approach.

I'm loath to say what we did was over-reacting; not because I think they had good reason for it, but because I think it was pointless bullsh1t. If they wanted to actually react they should have closed everything like the Dutch did. That was an over-reaction, but one with good intentions. Instead we just did "something" for the sake of reacting.

Personal freedom has never been afforded such lack of consideration.

Certaintly in Ireland where we had record numbers vaccinated

It's a precedent that's set for the rest of our lives.

We just need a "Get in" to have gone full Tan

@Timmy O Toole

Anything from 2 to 5 days beforehand, depends on how far into infection the person has gone when tested.

Reports on RTE that the 8pm over reaction time for pubs to close may even be changed before the end of January.

Presumably these restrictions are just costing the state a fortune and for no reason.

That is fair when it was a big unknown but we knew three weeks ago that a) it was more benign than Delta and b) that it was the dominant variant yet they are very slow to reverse restrictions - always a need for more time to evaluate.

the politicians are now ahead of the experts. Useful to recall that the Taoiseach 12 months ago highlighted that the Alpha variant was a major factor in the December 2020 surge is high was disputed by NPHET.

So Chief Medical Officers gambit with their advice?

What other advice is bullshit I wonder?

If games like that are being played I would doubt the credibility of other advice

IT hasn't exactly been covering itself in glory though. More clickbait than news of late.

Exactly the click-baity bull that I mentioned above.

What David Nabarro actually said was

Which goes without saying. But it doesn't sound quite as good as, "The WHO says Ireland should keep its restrictions" even though it's a completely inaccurate headline.