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

Looks like they aren’t going to give up, obviously trying to prevent the legislation from expiring. I actually have nothing against mask wearing i use them for work as i’m exposed to a lot of the public but i do have a problem with other people dictating what i should do and not do. If they get their way with this what else will they want!?? From RTE:

“”Organisations representing doctors and nurses

have called on the Government to reintroduce

some measures to tackle the spread of Covid-19.

The Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation and

the Irish Association for Emergency Medicine have

called on ministers to revisit measures, such as

wearing masks indoors and in congregated settings

and working from home.””

They expire tonight and it's a fruitless last ditch effort to get them extended. One can understand where they are coming from, in dealing with the day to day cases but this looks like it's beginning to wane and it would be beyond absurd to consider reimposing something that would not be needed in a few weeks. That said an immediate review of the isolation advice might be no bad thing.

Bad look from the health care unions

Bringing back mask mandates and wfh is laughable

“What we are asking, is that steps are taken to flatten the curve again,” he said.

“We’re not going back to talking about the draconian restrictions. We’re talking about the relatively simple interventions of requiring people to wear masks in indoor settings and advising people to work from home where possible.”

https://www.independent.ie/irish-news/health/healthcare-unions-call-for-masks-and-work-from-home-to-return-rate-of-covid-infections-falls-in-a-week-41505472.html

2 years in and this is the best they can come up with

They're just trying to cover up the fact that for 2 years they've invested 0 into improving the infrastructure in hospitals. Despite a global pandemic

Don't park your social life for another year. Best wait till 2030 to be totally sure.

Yes, I generally agree with that but only by a matter of weeks. No one seems to want to have the kind of discussion about effective mask usage at any level in Ireland, even though we don't currently have supplies of the only effective administer-at-home treatment.

I wouldn't go as far as to say it's virtue signalling, when I was last outside before I got the rona myself I noticed that many of those still wearing masks were wearing those of the respirator variety. Probably about 50% of those still bothering to do so. Maybe that's dropped since a week or two ago. And yes such individual measures are probably only going to diminish the peak of hospitalised cases somewhat and otherwise have no effect on the spread of covid (epidemiologically speaking).

The funny thing is, Ireland has a pre-covid domestic supply of FPP2 masks and they were able to supply post-HSE orders/acquisitions since like October 2020... We could have adopted the rather successful German model since mid-2021 but it is what it is.

I still think that having a stealth herd immunity policy without having supplies of effective treatment tablets is a daft idea and could have been easily avoided with just some modest public health efforts. But there would still be some pushback from those who feel very vulnerable / superstitious about the virus.

I don't recall our hospitals being overwhelmed the last two years outside of the normal winter seasons, despite the fact there was a global pandemic going on. But a lot of appointments and surgeries were cancelled so in fact it would appear that hospitals were actually quite easy places to work the last two years and the health staff actually had it easier than in the years pre-pandemic. That isn't to say anything other than that I understand why the unions and health workers are trying to shoehorn in the covid-induced practices on a more medium term basis as they have poor morale it seems and covid-era quieter jobs was a nice respite. Unfortunately, it is not the general public's fault and any sympathy they seek from the general public is lost when they try to force us via guilt and emotional manipulation to accept more covid restrictions that, quite frankly, the vast majority of us are tired of and (correctly) do not accept the link they will have to the perceived benefit they are argued to bring to the hospitals.

How is MM handling them on the radio ?

Deeply worrying that some health professionals actually believe face coverings in community settings would do anything for incidences of covid at this point.

No more so than the disgusting teachers unions, they haven't covered themselves in glory in the past week.

Did the size of the virus change or something? Surely if masks were as effective as we were led to believe, the transmissibility shouldn't have been as big a factor as it was in cases rising.