To Mask or not to two - Mask Megathread cont.

Conveniently forgetting countries with the strictest face mask laws still had record cases only a couple of months ago 🙄

Myself and others have covered this already with you but DAA's staffing issues are the result of them making huge numbers of staff redundant during the pandemic in an effort to cut costs/get rid of staff on more favourable (ie: expensive) terms. When demand increased again at the airport, this was shown up for the folly it was.

You're welcome.

A solution many of you have been waiting for.

Sip in safety.

Your"self and others have covered this already" with total disregard to COVID placing ALL the blame on DAA staffing issues, which is blindly incorrect.

Dalton Philips clearly puts the blame on 3 key factors. The first of which cannot be blamed for events occuring, leaving just 2 key factors.

It's happened twice already this year so no doubt it will happen again before Christmas unless changes are made.

Just as they were spot on back in March when data suggested that cases would fall away quickly and they did. The INMO does not set HSE/Government policy as they'd love to and we are now living with a disease that is little more than a very minor inconvenience except to a very tiny number of people. Of more interest to all of us is where the plan is to mitigate the disproportionate effect of incidental COVD on the hospital system.

In fairness to him it's a standard government non-answer. It's a bit like Martin not ruling things out becoming an entirely different headline. Bear in mind we had 1,600 in hospital with COVID at the end of March and there were no masks. There is unquestionably a COVID cult in the media and as I am learning in RL some people are finding it very hard to return to normal lives and are still fixed at some point in 2020. The continued stirring of this by the media is not helping them at all.

IIRC when SA got it, it was quite swift and at a lower peak than previous surges.

There's definitely a different environment this time.

First time we had little real information about the virus or its effects and scary images from China and Italy to stoke fears in people.

This time everyone has been through multiple vaccinations, many have caught it themselves and suffered no real effects in the majority of cases, and we know who is actually at potentially significant risk.

Plus the population is already under pressure and frustrated with government performance on everything else that's hurting them - the "old reliables" of housing, other healthcare needs, and of course the ever increasing costs of living, as well as the pressures on all of these by Putin's war and the "come one come all" response by Government to Ukrainian refugees.

If they try to enforce masks again in the middle of summer on an already weary and increasingly angry population it may actually lead to not only non-compliance but more protests and unrest.

Itll be great to see the back of Stephen Donnelly after the next election....

A dreadful minister and an incredible spoofer...

At the risk of being accused of gaslighting I think we really need to move to a point where the views of certain people are seen as symptoms of a compulsive disorder. Living with risk is too much for some and we can’t pander the most risk averse in society.

And Spock was a doctor after all.

I work in an office and we’ve been back a few days a week since March. A young woman I work with wears a fabric mask all day. She sanitises her hands every time she leaves or arrives at her desk. When she gets into work and leaves at the end of the day she uses loads of industrial cleaning wipes and spends 3 or 4 minutes wiping down the desk, keyboard and mouse, screen and chair.

Now I appreciate that there’s an element of theatre to this, she has a rucksack that’s peppered with LGBT, BLM and pro vaccine stickers, but surely at this point she’s aware that this is an airborne virus. Measures such as fabric masks and hand sanitising/surface cleaning are surely understood to be relatively useless especially with latest variants.

This kind of obsessive behaviour in 2019 would have been indicative of a disorder.

In 2022 with the knowledge we have of both the virus itself and the effectiveness of these mitigation measures I can’t help but perceive this kind of obsessiveness as a disorder unless it’s all some kind of woke ritualistic behaviour.

Perfectly standard June.

Something came up online for me this morning. With a headline about face masks and ventilation is required now. I don't know what it said because I didn't read it but thought it was very sad that people are crying about ventilation now. We're over two years in, have we learnt nothing about this? Ventilation should have been a measure two years ago but nope they were too busy with preventing droplets.

No harm in washing hands. There's some really dirty people out there. We now have monkeypox to deal with and that is viral and can be spread through surfaces. So washing hands and wiping surfaces is no harm.

Majority of Nurses have actually just been downgraded.

HSE now purchasing FFP2 from aborad, again. What could go wrong?