"Nobody cares about Covid anymore"

I like they way you ignored rising COVID cases in what was said.

Hmmm, something else is clearly being established in these discussions. Countries like Ireland do not hold votes on e.g. national health rules (among many, many other things). Even Switzerland, which is a direct democracy, didn't have a vote on a their mask mandate, or their bans on public gatherings

Polls showed (repeatedly) that a majority of Irish people supported the mask mandates. This was the same in most countries.

There are many of these polls, if you can demonstrate how each was manipulated, great.

To come back to an earlier point you made. You expressed the view that you only protect yourself. If you were e.g. on your way to visit your friend and his/her grandparents and you did a quick Covid test, discovered you were positive, would you still visit them?

Or would you protect them by telling them you had Covid and it was safer if you avoided them altogether?

Well you don't believe the polls, the media, the medical hierarchy, experts, Irish or international, the Gov. At this point there is nothing left.

Interesting opinion.

I don't think the lockdown measures were perfect by any stretch, but that's always going to be an issue with quickfire decisions being made for national rules in response to a dynamic situation. If there were a new pandemic tomorrow, it's only natural we would glean info from lessons learnt during the previous, so I think any national review wouldn't really achieve much beyond what we already now know. I also don't think taxpayers would be happy to fund a national review into why we took pretty much the same measures as every other country in the world

I'm sorry about your business and obviously young children missing out on socialising, on the flipside the world lost 6 million people in two years and national health systems were pushed to the brink. Perhaps the world should have prioritised the economy over people's lives and the healthcare system, not to be funny here but I genuinely can't remember anyone but fruitloops making that point when this new disease with no vaccines was sweeping the globe.

Right, but you wrote this:

You've just contradicted that. If you have Covid, you will protect e.g. someone's grandparents by taking the action of not turning up. Your action has nothing to do with you, it's to protect them.

Let's say you are visiting your friend's family, you don't feel sick, but you have a tiny tickle in your throat. Could be anything, who knows, or it could be Covid. You don't have a test handy and you're almost at the house. Do you tell them?

I'm going to answer this one for you. You do tell them. Why? because naturally you will want to protect them and not put them at added risk.

Let's say they insist you come and you do. You put on a mask and keep your distance. You don't like wearing the mask or having to distance, but you know it's not about you. You do it to protect them. It's a minor inconvenience to you, to avoid a risk you infect your friend's family.

Well you used to see people with masks now you mostly don't.

In a healthcare setting you'll still see a lot (most?) with masks. Which is a real flashback if you been away from it for a while.

I think you can infer a little of people's opinions and objectives from people's compliance or not. Maybe.

Just because you personally have an opinion that something is unjust doesn't make it so.

In our democracy (like most others), the public doesn't get to vote on public health rules or speed limits or similar laws like that. We vote in people who represent us to make these decisions (representative democracy)

In a e.g. national health emergency, representatives (of that party) consult with the country's bodies of related experts on the best course of action

Bit more context to it than that. Panels of experts, consulting other experts, consulting economic experts (to check the drawbacks), business representatives, industry representatives, etc, etc decided that due to the circumstances at the time, the country need a temporary lockdown to curb exponentially rising case numbers that were putting our entire national health system under pressure and resulting in climbing death cases. We can borrow money but we can't replace dead people. Keep in mind this was 2020, at a time when we didn't know much about the virus, how much it could mutate, etc.

The combined judgement of all these people and experts isn't infallible. What's important to note is that many other countries arrived at the same conclusion and took similar measures. It wasn't like it was one isolated decision. It was many decisions, and many of them were similar. We weren't an outlier.

Anyway enough explainy stuff.

It's 2020, you're the leader of this country, cases are going through the roof, we're scrambling to prep ICU beds, we are low on ventilators, we still don't know much about the virus, people are concerned. I had two cases of Covid hit my office on the same day, hundreds of staff refused to turn up the next day. People were concerned about themselves, their families. What rules or mandates would you have passed (or not) that would not have resulted in a mob with pitchforks turning up at your door within 15 minutes..

Take weeks to organise a national referendum to ask the public what to do?

You've just claimed that's what needed to be done..

Bizarre statement. I didn't get vaccinated against a disease to "feel comfortable in society". I didn't get my jabs as a baby to "feel comfortable in society".

Again, it's not all about you. It's about protecting others during a pandemic of an infectious disease. It's a mild inconvenience to temporarily wear a mask when out. However if rules aren't made about masks, even in a pandemic, we know many people wouldn't wear them (same happened with seatbelts).

During the first year of the pandemic, when our national health systems were under threat of being swamped (and we didn't have vaccines, and didn't know how it would mutate), mask mandates were introduced almost everywhere, why? Because masks reduce the spread and are a mild inconvenience.

In 2021, we kept mask rules because we still had immense spikes in cases, but as the vaccines kicked in these were having a less severe impact on hospital and ICU admissions.

2022, much of pop vaccinated, a lot of herd immunity, health system functioning okay, mask mandates removed

In 1918 during the Spanish Flu epidemic people wore masks, why? Because it reduced the spread of a deadly virus. We had to introduce mandates, why? Because certain people refused to wear masks and put themselves and others at risk (which also increased the pressure on the health system at the time). Hence mandates.

That's completely fine. The points and questions still stand.

You believe the country should have had a national referendum to decide if masks should be worn during a pandemic. If you don't believe that, you are free to explain how the public should have decided this. If you can't explain, then okay, there's nothing to discuss.

A LOT of people weren't happy with the pandemic either. The whole Irish people dying from a new disease and our national hospitals heading towards collapse. I'm genuinely sorry your business was affected but this has to be said so many times in this thread, the world doesn't revolve around you. It resolves around everyone. Not everyone in Ireland is a pub landlord or a business owner. I know it wasn't enough, but there was compensation, that's my taxes paying that, but you're alright you can have that.

Yikes. You actually went there. Okay, let's apply this to your situation, thousands of businesses fail every year for all sorts of reasons. "**** happens". "People die".

And there it is.

Right, you feel sorry for doctors and nurses who wear masks every day, is there something you know that they don't, if so, please share

Unless this is just another mealy-mouthed vapid complaint about people choosing to wear masks

Asian countries have been wearing masks since the 50's. So that's Asia out for you. Sweden? ah wait, they introduced mask mandates. I dunno, maybe some astronomically wealthy self-absorbed libertarian will buy a massive chunk of land somewhere and all the anti-maskers, anti-lockdown types and all their brethren can flock there. We can only live in hope.

Anyway, who cares about this, 60 million people die a year.