"Nobody cares about Covid anymore"

Wow you really post some dumb stuff but this is a peach even for you "Nobody can say for sure whether they had COVID or not". I guess all those millions of positive antigen tests were just a guide? all the sequencing of positive samples?

Just because it was your experience does not make it true for everyone, the world does not revolve around you or your particular experience.

/Edit: I should have said PCR not antigen, my mistake, I got them mixed up.

What Philip Nolan said was - "a negative test might give false reassurance that you are free of infection.”

The concern about people self administering antigen tests was that you wouldn't swab correctly \ get enough viral load and the test wouldn't pick it up and would report negative. And then go out and about spreading it.

If you followed the instructions on the test kit - basic stuff like washing hands and not eating or drinking for the required minutes beforehand - and tested positive, then almost certainly you had Covid.

To suggest it was a scam, and to use the Nolan quote out of context in support of that, is deliberate misrepresentation and misinformation.

Who said such scenarios were the main driver of concern? Nobody.

But it is a problem if you can spread it and then make someone sick. It seems to be more likely to occur if you are in the pre-symptomatic phase rather than remain fully asymptomatic, but the data suggests it can occur. If you have evidence to the contrary, that people without symptoms cannot spread the virus, then do share.

Otherwise, to suggest it is unscientific, hysteria or insanity and a scam is utterly without foundation. It's just slogan bingo.

That happened because PCR test capacity was overwhelmed. Extra data would not have made a difference at that point.

If there were trends in the levels of antigens reported, that would indicate trends in society. It doesn't have to be 100% accurate at macro level.

But that wasn't the only data - GP referrals, hospital referrals similar to what is done for flu surveilence would also be used.

To state that there was no officially collated data tracking the prevalence of COVID in society is without foundation, and is false.

It’s not the big bad wolf that some would love it to believe. This won’t be causing any set backs. It’s already peaked in a lot of places already.

People are delusional if they think the world is going back to 2020.

Due to the media's hysterical reporting, lots of people still see COVID as a very deadly disease. The "If ya had COVID you'd know all about it" attitude.

It was the official position from day one that most people would be fine but we needed to protect the vulnerable, and so it remains, and it was 100% correct.

Unfortunately, that is a degree of subtlety that is too much for some people, particularly those who get their scientific data from Eddie Hobbs or went to the Joe Rogan School of Medicine.

But yet near the end of May 2021 we had Tony Holohan tweeting

"Drove into Dublin City centre to collect someone from work at 8.15 pm. Absolutely shocked at scenes in South Great George’s St, Exchequer St, South William St area. Enormous crowds- like a major open-air party. This is what we do not need when we have made so much progress."

IIRC all the vulnerable and elderly had been vaccinated at this point.

How come he didn't start his tweet by saying the effects will be mild for the young and healthy?

It's comforting to know that when I'm being prodded with the satanic pitchforks for not stoking the fiery furnace fast enough, I was just unlucky enough to be one of the "some" of the unfortunates.

I have not really dwelt on the subject as I don't get around a lot now, but I gather that Covid can knock a lot of people back, a little more with each new infection. It's what I gleaned from a scan through of the headlines.

I have managed to find some of the masks I had left over, it was prompted by a woman in Aldi Tralee, who bravely shrugged off whatever respiratory illness she had in order to shower shoppers with particulates of whatever was multiplying inside her and also treat them to a racket that would guarantee a run on earplugs tf the store stocked them.

Anyway it seems a small inconvenience to go back to mask wearing and even if I succumb, I will have done everything reasonable to avoid infecting others I suppose.

The fact that it might be just as easy to die of the flu is probably of little comfort to the poor individual gasping his final breaths.

That was March 2020 in a public address to the nation. One of the highest profile broadcasts this century by a Taoiseach.

The message from the government, HSE has been from the outset most cases would be mild. I have linked multiple points of evidence disproving this canard.

By contrast, nobody here has linked the mythical government, HSE press releases stating to the contrary, despite it apparently being an overload of hysteria. So it should be a simple thing to do. The inability to support the claim makes its falsehood glaringly obvious.

LOL!

85000 people, the graphs, the exponentials, flatten the curve.

Just FYI, you spelled "oh, you're right, thank you for pointing out my error" incorrectly.

Again, this is the problem when we deviate from simple one sentence instructions like "stay at home", people get confused, as this thread so lavishly illustrates.

It's why people like you respond so well to being manipulated, you hear the simple explanation for why you have failed in life, and it's always someone else's fault, and it's like a wolf whistle to you, you go running to whoever is holding your leash.

Firstly, it was March 2020, when Covid had been known about for about a month.

Secondly, it was always a worst-case scenario and was described as such.

Thirdly, we spent the next two years actively trying to reduce that number, and we succeeded.

Fourthly, back in March 2020, the idea that we'd have totally effective vaccines in less than a year was absolutely crazy, but that's what happened, thanks to the science to which you so stridently opposed.

You seem to be very unhappy that all the measures taken to reduce the death toll were so successful, which I have to say is an odd take. Would 10,000 more deaths have made you happy?