"Nobody cares about Covid anymore"

Already answered, because we (Ireland) were too cautious in reopening post vaccine rollout, we should have opened up, understanding that restrictions may be necessary in Winter as other virus or variants became apparent (which is what happened) and the impact against infectiousness waned.

We should have been aligning our booster strategy directly with the flu season instead of opening it up to 18+ year olds in December when the impacts won't really be felt (numbers start dropping in January anyway as there are much less gatherings and social interactions). We'll see if we make the same mistake next year.

My posts from 2021 spelled this out in detail and you're still stuck on the same narrative as you have always been.

Vaccine spending is a fraction of a % of the health budget. The cost/reward for vaccines is greater than all other medicines and treatments that are administered as they prevent hospitalisations and treatment being needed. This goes for the entire population, regardless of age/fitness.

How much did the vaccine program cost so?

All I can find is an Oireachtas question from July 2021 to the Minster who flags that the cost will be "well in excess of €200m".

It doesn't sound like an insignificant sum of money. How many hospitalizations were saved among people in the 30's and younger?

You seem very confident they were great value but on what basis?

I'd agree of all the billions spent on Covid, the vaccines were probably the best value but even that isn't saying much. As for the rest of the €50bn added to our debt, it's absolutely scandalous that so much was spent on the basis of so little accountability or questioning of the value we were getting

There is no conspiracy theory here. Disagreeing with a point doesn't automatically make it a conspiracy theory. That's just school yard level debate being perfectly honest.

You're arguing that the basis of restrictions at the start of the pandemic is based on Christmas 2020. That's just absurd really.

If someone can explain why literally everyone, in every country, whose job it is to protect public health in was in favour of restrictions, face masks and vaccines when in fact it's all nonsense, then I'm all ears.

Conversely, if anyone can explain why literally everyone with a vested interest in fostering discontent and peddling consipracy theories pre-Covid turned out to be against restrictions masks and vaccines, and why we should take such people seriously, then I'm also very interested to hear this.

If anyone can explain why we should have disregarded the WHO, HSE, CDC, EMA and whoever else, and should have listened to Eddie Hobbs, Gemma O'Doherty, the National Party, Jair Bolsanaro and Joe Rogan, then likewise, answers on a postcard.

As it is, this thread is the death rattle of a bunch of very bitter posters shaking their fists at the sky, having been proved spectacularly wrong and looking for someone to blame.

If someone can explain why literally everyone, in every country, whose job it is to protect public health in was in favour of restrictions, face masks and vaccines when in fact it's all nonsense, then I'm all ears.

It's called arse-covering. It's what public officials are extremely good at. Why take the risk when it's only tax-payers moneys that is being flushed away.

And not "literally everyone, in every country" was in favour of the restrictions adopted. Anyone in Ireland who stuck thier head above the parapet was drummed out though - groupthink is great

https://www.irishtimes.com/news/health/doctor-resigns-from-hospital-group-after-comments-on-draconian-covid-19-curbs-1.4356244

They restrictions themselves varied wildly from country to country and sometimes even within countries, so the narrative you're peddling is quite frankly bullshite.

Pubs "serving food" were very much open in December 2020.

And even with some pubs staying closed and a lot of people hesitant to go to the ones that were open, we still got an absolute tidal wave of infections.

Spidermon0081 anti-vax before COVID vaccine rollout=yes

You are all over the place mate.

On the one hand you believe vaccines were what released us from restrictions.

Let me remind you what you said just yesterday.

"But let's be clear, no amount of wishcasting changes the fact that it was the vaccines allowed lockdowns and restrictions to go, low vaccinated places got hit badly by Omicron"

On the other hand you suggest that even at record high vaccination rates we still should have imposed restrictions at Christmas time last year.

You aren't making any sense.

Ah, the old switcheroo, beautifully done I may add.

Subtile reframing to include masks and vaccines. Throw in a sprinkling of controversial figures. Mix with an appeal to authority. Add in a dash of an argument nobody made. Hey presto, you have the perfect strawman cake baked to perfection.

You keep shifting your argument...are you now suggesting R Rates had something to do with the lifting of all restrictions?

You are shifting the argument because you can't answer a simple question. You can't answer that question because you know you are wrong.

"But let's be clear, no amount of wishcasting changes the fact that it was the vaccines allowed lockdowns and restrictions to go" - That statement is absolutely incorrect - If that statement was correct, we'd have lifted all restrictions in Sept 2021 when 95% of us were fully vaccinated.

Keep trying to take sly digs at me all you want...we are just going around in circles.

There has been 0 shifting, just you completely unable to engage in any good faith discussion without bouncing around.

Vaccines reduced R and hospitalisations. This allowed us to open up.

Ireland were hesitant about opening up after the meaningful christmas debacle in 2020 so were ultra cautious when opening up again and R was rising again coming into winter causing them to delay reopening. We could have opened up more in September due to the vaccines as Denmark and other countries had. There was also the waning effect against infection (from both the vaccinated and previously infected) that was causing cases to rise that again caused the authorities to be cautious in reopening but as the winter went by it was clear that the link of cases to hospitalisations was broken making restrictions unneeded.

Please say you understand this, my statement is absolutely correct, trying to pin it to Omicron (which didn't exist when Denmark was opening up) is false.

Again, if you want to go into further detail, the vaccine thread is there to talk about it, or the relaxing restrictions thread (where this was already done to death and where my predictions, as shown already, came true).

Well, it's important to continually question things when they are impacting people's lives. In a functioning democracy that's how it should be.

Now, using Rogan as an authority is plain daft in my opinion and I wouldn't for one second be using that as a basis for any argument.

There are valid questions that need to be asked of the governments and health authorities around the entire pandemic response though and I would include the WHO because they haven't covered themselves in glory throughout this pandemic. For the most part I honestly believe decisions were made in good faith. Where I see a problem is that good faith alone shouldn't be enough to strip back civil liberties to the scale we saw and the longer term impact to both our own society and poorer nations who really took the brunt end of the stick by shutting down the global economy.

It's best to leave the nutters on both sides to their own devices because you can't reason someone out of a position they didn't reason themselves into in the first place.

It is vital these topics are discussed at National Level.

The WHO are pushing for a Pandemic Treaty which will impact all of us in the future should we experience another pandemic.

Which our Government has signaled it's willingness to sign.