Enough time has gone by for us to gain some perspective without forgetting what it was like. Any lessons learnt?
You can only estimate those things well after the event, even then they are clouded in all kinds of statistical assumptions and uncertainties about population size and age etc.
Those numbers were being published but at the same time they were really paying attention to hospital numbers, ICU numbers and when that capacity is full then treatment not just for covid in jeopardy.
Indeed. Infection numbers was a very dodgy metric, dependent on the number of tests being done which wasn't given along with the positive numbers. All cause mortality / excess deaths is much more meaningful, but it's easy to say that in hindsight I suppose.
There are few things more dangerous than a bureaucratic ideologue given too much power.
The way the Govt. handed over the running of the country to Tony Holohan was a disgrace.
He saw Covid as his big chance at personal redemption and by God was he going to take it.
Everything was viewed through the prism of infection numbers.
Children's education, social development and mental health could all be willing sacrificed to that end goal.
The billions that were wasted on Covid theatre which could have been channelled into improving society as a whole was obscene.
The worst thing is there's been no lessons learned and nobody held to account for the decisions which were made - so many of the public were complicit in the farce that there is simply no appetite to question any of the measures which were taken - that's all well and good but what happens next time?
The "my Ooni pizza oven is bigger than yours" gang - a bit pathetic really.
Is this Denis "Malta" O'Brian?
Yeah, one of Tony & Co's very costly errors imho. They really were in full patronising, we know best mode with this one & a few others.
I know some people (including a poster here) may say that they were worried about the efficacy & accuracy of people testing themselves at home, but firstly they could have verified that this belief was bogus by simply testing a test group & then let them test themselves, and secondly, the home testing kits were quite usable & quite accurate and the public health control gurus got it completely wrong imho. And worse when they were shown to have got it wrong, they arrogantly doubled down on their "don't rely on these home tests" muppet mantra....
Classic Tony!@
It was 2 metres.
Denis o brien was commenting on the work from home phenomenon that was mandated for office workers during covid. He said it has caused a loss of effectiveness and productivity in the civil service. The operation of the state apparatus is not what it was before covid. That young graduates have become too entitled, they are demanding what their working terms are rather than the other way around. That Ireland is too dependent on multinationals revenue flows and that we are up for a rude awakening
That they have written off everyone who has gotten long covid.
yeah "open the gyms" for "me mental health" from gym bros who never gave a crap about people's mental health and then taken up by people who would think a kettle bell announces when the tea is ready
Workout at home, like the rest of us, ya prat
Lockdown was bliss with a young family. Loads of 1:1 time with kids without the distraction of running between sports, parties etc.
It definitely made me focus more on family time since.
😅 Some people got the whole way through Covid with one disposable mask.
those not understanding that a facemask is supposed to cover the nose as well as the mouth. It really exposed how infantile a good portion of adults are
Jesus that remains my biggest bugbear. Someone wearing a mask with their runny nose poking out the top.
Personally I had no problem with lockdown, but my wife was a bouncing off the walls initially before getting a handle on her panic. Dealing with her stress was the most stressful part of it.
I had via a previous job studied a bit about contagious diseases, had even been in Myanmar where the plague is still present, so I was comfortable that we were hunkered down. I had a pile of books that was waiting to be read.
Overall it changed our lives for the better, much better. It spurred my wife to transfer out of Dublin and we now have a lovely garden that we couldn't possibly afford in Dublin. I always pack a facemask for trains and flights and I've only been in a pub a couple of times since, although I was already sick of the pub scene before the pandemic.
I am discouraged by how easily people lost the plot, the whole "open the gyms" crowd made as much sense as those not understanding that a facemask is supposed to cover the nose as well as the mouth. It really exposed how infantile a good portion of adults are.
Many of the educated are as well.
The uneducated are idiots.
Well I believe my cousin. I also believe some people could be that dumb.
I heard the same story from a Dublin taxi driver. I didn’t believe him either 😂
The first thing that struck me was that I was not the only Irish person who doesn't know how far away 2-3-4 feet are(I knew this already but seeing ppl needing stickers to show them where it is, was heartening)
My cousin is a taxi driver in the UK. One day she pulled up behind a car that was stopped at some traffic lights. The driver in front got out, walked back to her car and started banging on her window. She rolled it down a little and he starts shouting at her for not leaving 3 feet between her car and his. "The government has told us we have to remain 3 feet apart!!".
Now, wrap your head around that one.
That there are so awesome speech writers in Leinster House, look at how it impacted on Irish/British relations when Boris came to visit.
That Leo was less sheltered that I assumed from his rich kid attitudes, comments about how there maybe more in your neighbourhood that you know and recommending people used the radius to get to know their full space and how 5k isn't any space in the country.
That some people(imc men) had such a strong reaction to being told to stay with in 5k or no closer than 3 feet and decided to ignore these things, impacting people who were dependant on people behaving cautiously in a global pandemic! Most of this group still holding grudges about being asked to behave in the common interest.
There are vast numbers of scientists who don't subscribe to the way covid was handled, in fact Covid was handled differently in different countries…..different 'the scientists', I suppose.
Many of our own celebrity scientists came out with all sorts of bunkem. McConkey said we'd have hundreds of thousands of deaths….Luke O'Neill said the vaccine, any vaccine were 100% effective. The amount of stuff that people have memory holed is absolutely wild.
The Facebook joke is still going….to be filed with 'my wifi is great since I got the vaccine with the chip in it' mwah amn't I hilarious…
And on the flip side, how many people seem to think they know better than scientists because they read some conspiratorial nonsense on Facebook. It's actually a tad frightening.
The Dunning Kruger effect in action.
So nice to read a post that isn't someone shaking their fist at the sky about some minor inconveniences, five years ago, while people were dying in their thousands around the world every day.
What sort of muppet is complaining about not being able to go to the Canaries in 2020 after all that has gone on, or still ranting about Tony Holohan FFS.
I was in a similar situation to you; I didn't suffer any financial hardship, the weather was great, and I completely reset my attitude to work vs family, and it remains reset to this day. I never think twice about getting up from the desk to go out on the green with my kids or bring them to training, whatever.
The sense of community and togetherness that we had in Ireland was something that we will probably never see again.
Turn off the TV/radio and research more!
Be a critical thinker!
That some people are so unbelievably stupid that they need instructions on how to wear a face mask and half of them still wear it wrong.
COVID thought us that when the world is under threat we can be bandi together, stop the wars and work together to find a solution. 👍
Completely disagree, there is a strong argument that the Ukraine invasion would never have happened if it wasn't for covid. It was putin isolated in his bunker away from rational world leaders and advisers that taught he could take over Ukraine and it would all be so easy, he only had the ear of the crazy guys in the kremlin during covid and that was a primary reason for invasion. He had lost his grasp on reality
Or rather more mundanely, a large number of people wouldn't do the test properly, and go out even though they had symptoms and were infectious with covid. If you tested positive you had covid, if you tested negative… you might still have it. They were good for confirming if you had it, but a lot of people would use it to test if they were ok to go out \ go to work etc
learned that most Irish people love being told what to do.
It’s no wonder the Catholic Church kept such a grip on the place for so long. The amount of nonsense Covid-theatre that people indulged in would have been funny if it wasn’t so worrying.
Remember when Tony holohan refused to sanction the antigen home test kits which other countries like UK were widely using by then. He had people traipsing to covid test centres maybe waiting days for a test and told to isolate while waiting. Most people actually abided by this aswell , why was it so important to find out you had covid, it wasn't going to help you anyways.
Why was Tony holohan so insistent on this because with home test kits they would have lost control of the narrative, the RTE daily covid cases reported with such reverance would have lost their relevance .
And if a bus window is open near where you're sitting on go ahead Dublin bus, there's a good chance some 'chungwan will bang it shut when they sit down beside it.
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