Five years on, what did COVID teach you?

I am generally a rule follower, that’s my personality, especially if the rules make sense to me. Happy to wfh, wear a mask in public etc

I did then & still do, wfh. I didn’t want to be ill & I didn’t want to look at which of my friends could be responsible if I became so.

I was happy at home with my family & in the garden. I know I will never buy a property without some kind of private outside space.

Covid also helped weed out what used to be known as the tin foil hat brigade. Maybe that is me to others but even now there are people I know who & with whom I used to be better friends who are awaiting the arrival of the 3i Atlas passengers. I’ve learned to be more discerning in my friendships.

Exactly, they did quite well at containing it until they lost the run of themselves and started the ridiculous rolling lockdowns and the mask loons with their tin hats ranting about airborne killers, good point on the system, people were amazed how rubbish our healthcare system really was.

It's almost as if he has office spaces that are vacant in Dublin that he'd like to be filled with people.

I learnt many things.

on a personal level I learned that many embraced lockdown cos it normalised their anti social lives.

on a national (maybe global level) I found 90% of people will do what they're told regardless. the man on the telly spouts fear and they obey. Its easy to see why places like North Korea can exist.

thomas edison i think

Five percent of the people think, ten percent of the people think they think - and the other eighty-five percent would rather die than think.

95% of people took the vaccine go figure….

I learnt, from our then Health Minister, that there were 18 previous coronaviruses. This man is now our Minister for Finance. Politicians never cease to amaze me with the width and depth of their knowledge.

Also, if you collected up every Sars-CoV-2 virus particle in the world, it would fit inside a soft drinks can.

Conversely. It also confirmed who in your friend/acquaintance circle would happily see a person sent to the gulags for not obeying the governments every incoherent utterance.

You didn't or don't have to be a scientist (even though I am) to have realised the 'experts' were talking rubbish alot of the time. Remember the 9 euro meal and the masks standing up but not sitting down?

Also, only 'experts' that followed the fear narrative were given airtime. Dr. Martin Fehilly who was a top guy in the HSE got retired not long after going on Prime Time and telling us alot of more measured things which turned out to be true. Whereas, the likes of Staines and McConkey were on the radio constantly throughout because they said 'we're all gonna die'.

Have you ever heard of the Great Barrington Declaration? 'Experts' from Harvard, Stanford and Oxford, again more measured, but not ever mentioned on Irish media.

That for next pandemic we need to trust vaccines and science more. The idea that we still needed restrictions with 85% of our population vaccinated and scientists telling us that Omicron was less dangerous than previous variants was completely ridiculous

If kids are less suspectable to the harmful effects of a virus that it's more beneficial to keep them in school. School from home simply doesn't work

Also if you're allowing freedom of travel to a country without restrictions there's no point in imposing restrictions in your own country

A small bit of common sense goes a long way

At a very basic level it was to reduce transmission. The inquest findings in the UK estimated that around 27 thousand lives may have been saved if the UK shut down at the same time we did instead of delaying a week.

In Venice there's an island where in the times of the plague ship crews who just arrived would have to stay 40 days to ensure none carried any transmittable disease.

I was in rural east galway for most of it and yes the nearest shop was more than 5km. Thank God for tesco home delivery.

The county shutdowns made zero sense. As you said one county is locked down, then cross a bridge and they are not shutdown. Just like when there is a weather warning, one area gets a warning and the next townland over doesn't, and then the weather system moves from it's forecasted location.

I don't know where you were but there was a yoke going around back then that people who's nearest shop was a Supervalu would end up bankrupted!!

That the Irish government has kept up the huge spending spree since covid, the size of the state sector as recently as 2018 was 60 billion but it has ballooned to 117 billion in the last budget by pascal donohue. That's also pascal donohue legacy he has increased the size of the state by nearly 100% but little reliefs for hard pressed tax payers. Covid gave them alot of cover to do this