Lads.
Could ye not try living yer best lives possible daily?
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Weâll go with this one. Organise a press conference and weâll provide the public with a rational calm explanation
- Emirates Flight 203, September 2018 â 106 of 521 passengers on a 14-hour flight from Dubai to New York reported symptoms including coughing, sneezing, fever, or vomiting. The pilot notified airport ground staff, and personnel from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention met and quarantined the plane in New York and evaluated passengers, 11 of whom were sent to the hospital. A few passengers on the âflight from hellâ turned out to have common colds or flu, with the other passengers coming to the belief that they were also sick after observing those around them.[52][53]
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Which is stay in your county no craic etc etc
Probably
I donât get this line of thinking. Whatâs going to change in 2022 in relation to September 2021 say when most people are vaccinated. Is it not really as simple as when people are vaccinated we open up. Nothing else is going to change in relation to the virus itâs still going to be there.
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So there will be a revolution in this century
Who are you?
The optics and narrative will only slowly be changed - to do otherwise would be to countenance that NPHET was wrong.
When you think back you last summer and the hysteria about a few lads dancing on a bar top in Berlin Bar and there were 4 cases in Ireland that day.
Now we have a vaccine and the roll out slows to a crawl on weekends because like everything the system is designed to facilitate the people
Working in it which includes they being allowed to shut down the economy rather than being asked hard questions about balancing risk and speed of vaccine roll out
The fact that AZ vaccination teams were stood down and had to be âremobilisedâ is staggering. What else were they sent to do?
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Itâs not all.about pubs mate
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Still redefining lockdown.
Are we the only country in the world with construction suspended?
I want you to spend the morning perusing the contents of the following, I strongly advise @TheBlackSpot to do likewise
(Iâll be glad to address any questions that may arise)
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You wont hear too many doctors breaking ranks. Where is the sense in this?
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Airfield Estate reopened last week. Went out for a look recently. Masks mandatory for adults and playgrounds blocked off. As we all know open farms and playgrounds are LETHAL.
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The fact that the two week school holidays werenât moved to the first two weeks of march is another example of this kind of rigid thinking. All online learning should have stopped for those two weeks when most students were out of school. They could have had the bank holiday off at Easter then and had a good run of it. This isnât a teacher bashing comment either itâs more a comment on the lack of flexible thinking.
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What we need is not just an exit plan from the current lockdown, but a longer-term exit plan from the republic of Nphet
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Whatâs she saying? I wrote her off as a complete gobshite after her recent dryrobe and gaa columns.
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There is a theme emerging from Taoiseach MicheĂĄl Martinâs latest pronouncements. He was âsurprisedâ at the call by Catholic bishops for an easing of Covid restrictions on Masses and funerals. Before that he was âdisappointedâ by issues with the vaccine rollout. A week earlier it was the British government and its unilateral action on the Northern Ireland protocol that âdisappointedâ him.
His last televised address a month ago was a clarion call for us all to join him in this state of tongue-clicking, eye-narrowing, deep-sighing disenchantment. We were, he told us, âall completely fed upâ and âfrustratedâ.
And if we werenât it was time to get with the programme because there were at least nine more weeks of sitting on the sofa feeling sad to go.
Does anybody want a leader who casts themselves as a passive observer of events beyond their control â not angry, just perpetually disappointed?
We wonât find out until next week which restrictions we can expect not to be eased on April 5th, although the steady leaching away of hope has already started. On Friday the first of the usual dreary leaks flagged that the 5km rule â surely the most pointlessly frustrating of all restrictions â might not be lifted.
âSenior sourcesâ were busy expressing âpessimismâ. Martin is also gearing us up for a fresh round of his preferred emotional state. âThere is no point in opening up and having to close again,â he told RTĂ recently.
It is true that we need to be cautious, and proper that his tone should reflect it. Nobody wants a leader vomiting out giddy soundbites divorced from the harsh realities of life in a pandemic. Well, maybe those who voted for Boris Johnson do.
But does anybody want a leader who casts themselves as a passive observer of events beyond their control â not angry, just perpetually disappointed?
Being Taoiseach amidst the perfect storm of the most serious public health crisis in the history of the State, a grim economic outlook, a shadow pandemic of mental health and social problems, while leading a dejected population through one of the longest and harshest lockdowns anywhere, is a gig nobody would envy.
What we need is not just an exit plan from the current lockdown, but a longer-term exit plan from the republic of Nphet
And thatâs even before you get to all the other things he has to contend with â the National Public Health Emergency Team (Nphet) calling the shots, TĂĄnaiste Leo Varadkar snapping at his heels and Mary Lou McDonaldâs constant demands that he very clearly state something or other that he would very clearly prefer not to.
But over a year into a crisis of this magnitude the public doesnât want a leader it has sympathy for. It doesnât want a Taoiseach sitting like Bernie Sanders in his fold-up chair, casting a disappointed eye over proceedings.
From next week the Taoiseach will tell us what comes after the current phase of restrictions ends on April 5th. It would be refreshing to hear less about what is expected from us, and more about what we can expect from the Government.
What we need is not just an exit plan from the current lockdown, but a longer-term exit plan from the republic of Nphet.
Nphetâs brief is to dispense public health advice. For the past year that has involved getting the Covid-19 caseload down low enough to protect the health service and save lives, something it has done well under exceptionally tough circumstances. It is not the teamâs job to worry about anything outside of this remit.
Thatâs why, for example, we are currently in the farcical situation in which non-essential retail is closed, except for the many kinds of non-essential retail carried out in the homeware sections of chain stores.
Likewise, click-and-collect is closed, except for the places where it isnât.
If this goes on much longer what will be left of our towns and cities?
Meanwhile, younger teenagers are spending up to eight hours a day on Zoom, slowly disengaging from their education and friendships, and denied even the relief of team sports. Never mind our towns â if this goes on what kind of state will they be in?
The question isnât why compliance is fraying now, but how we managed to keep it together this long
Those things are not Nphetâs concern. But they are the Governmentâs.
Taoiseach MicheĂĄl Martinâs real test of leadership comes now as cases plateau at about the 500 mark. No amount of paternalistic pronouncements about holding firm or staying the course seem capable of pushing them down further. The frustrating thing is that many outbreaks still arenât being investigated to discover the source.
But for all the gloom things are much less bleak than they were when we entered this lockdown. The majority of people getting sick now are young adults. The numbers in intensive care were down 11 per cent this week. There were 19 open outbreaks in nursing homes this month, compared to 60 in February, and 139 in January. This month 14 healthcare workers fell ill, compared to 1,000 in January.
On St Patrickâs Day Ireland had the third lowest rate of Covid-19 in Europe. And yet, according to the University of Oxfordâs Covid-19 government response tracker, we are in one of the harshest, longest lockdowns anywhere in the world. Only Eritrea has had stringent restrictions since January, with Venezuela, Italy and Georgia just behind.
The question isnât why compliance is fraying now, but how we managed to keep it together this long.
There is reason for optimism, and peopleâs behaviour will reflect that, even if the Government doesnât
Whether the Government acknowledges it or not, the nightly numbers will become less important as more vulnerable people are vaccinated.
Israel, which has immunised over half its nine million population, still has active transmission, but there is a 50 per cent weekly decline in cases. A scientist at the Weizmann Institute in Rehovot, Eran Segal, reported this week that there are 86 per cent fewer cases in people aged 60 and older than there were in mid-January, and 91 per cent fewer deaths.
There is reason for optimism, and peopleâs behaviour will reflect that, even if the Government doesnât.
We donât need any more disappointment. What we need is a realistic appraisal of where we are, and a clear path out of this.
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Gov plan - Blame the public ,blame the pharma companies , blame PCR tested Johnny Foreigner coming in through airportâŚhope the mob latches on to one of them themes⌠blame everyone bar themselves for being stone cold uselessâŚ
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Diageo had an ad on this morningâs radio about a call line for workers and family of workers in the pub trade.
Hard not to be cynical.