Whatâs driving that?
The UK varmint. There is no real lockdown here apart from schools and MNCs WFH. Traffic in the mornings here is quite busy apart from the school run times.
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children dropping dead left right and center, if they make if home alive then they are murdering their grandparents
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McDowell is the light
âHope is not a strategy. Luck is not a factor. Fear is not an optionâ â James Cameron, film director.
Many people are beginning to wonder: âIs there a plan?â
We know there is an intention to roll out mass vaccination in a series of steps â faltering steps if the misguided AstraZeneca suspension is anything to go by.
But is there a plan? What does vaccination of the over-80s or over-70s mean? As far as I know, it remains a criminal offence for four such vaccinated people to get together for a game of cards, or for any one of them to travel 20km to visit a sibling, or to attend at a grandchildâs birthday or baptism, or attend a religious service.
And if the vaccine rollout gathers pace as intended, at what point does the social and economic life of the country â for the vaccinated and the un-vaccinated â open up to an appreciable degree?
If, say, a majority of adults is duly vaccinated, does that have any planned consequence? Is there a plan which relates the degree of lockdown relaxation and the achievement of 50 per cent, 60 per cent, or 75 per cent rollouts?
Do those milestones have any significance in some strategy? Or is the plan to have no plan â except to hope that vaccination will at some point reduce the R-number to some at present unstated acceptable level that might justify a cautious reopening of social and economic life?
Put another way, is there any point at which we collectively adjudge that the older and more vulnerable have been sufficiently vaccinated to permit the younger and less vulnerable get on with their lives notwithstanding persistent low-level community transmission?
Nphet
The National Public Health Emergency Team has ruled out pursuing a zero-Covid strategy as a short-term aim. If so, it seems that the plan (if we can call it that) is to vaccinate and to contain the coronavirus by an ever-changing blend of lockdown and tracing.
The effectiveness of our existing tracing programme is a carefully preserved secret. We do know that a House of Commons committee found that the UK tracing programme had been a ÂŁ35 billion failure. Is there any reason to believe that our tracing programme (whatever its cost) has been or will be any better?
Since we conveniently abolished the DĂĄil Covid committee chaired by Independent TD Michael McNamara there is little or no chance of getting real answers to any of the foregoing questions
Independent TD and volunteer vaccinating doctor Cathal Berry drew our attention yesterday to the very real issue as to whether the response to the national emergency can properly be left to one Minister and one department. Other Ministers seem free to give anonymous press briefings like a Greek chorus located in the wings.
Hotel quarantine
As regards the hotel quarantining regime, the Minister is damned if he does and damned if he doesnât. It wonât stop an air-travelling Irish citizen from a safe destination who has shared flight or airport facilities abroad with an infected traveller from a listed destination from being a vector of infection for a new variant. It will reduce that risk. But nobody seems willing to physically enforce compliance with the quarantine regime. It may be a deterrent but it is far from foolproof.
Ireland, alone in the world, closed down its construction sector. Can it not reopen with on-site testing and tracing? Is there something unique about Ireland that prevents sites from reopening but permits meat plants to do so? Can addressing the critical housing shortage remain long-fingered?
It seems as if we are engaged in some attitudinal mind game in which any concession on lockdown, however rational, is seen as damaging to the collective will to combat the pandemic. That collective will cannot persist in the absence of hope and confidence. Ronan Glynn, the deputy chief medical officer, is a decent man. But he has got to understand that the younger and less vulnerable simply will not remain cooped up in Level 5 for much longer.
Another wave is a frightening thought. So too is a vaccine-resistant variant. But Northern Ireland will be much more highly vaccinated than the Republic to an embarrassing degree in a matter of weeks. So too will Britain â even if Boris Johnson has to go dutch on vaccines with the European Union. The UK is not going to remain in lockdown, even if it restricts overseas travel.
Government credibility is living on borrowed time. We have to see the way out of this. We have to see the stages along that way. We have to have some confidence that the survival of the acute hospitalsâ capacity to deal with the pandemic is not the only over-riding determinant of national policy.
Hope is not a strategy â but it needs to be nurtured.
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Deary meâŚ
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Very valid points in that piece. By that, I mean heâs said things I agree with and have said myself.
Near the end of February, when restrictions were being extended to 5 April, the point was made that they didnât want to set any targets as it would lead to anticipatory behaviour. I argued the opposite was the case; if they didnât publicise targets that would allow reopening then people would throw their hat at it and stop complying. I think thatâs been happening in ever increasing numbers.
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The bould Samuel can be heard here.
We canât have a plan because if we have a plan it will give people hope and then if we have to change the plan then people might lose hope so we will plod along with no plan and no hope so that we wonât disappoint people or miss targets.
Irish government and NPHET logic. And a lot of Irish people seem to be ok with that.
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I think what you are describing there is whatâs coming out of nphet. Unfortunately the government are way too weak and the situation is still too dicey for them to start pressing nphet or going against them. The British variant spike really fucked us because the government lost any authority they might have to push a bit more after that.
As Iâve said before I think things will turn as the vaccination progresses. If other countries move first to open x y or z whenever so many people have been vaccinated then we will be able to do that too. The government is currently too weak to start saying things like that and fear a rift with nphet opening again. So they just have to sit on it for now until vaccination proceeds along another bit before they can assume control again.
Thatâs my reading of it anyway.
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I would agree with that and I think it is pathetic. The government will be shamed into coming up with an opening up plan after every other country has one and they will be shamed into confronting NPHETâs ultra conservative approach when Irish people start seeing footage of other European countries restarting normalcy during the summer and weâll be fucking around with 10km travel restrictions in June when most if not all vulnerable people will be vaccinated.
Apart from the inate authority they have to not only push things but make decisions at their own discretion.
The pre-Christmas relaxation did not go well, but that is not an excuse for the Government to just abdicate responsibility for the high level running of the country to NPHET. They are in Government to lead, thatâs what they should do, but instead we have a bunch of cowards who are prisoners to perception, terrified to take any sort of risk lest they get criticized for the results.
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I agree with you and @Blake there. I think most reasonable people want to see a bit of hope and optimism.
But unfortunately now is not the time for it. If the government started pushing against nphet now it would be divisive and the government would lose political capital. If nphet donât change their tune when vaccination progresses then the push will come. I still think the turnaround in mood will happen really fast, weâll be vaccinating a million a month soon, once we start hitting the big numbers peopleâs expectations will change and the government will be on firmer ground.
I do think they could and should provide a bit more optimism but theyâre in a hard place. Thatâs just where it is at the moment but it will change soon enough.
Ah ffs. This shite again.
We have a plan. Lock it down and if that doesnât work, lock it down HARDER.
have some huel chunky
Clowns that voted FFG finally realising what they voted for and are looking for someone to blame 
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McDowell point that a roadmap should set out a reopening at a certain level of vaccinations is well made.
People who are fully vaccinated canât meet up with other fully vaccinated people is wonderful science.
I canât see them giving a roadmap. They shocked us all last year with a roadmap for reopening May June July with dates etc but canât see anything substantial happening under Martin whoâs basically NPHET in a suit and Fitbit and happy to just toddle along until his Taoiseach stint is done and blame it on supply of vaccines
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The reason for that is because youâve locked young people into their houses to protect vulnerable people. You canât continue to lock young people in their houses and let the auld wans out and about
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Dr Ronan Glynn is getting thumped for asking us to do a little more, and ends up being apologetic in the face of trolling for whatâs described as a communication error. Itâs actually the inevitable outcome of a much bigger communications error: The unexamined daily briefings, added to by public appearances by the Taoiseach and TĂĄnaiste, plus the health minister, HSE, et al. For the first time in history, too much communication is happening. It has always been assumed that you couldnât overcommunicate with people. Wrong, wrong, wrong.
Hereâs how what has happened has inadvertently broken the laws of good communication. First, a daily appointment in Sammara was created in the nightly Nphet briefings, which forced the two national broadcasters into obedient presence and promulgation. For several months, that was riveting and highly educational. But over time, the story became repetitive, the lack of pictures forced the nation into gazing at Covid yellow notice boards, and the Nphet guys became more famous than the famous themselves.
At that point, the political syndrome came into play. Nphet began to be seen as the real government, and a cohort within the public started to hate them accordingly, demanding that the Cabinet âstand upâ to them.
At the same time, the Government, to prove they really are the Government, and also in the hope of retrieving and repeating Leoâs moment on St Patrickâs day last year, started competing with each other and Nphet for coverage.
Meanwhile, instead of saying âHereâs the data, Government will tell you what theyâre going to do with itâ, Nphet moved from pure information-delivery (which is safe) into motivational be-good-now health promotion, (demonstrably unsafe for Nphet) which led to the Glynn thumping and his baffled comment that all of us have only one enemy: The virus.
People citing Churchillâs constant communication with the public during the Second World War tend to ignore what happened immediately after peace broke out. The British public turfed him in an election.