Thank you.
Have never claimed to be anything other than sensible⌠Like most people, I am a loss about a lot of pandemic-related issues. I just hope vaccines will get us out.
Too many lads here giving out about what they havenât instead of appreciating what they have
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The issue with masks is 90% of people wear a cloth mask or scarf, which are useless based on science. In fact I would say it is counterproductive as it gives a false sense of security. Cloth masks simply do not stop aerosols from an infected person nor stop you breathing in said aerosol. Remember the issue with transmission isnât just being proximate to someone being infected, itâs also (maybe primarily) that the virus lingers in the air indoors for hours.
So I wouldnât rule out supermarkets, as hundreds of people go through them every day. Contact tracing data says 50% of people have no idea where they picked up the virus, and that they were being careful, worked from home, wore masks when they went shopping. So where did they get infected? I think the reality is it was everywhere in December/January and whether you got it or not was a lottery.
Herd immunity is based on science. The issue with Covid is it is so infectious you need an incredibly high number to achieve it, at least 70% or maybe 80%. I accept that is unrealistic, but itâs countered by the argument that the more people who have had the disease and recovered the better as they are no longer a source of infection. In an ideal world all of the younger healthy people would have had the disease and recovered last summer, it would have removed that majority of the population who became the spreaders in the winter wave. I know that sounds pie in the sky but what transpired was worse, because the great majority of the population were sources of infection.
The biggest question for me is with all the government restrictions why did so many people get infected? Places that were locked down much harder than Ireland in December had just as high levels of infection. I think vulnerable people themselves and their families have been by and large extremely careful, but there have been enough family gatherings, social gatherings, etc. to keep the infection rate going through 2020 and then it spread like wildfire as we entered winter. Exactly the same as flu season, just much worse. How do you stop that? I think the honest answer is you canât, not with this type of virus.
So what did lockdowns achieve? Over and above the restrictions people placed on themselves? I would argue nothing, and longer lockdowns were perhaps one of the biggest reasons why the winter wave was so bad. I keep coming back to Florida and California. Florida ended their stay at home order at the end of April 2020 and never reinstated it. They gradually opened up while leaving restrictions in place for large events. California has had the longest lockdown in the country and never opened up beyond allowing outdoor dining. The winter wave in California was far worse than Florida, more infections, more deaths. Why is that if lockdowns work? I know which state I would have preferred to live in for the past year, and it isnât where Iâve been stuck.
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420/4
74% of the 420 aged under 45.
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There should be very few hospitalisations from todayâs figures so.
There will be very few
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So we needed lockdowns, just not in supermarkets, farmers markets, barbers and hairdressers. In other words clothes, electrical items, mobile phones, compost, flowers etc could be bought safely in tesco but not on the high street.
And there was no hysteria, panic, CCP propaganda driving the government response? Sure they were driving hysteria themselves⌠are you saying we did need the nightingale/navy/field hospitals and glut of ventilators after all?
No generalisations about masks? Pity, I would have said the vast majority of people arenât wearing surgical masks. I would also have said that although surgical masks are reassuringly blue and doctorish theyâre not remotely intended to prevent transmission of a virus. Theyâre called surgical masks for a reason. But I can see why many of us might draw foolish conclusions
As politicians and scientists well know, thereâs no measurable way to prove masks and lockdowns were effective. Neither you nor anyone else can point to a point on an infection trajectory chart which shows their introduction or removal. Theyâre a cod.
And believe me, I can empathise with a hypothetical anecdotal irrational propagandised diabetic cause celebre as well as the next man, but there comes a time when one has to catch oneself on and quit bowing to this nonsense
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Jesus what a can of piss. George must be about to explode.
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Another kick up in the hole to frontline workers.
I donât think science says that cloth masks are useless, or at the very least I expect youâre seriously cherry picking stuff to conform to a preconceived bias on this matter.
You say wearing a cloth mask is counterproductive? That would lead the reader to assume you advocate wearing no mask at all rather than a cloth mask? Yes?
If that assumption is correct, why does pretty much entirety the scientific/medical community worldwide say the opposite?
As regards lockdowns, lockdowns are only as effective as the willingness of a population to comply with them. In the US it strongly appears to me there is a large section of the population, I would say at least 74 million people, who actively want to disobey any restrictions relating to Covid and/or think the whole thing is a hoax or something stupid like that. We know why that is. I donât think we have anything like that ideology in Ireland bar a thankfully very tiny section of the population, and lockdowns have proved highly effective. I havenât been following exactly what each state in the US is doing as regards lockdowns but would doubt that most US lockdowns have been as stringent as some of the ones in Europe or elsewhere, and even more importantly Iâm pretty sure they havenât been accompanied by the sort of welfare payments needed to make them effective. I expect there are a lot more people who simply cannot afford to stay at home than is the case in Ireland.
The idea of natural Covid herd immunity is a crock. Even in a theoretical sense, the idea of herd immunity only contains the most infinitesmal grain of sense if you genuinely believe there will never be a vaccine at all. At the start of this pandemic it was widely assumed that a vaccine was 12 to 18 months away, and within a reasonably short time those near to the levers of power knew that a vaccine/s would likely be available by the end of 2020.
The idea of herd immunity is to bring forward vast numbers of cases, illnesses and death into a short time window, otherwise it makes no sense at all. With a disease like Covid, about which so little was and is known, that is totally and utterly unconscionable and is a recipe for death and destitution on a calamitous scale, and mass societal breakdown.
At the start of the pandemic, it was assumed the theoretical figure for herd immunity would be around 70%. That went up to around 85% because of the new variants, which developed in areas of prolific spread. In a herd immunity situation there is no telling what sort of variants could emerge, and there is no guarantee of avoiding re-infection either, thus calling into question even the theoretical idea of the whole thing.
In a US context, youâre looking at 280 million Covid infections to theoretically reach herd immunity. Do the maths on that one.
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Iâve read some of your posts on Covid and it seems to me that many of them contain very hyperbolic language. Do you really think thatâs the best way to persuade people of your argument? Personally I think the sort of tone and rhetoric you use is an immediate turn off to most people and they simply zone out of what you have to say.
I think this is the case in public debate on Covid in general too. People who use hyperbolic and very aggressive language, in the company of what appear to be very dubious arguments, such as yer man Ivor Cummins - whose style you seem to model your posts on this topic on - are simply written off as cranks, and I think with good reason.
It seems to me that the likes of Ivor, Graham Neary and others who have made a bit of a name for themselves online arenât particularly concerned about persuading the general public of their arguments, and are much more concerned about raking in money from a small band of passionate followers via Patreons and PayPals and whatever other online donating platforms are out there.
I was just wondering if you had ever considered the idea youâre being groomed into being the victim of an online scam by Ivor, Graham or others? That youâre being played by liars and charlatans?
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If it were in the supermarket then staff would surely be infected too. I havenât heard of any major outbreaks amongst supermarket staff or supermarket closures.
A lad I know from up the road here suspects he may have picked up Covid recently from a trip to the supermarket. Iâve no way of ascertaining the truth of that particular claim but Iâd say itâs certainly possible. Heâs grand now anyway. It would be interesting to see how many supermarket workers have tested positive. Do we have such figures anywhere?
What about lads selling Ferrero Rocher? Theyâve been flat out through the worst of it
If lads selling Ferrero Rocher had Covid, theyâd be really spoiling it.
Nice to see a bit of normality and people socialising this evening.
Not sure where they piss though.
Youâve missed about the last six months of discussion on here, so just to catch you up.
On masks, no thatâs not what Iâm saying at all. I wear a surgical mask if I go to a shop and would recommend the same to anyone else. Iâm saying cloth masks are ineffective and give a false sense of security, and donât prevent people getting infected. So when people assume they are safe walking into a supermarket with a mask on they are not. The evidence supports that, 50% of people who were interviewed by contact tracers said they had no idea how they got infected. In other words people who followed the rules, wore masks, worked from home, etc. How did they get infected? Because the virus is airborne, and a cloth mask will not protect you if you walk into an area indoors where the virus is lingering in the air.
So people should wear surgical masks and I think one of the best things governments could have done is mass produce or pay to have mass produced surgical or preferably N95 masks and issue them free to their populations. It is one of the many things Asian countries have done better than western countries.
Lockdowns vary by state in the US, how strict they were and how long they went on for. Some states were more stringent than Ireland, some roughly the same, and some less. The outcome is the same though, regardless of how long lockdowns were maintained or how strict they were. Here in California (a heavily blue state) lockdown was just as strict as Ireland, were not lifted as much as Ireland in summer, and we had no âmeaningful Christmasâ break, but had an horrendous winter infection and death rate. Why is that if lockdowns work?
Welfare payments are just as good as in Ireland or Europe, I wonât bore you with the details but poverty levels actually fell in 2020. For those unemployed due to Covid, the payment was $600 a week on top of regular unemployment, so roughly $40K a year. A lot of low income workers wouldnât earn 50% of that. On top of that a check for $1200 per person in April of 2020 and another two for $2,000 in Dec/Jan. Small business support has been good.
On your argument that Republican voters caused the level of pandemic in the US, sorry I know you want that to be true but it simply isnât. Is it also Republican voters that caused a similar pandemic in Europe? Add up the populations of continental Europe, and have a look at the data, cases and deaths are roughly the same. Was it all Trump voters? I would also argue with your assertion that lockdowns were highly effective in Ireland, an island nation with a low population density outside Dublin should have done much better surely?
If your assertion about herd immunity is correct, why has Sweden or Florida for that matter not had calamitous death and destruction? The âlockdowns are highly effectiveâ argument falls apart when you actually look at the data, they have not been effective at all. It would have been far better to put all of the effort and resources into protecting the vulnerable, how many lives would have been saved for example if nursing homes and hospitals had been made more secure? More support for the elderly in terms of food deliveries, instead of locking up visitors maybe provide hotel accommodation to people who tested positive, instead of telling them to quarantine at home (with vulnerable family members in many cases). Thereâs lots that could have been done to protect the vulnerable, if it had been the #1 focus.
The narrative that going balls out for herd immunity was the only other alternative is simply a narrative, a lie like a lot of lies that have been fostered by the media. But what we did was worse as it turns out, we instilled maximum fear in the entire population that Covid was going to kill everyone, so they all self isolated for months. Even today, a year into this, 40% of Americans believe that if you get infected you have a 50% chance of being hospitalized (itâs less than 5%). Guess who didnât believe it though, young people who knew by late summer of last year that it presented no threat to them. So when you say how willing the population were to comply, young people stopped complying and donât tell me that didnât happen in Ireland as well, or Europe.
In the absence of an elimination strategy from day 1, I have yet to hear a coherent argument why Swedenâs approach was not on balance a viable one, or Floridaâs. Lockdowns did absolutely nothing to reduce the winter wave of Covid, and I would argue contributed to its severity. I wonât convince you of that obviously.
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Where are people getting infected than? Obviously the home is the #1 location, a family member bringing it home or a visitor, but where did the original family member get infected? Most staff working in shops are young, maybe a lot of them did get infected early on and either didnât have symptoms or mild disease.
How the bejaysus is Paul Reid on the news sporting a tan? Bad image management there Paul
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