What happens to the virus if people dont mix normally? What are the implications for the immune systems ability to fight this virus, or viruses that will inevitable come along in the future?
Numbers are below 2,000 for the first time since New Yearâs Day
The net number in hospital decreased by 26 overnight
There are two less people in ICUs
Weâre moving slowly in the right direction. Stay the course. Stay safe.
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This could be solved in two weeks.
Simply fine everyone who breaks regulations and name them publicly.
Anyone operating a shebeen or gathering whatever gets an additional automatic 10k fine and seize property to satisfy that of they try to weasel out of paying it.
Mandatory hotel two week lock down for all entrants, Irish or otherwise at their expense.
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And what happens after the 2 weeks?
Every time weâve opened up and had âsocially distancedâ meet ups, what has happened?
Shebeens are closed currently so it might be the time to strike with such a strategy.
So now we are down to (or back to) what you consider preferable on the basis of opinion? And you broach waffle⌠My god. The mind boggles.
I will let you go with a few emphatically non waffly counter observations:
1 No one, in any society not a dictatorship, has absolute liberty (and only a highly limited cohort, and perhaps only one person, has such liberty in a dictatorship). There is, ordinary way of things, no absolute liberty. This truth is there in the obvious ways (I cannot assault yer man because I dislike him for jilting my sister) but likewise in less obvious ways (we can drive faster on motorways than on middling roads and we cannot drive under the influence of much alcohol). Governments are there, among other reasons, to set such limits.
2 The vast majority of people consider it right to prohibit drink driving due to the category of âriskâ. A drunk driver is not merely a risk to himself but also to others. Again, while there is no law about being intoxicated in a private dwelling, there is a prohibition on intoxication in a public space. Again, there is no absolute liberty â because of risk.
3 Philosophers distinguish between ânecessaryâ and âcontingentâ truths. âStanley is a widowerâ involves the necessary truth that he once married a partner who died. âStanley married in 1987â is a contingent truth about an event in 1987.
4 The concept of âherd immunityâ â on which you and others are so set â involves a necessary truth. This particular truth bears on risk. The âherd immunityâ concept necessarily involves people passing the virus to people who in turn pass the virus to other people. No transfers, no herd immunity down the line. The concept is necessarily tied to this loop.
5 Bears on risk? Yes. What allows you to accept risk on my behalf or upon anyone elseâs behalf? How are you abrogating this right to yourself? On what basis? That your social life is inconvenienced? Is that it, in the phrase?
6 To repeat: why should you be allowed to accept risk on someone elseâs behalf? A drunk driver is not allowed, legally, to act in this fashion. And we are only a difference in degree rather than in kind, in this area, from lockdown protocols. The political philosophy involved would be cognate. You can accept risk, in private, for yourself â but not for others.
7 Why? Because the state has an equal duty of care to all its citizens. A signal part of this care is not allowing someone to accept risk on someone elseâs behalf without their consent. Herd immunity, necessarily, involves this abrogation of risk.
8 A societyâs sinews tauten at a time of crisis. Tough times, not easy times, define a societyâs deepest strengths or weaknesses.
9 A 26 year old obese woman with underlying conditions is as entitled to the same care in principle from the state as a 26 year old woman fit for the Olympics. If this care is not duly given, we have established a form of apartheid in society. Some people will forever know afterwards â and so will people born later with similar difficulties, through the vectors of social memory â they are effectively a second class citizen, there on sufferance for the moment but disposable once the next crisis arrives.
10 Do we want a society striated by pandemic-derived apartheid?
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I honestly donât know, Iâm interested to find out just how minimalist anybody would suggest restrictions go,
And the idea of socially distanced pints isnât normality, and it didnât work before Christmas, grand at the start of the night but you know the wayâŚ
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Numbers get to a level where hospitals arenât overwhelmed and businesses and schools can open? You have to live with it at a manageable level, none of this zero covid nonsense
There was a massive cluster around these parts with a shit load of cases coming out of a pub that allowed a big celebration go on week before Xmas. Same down in wexford. If everyone applied the rules strictly might be some chance but its clear plenty publicans didnât do that
Have you data to back that up? So community transmission is coming from Hospitals & Nursing Homes?
News to me I must admit
Iâd reframe the question @Malarkey. If this was forever and there was no vaccine would you accept it as the only way.
If it happened in 1998 would we have locked down. Society was more or less same then absent social media and the Internet.
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I know two people who are struggling with it in hospital. Both picked it up in hospital. Youâd imagine 9 months later this should not be happening ?
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It definitely shouldnât still be happening
Two years out of school is creating it for the 4 and 5 year olds from a deprived areas.
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You see, people like you love this Mad Max âforeverâ stuff. I do not live in that world. I live in a grey area with an awful lot of hard choices. And I err on the side of pragmatic caution, because caution does least irrevocable damage.
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What Iâd like to know is what happens if the continual mutation of the virus renders vaccine efficacy redundant? What then? Say we get to June. Gradually easing of restrictions, cases increase through Autumn. 1m people vaccinated against the Sars-Cov-v2 variant. What happens if entire population are exposed again. Perhaps those that have contracted the virus already may have stronger immunity to withstand new variants. Do we lockdown indefinitely? Sooner or later the conversation surely becomes about tradeoffs. In such a scenario will there be any contingency planning to increase ICU beds, have a recruitment drive for healthcare workers.
And âstaying openâ in Christmas Eve would have helped those youngsters?
Take a breath and have a think.
There are more straw men here than on Guy Fawkes Night.
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Presumably the Taoiseach wants extremely low Covid and as the ZeroCovid lads would say apparently it doesnât mean no Covid, only extremely low Covid.
So is this just an argument over branding?
Forever. 2 years. 3 years. 4 years.
How long would you accept a lockdown?
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