On a boat as a wedding present like with the grey squirrel back in the day.
Exactly. There is no evidence that any of the variants that have emerged are any more dangerous in terms of lethality than the original strain and all the evidence says vaccination works to prevent serious illness against all of them. Once the most vulnerable groups are vaccinated, not alone should MHQ be dropped but most restrictions should be dropped. I would say Ireland is now at that point.
Aiming for zero Covid is a pipe dream, it would be like aiming for zero flu or zero colds. The disease is now endemic pretty much everywhere, it will ebb and flow for years if not decades, and we have to either choose to live with it or stay in hibernation forever. If the risk from variants are worth shutting down society now, they will be worth keeping it shut for decades.
Even though you are a bit of a leftie itâs good to see you adopt a sensible approach on this, but itâs really exposing the far left as complete nutters who wonât rest until they get their totalitarian utopia. Hopefully itâll be a long wait, but if the last year demonstrates anything it shows how powerful propaganda can be in convincing people of blatantly false narratives.
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Holohan is some operator.
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I genuinely donât see any issue with a travel ban. There should have been a travel ban at Christmas too and if there was the last six months or so wouldnât have been as torturous.
I think if we open the whole country up the people living in the country should be allowed the freedom for a few weeks.
By enforcing quarantine/banning travel you are just playing it safe a little bit for fear the worst happens and the vaccines fail or a new variant occurs. Like itâs only for another 3 or 4 months. I really donât see the big issue at all. Australia have a quarantine, no vaccine and have been living normally for 10 months. Iâd happily swap that for the mess weâve endured.
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The Indian variant and the Yorkshire variant are about to become the dominant strain in Ireland
Iâd hope not but Iâd genuinely lean towards travel/quarantine for four more months than another lock down of sorts in September.
The worry index had taken a serious dip
Yes, amazingly enough I have heard of the vaccines. Despite the vaccine programme ramping up, relatively few people are currently vaccinated. Which means that a highly transmissible variant rampaging through the population can still cause a lot of problems. It would be rather foolish to dismiss this threat. Youâd think that after being burned three times already, everybody would be a bit wiser that caution is sensible and bravado is not, but I suppose that was a bit much to hope for in this instant gratification society.
Ah here.
A lot of them rather badly.
The assumption should be that B.1.617.2 has the potential to do significant damage, especially with 3.5 million people or thereabouts unvaccinated. In an environment with uncontrolled spread, I canât see why anybody would think it doesnât the potential to do so.
Your assumption is that we should dismiss expertise on this matter. Itâs your right to hold that opinion.
We donât have an environment with uncontrolled spread.
Again, which EU countries are riddled B.blahdyblah?
And finally, MHQ wasnât introduced based on expert advice, it was introduced as a political reaction. No one in government thinks it makes us safer.
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How? Please explain. We have had 400-500 cases daily for the last 6 weeks or so with 75-80% of them being in people under 45. Hospital numbers have fallen albeit plauteauting around the 100 mark over the last 2 weeks or so. Proof that vaccines are working in my opinion and that those that are being infected are in the main the younger demographic of our society that are not going to place a strain on our health service.
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George Lee absolutely buzzing at Holohans comments today.
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The problem is we could have. If, say, by the time we have 2 million people vaccinated - which means 3 million would be unvaccinated - we have a situation where society is opened pretty much fully, and foreign travel is completely liberalised, that would be a mass spread environment. I donât know how anybody can say otherwise.
A quick search brings up the following results for latest daily Covid deaths in Europe:
France 146
Germany 234
Italy 164
Spain 66
Turkey 233
Sweden 38
Belgium 26
The US is still averaging around 579 Covid deaths per day in the past week.
These figures are very far from nothing. They are still very serious figures.
For those last six weeks weâve still had Level 5 lockdown. Vaccines work. Vaccines also take time to roll out. If we were to start hitting, say, 3-4k cases per day, and that is certainly possible, that is a problem and anybody who doesnât think so is living in cuckoo land.
We donât have a mass spread environment. Youâre comparing apples with oranges in order to justify a nonsensical MHQ system. Youâve also dropped the variant rationale. The system as it currently exists is a nonsense. Even if your aim is zero covid, itâs a nonsense.
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Even if we did you are contradicting yourself as you said vaccines work ergo if we hit 3-4K cases a day they are going to be in the younger demographic so will not put pressure on our health service.
We havenât had a mass spread environment up to now. Thatâs the point. But weâve just opened up non-essential retail, so we could well have. I think it was too soon to do this, I think we should have waited at least another six weeks. MHQ is at least some sort of brake that will somewhat help things, even if on its own it cannot be expected to do the job. The UK has MHQ and theyâre now doing the best of any country in Europe, though they are obviously helped by the faster vaccine roll out. Thereâs a reason they brought it in while rolling out the vaccine. Because they want to be rid of Covid.
I donât believe in pouring petrol on a fire. Do you?
This is going to be a nonstop story for months as geeks discover new variants. Iâd say theyâre on their last legs in the U.K. with the variant stuff after the Indian scary earlier this week was a damp squib. Theyâll get another couple out of Ireland. Holohan; âIâm genuinely concernedâ. Genuinely this time.
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Tomas Ryan says you can give babies autism through long Covid.
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