The next part of the pandemic will be longer, more confusing and more depressing.
And it will be a disaster for public discourse.
Things will continually change, uncertainty and precarity will reign, and understanding will be complex - more and more people who are ill equipped to deal with this complexity will reach for a reactive simplicity as a crutch.
And belief in crazy conspiracies will grow, much more than it already has.
And NZ will be more isolated than North Korea
Heās a useless cunt. Has anything meaningful been doon to address capacity? Extra beds! Staff hired! More places available on medicine/nursing degrees to increase staff availability in the future! Joe public really needs to stop being an imposition on the health service. FFS.
Thereād be no overcrowding if lads would just stop getting sick
You sound devastated.
Nail on the head. We will see a greater divide in opinions on restrictions but the powers that be will be very cautions, not on the based of the risk of the virus but to cover the poor health system we have and ensure it wonāt get over run. Iām lost as to what the end game is. Imho covid is here to stay. Zero covid isnāt an option and the vaccine isnāt getting rid of it but reducing risk
Why is it that Ireland has more restrictions, higher vaccination levels, and yet has higher infection rates than most of the EU?
We are currently looking at having over 90% of our adult population vaccinated by the end of the week. Itās not going to get much better in terms of vaccines.
Because people like you do what theyāre told.
More testing?
Agree with that. It might get a bit better over the next month or so as teens take it up, but if it is the case that the vaccine diminishes in effectiveness after a year then quite conceivably we might never be in as good a place again as we are now.
Proximity to the UK and too many young people according to Champ.
Exactly, especially after all the test events where they trialled scanning vaccine certs, contact tracing procedures etc ā¦
I would say these ātoken restrictionsā that we have now certainly donāt achieve much. Putting on your mask on the walk to the jacks in a pub, for example, is outright tokenism. Iād say the difference between what we have now and no restrictions whatsoever would be quite small
Without knowing anything on testing rates, I highly doubt it. You think Ireland is testing way more people than other EU countries? Unlikely Iād say. Especially since other countries are using testing as a means to a green pass for hospitality or whatever else.
Iād agree.
Are we perhaps looking for a lower viral load?
It makes sense if the vaccines arenāt worth a shite ā¦
Proximity to the UK strikes me as a spurious reason. But then weāve always blamed foreigners throughout this pandemic. Couldnāt be our own fault.
They donāt seem to want to trust the vaccines. Better wear a rag on your face. Iād be ok with masks if they mandated n95 masks that might do something