Deputy Chief Medical Officer, Department of Health, Dr Ronan Glynn

“The plan is to proceed very cautiously on the basis of the data that’s in front of us, for as long as it takes. I’m hopeful that as we move into June, as those who have been most vulnerable are fully vaccinated and as we roll out millions of doses of vaccine to adults, that we’ll be in a far, far brighter and better position than we are at the moment.”

Dr Ronan Glynn last night.

This afternoon.

Cork city.

“We do understand and get it that people are fed up…

“I am not going to speculate, but we will give people clear indications in advance of April 5th as to how we see April panning out and I don’t believe in speculating beyond that.”

Taoiseach Micheal Martin.

Anyone?

Taoiseach refuses to speculate on relaxing restrictions (RTÉ)

RollingNews

Sponsored Link

32 thoughts on “How Long?

  1. frank

    3 of my neighbours arrived back on Saturday from their month long holiday in a south American red listed country. Not only are they not quarantined or isolating they are living with 10 other individuals in a house share. 2 of whom are au pairs another 3 are food delivery cyclists. Another works in a burger place and another one and I kid you not works for an elderly home care provider.

    And yet I can’t go 5k to visit my brother and elderly parents have been been living in terror for a year now. This is a pile of steaming crap

    1. Dr.Fart

      this is why people are “fed up” as Martin says.. because we have been following the rules and doing what we can, while on the other hand the government allow an environment for this kind of thing to happen. that keeps the numbers high, and then they tell us we aren’t being responsible enough.

    2. Cian

      What do you mean?
      If they came from a red-listed country they must quarantine for 2 weeks. It’s the law. (see S.I. No. 44/2021)

      They may be choosing not to – but they are breaking the law.

      Similarly you can choose to go visit your brother and elderly parents – and break the law too.

      1. wearnicehats

        Ahh Cian rises from his bath of disinfectant, dons his hazmat suit and sits down to spread the usual doom and gloom. You should get a job with RTE. You could give George Lee’s missus a break and take over cleaning the little stain of excitement from the front of his trousers after every episode of six-one.

        When would you be happy exactly? What’s the cut-off?

        1. Darren

          Haha I like that response. Sound mind

          Also that stain if excitement rw George Lee .. it’s dribble

  2. wearnicehats

    All this stuff has become an irrelevance now. You only need to go outside today. No-one cares anymore. Sure there’s the masks and the queing blah blah blah but nope. Parks are packed, playgrounds are packed, the traffic’s hectic.

    The lads have lost the dressing room now. I know amongst my peers there’s just a quiet ignoring of it all now. A – good bit younger – mate of mine just popped up to Northern Ireland, where he’s from, and got the jab. In a leisure centre. in 5 minutes. They had 8 vaccination stations on the go at once. Got the AZ too – he seems to still be walking around ok. Smugly, I might add. Currently I’m looking at October, maybe November? He’s planning a holiday in July with his vaccine passport. The government, those tiresome barstewards in NPHET and Claire Byrne can spout all they like but, for the life of me, I don’t know a single person who’s listening any more.

    1. Micko

      Absolutely – people are done.

      Jan 8th we hit the peak – over 8000 cases that day.

      Over two months later, we’re now down to a few hundred a day and mostly under 40 year olds. … but same rhetoric from the government.

      Over the last 5 days, 3 of the days have had zero deaths.

      But Ronan is still giving it the ‘Careful Now’

      Paddyland

      1. Nigel

        I’d say people want to be sure all that effort isn’t for nothing and doesnl’t get wasted by openeing back up too soon.

      2. Cian

        It’s a very contagious virus. We’re at about 500/day for the last week;

        BUT we went from 500 positive tests a day on December 20th to 1,000 eight days later; to 2,000 six days later; to 4000 four days later!

        (this was followed by a thousand deaths in January and another thousand in February)

        THAT is why they need to be careful.

        1. Micko

          If we stay at 500 cases a day do we stay locked down forever then?

          Like, say we hit June and we’re still at 500 cases and on most days no one dies – do we stay locked down?

          At what point do we accept that a certain number of people will die from Covid.

          Same as every other disease.

          1. Cian

            I honestly don’t know.

            If we hadn’t opened up at Christmas that might have saved 1000 lives. Was our Christmas with family and friends worth 1000 lives?

            We can open up and risk another wave and another 2000+ lives cut short.

            Or stay locked down for Spring, open up in Summer, and with vaccinations be clear by the Autumn. (with an unknown lockdown death-count and society hit)

        2. E'Matty

          as long as they keep testing away there will be cases for the foreseeable future. Even post vaccination, there will still be cases. Cases are utterly irrelevant if the person does not go on to develop Covid. We’ll be in lockdown forever at this rate.

          1. Micko

            Exactly, cases are irrelevant really.

            Myself my wife and seven of my friends hardly knew we had Covid.

            My friends 86 year old Mum did end up in hospital though. She’s grand now though thankfully.

            I and my “covid mates” are all in our early 40’s

            I know that some people aren’t as lucky, but we have vaccines now. So things are different.

            If you’re concerned about dying then stay indoors and wait for the vaccine

            That seems like a compromise to me.

        1. wearnicehats

          The whole opening up for Christmas thing is total scaremongering too. I don’t believe that people lost their minds at Christmas, any more than they would have done anyway. The massive rise in cases was essentially due to massively increased testing. Sure there was an increase in deaths but a relatively small one compared to the number of people who would normally drop in December and January anyway –

          we CANNOT keep living like this – you might as well BE dead.

          Ireland has seen a miniscule death rate – way way below the need for this imprisonment. Anyway. I don’t agree with these anti-lockdown rallies. They’re not needed anymore, they’re just giving NPHET the excuses they need – the silent rebellion is well underway.

    2. Dr.Fart

      very hard to listen to them alright, especially when they keep blaming us, while the only action they take is “stay at home” while letting foreign travel pass freely in and out of the place. “stay the course” they tell us, while simutaneously letting the course turn to sh!7

      1. Micko

        Indeed,

        Don’t forget all the Irish people who can come and go as they please.

        The government types, the medi-celebs, all popping into RTE whenever they like (with perfect hair too) the senior civil servants, etc – all those guys.

        No travel restrictions on those people, all still on full wages, saving a fortune – while other people try to pay a mortgage and look after their kids on €350 quid a week.

        We’re creating an even greater divide between the rich and poor.

        Wait till the banks come looking for their money. Oh man – it’ll be a “poo show” ;)

  3. Nigel

    And there was great weeping and gnashing of teeth
    and the cold darknes of early dawn was pierced by a cry
    FECK’S SAKE

  4. Gavin

    “…I am not going to speculate, but we will give people clear indications in advance of April 5th…” in other words we haven’t a clue what we are at. Surely if we reach a certain number of people vaccinated then that can be a marker for when we reopen things to varying levels of degrees…This, we haven’t a clue, and if the wind changes that might affect things, just doesn’t wash.

  5. MoRhustyDilis

    Ahhh yes the eternal search for zero virus in a world full of viruses. Keep on leading the people with the same rhetoric and the exploitation of figures and other compositional techniques.
    And the people are more than willing to be lead down a dark road with zero end in sight. And mock those who speak up.
    I’ll wager that they already know what their ‘plan’ (I use this word very loosely!) is and this once free state will be in restrictions until August.

  6. GiggidyGoo

    The Half-and-half Taoiseach.
    I hope the Corkonians are happy with what they got with the 6th count Taoiseach

  7. Redundant Proofreaders Society

    The weakest leader (or indeed, boss) is the one that answers your question with a vague date in the future when they ‘hope to’ try and answer your question.

    Who voted for this guy?

    1. MoRhustyDilis

      And not a peep from egghead Donnelly. Surprised not surprised. These school teachers are in way over their minor qualifications. They wouldn’t last 2 week in the private sector.
      How will they think that they will be free to move around in public or after politics without being hounded and hurled abuse on the streets after this?
      I for one commit to approaching each and every one culpable that I see and let them know what they are and what they have done.

  8. Termagant

    The problem to me is that the leader of our country shouldn’t be speculating on what’s going to happen when we hit the next deadline. If there was any wherewithal whatsoever among the people in charge of the country there would be a system, and he could say “On April 5, if the numbers are X, and our vaccinations are at Y, we will reduce Z restriction. If they’re this other way, we’ll do this other thing. A third way, another course of action will be taken”. But there isn’t a plan of any kind, more than a year into this and the strategy has never moved past waiting and seeing, so we’ve got the man controlling our fates shrugging his shoulders and refusing to be led on what he thinks might happen in 2 weeks time.

    You can’t expect people to continue complying with severe restrictions on a completely indefinite basis. It’s simply not workable. No attempt has been made to manage hearts and minds through this, they’ve just said “you’ll just have to put up with it” without any regard as to whether we can or will.

  9. wearnicehats

    REG: Right. Now, uh, item four: attainment of world supremacy within the next five years. Uh, Francis, you’ve been doing some work on this.

    FRANCIS: Yeah. Thank you, Reg. Well, quite frankly, siblings, I think five years is optimistic, unless we can smash the Roman empire within the next twelve months.

    REG: Twelve months?

    FRANCIS: Yeah, twelve months. And, let’s face it. As empires go, this is the big one, so we’ve got to get up off our ar$es and stop just talking about it!

    COMMANDOS: Hear! Hear!

    LORETTA: I agree. It’s action that counts, not words, and we need action now.

    COMMANDOS: Hear! Hear!

    REG: You’re right. We could sit around here all day talking, passing resolutions, making clever speeches. It’s not going to shift one Roman soldier!

    FRANCIS: So, let’s just stop gabbing on about it. It’s completely pointless and it’s getting us nowhere!

Comments are closed.

Sponsored Link
Broadsheet.ie