Covid-19 Pandemic - The New Hope

[SJ]

Give the dramatics a rest and play the ball. What do you propose instead? Austerity?

Foyler is bang on when talking about how do you get 500k people back to work who have been at home on the PUP for so long. Many will want to but the jobs won’t be there. That recovery will take time, and may need to be incentivised.

There'll be bumpiness for sure but the tap has to be turned down slowly. I don't think things will be nearly as bad as you think -there's a lot of pent up demand.

I see the danger as almost opposite to you - I think we're going to be back to overheating faster than anywhere.

[Rennwagen]

I get the feeling traditional FF or FG voters are livid with the results of the last election, when they "jumped into bed together"
But if they keep giving away free money, who knows and it wouldn't be the first time an election was bought.

[crank_case]

77% of people asked said that the current lockdown was harder from a mental health perspective than the one last April. .

Not going to comment on what "De Gubbiment" is doing or whether it's right or wrong, but I think this worth picking apart at just general regular life level.

I think there's a couple of things at play..

First is fatigue obviously - You can be great at dealing with high stress situations for a short time, but after a while no-one has any adrenaline left.

Second, I think in the first lockdowns, everyone was all "we're in this together", "be kind" and lots of other similar soundbytes but generally actually meaning it. People were cutting each other slack and seemed to finally get a bit of perspective that most us aren't exactly curing cancer, or working on a vaccine. Everyone understood delays and for example, companies prioritizing front line medical organizations like the HSE and NHS. That's gone now as we've normalized, everyone still working is getting pressure to deliver projects, get stuff fixed etc. often with higher demand, less people, but less empathy too. Everyone not working on the other hand is going into deeper financial uncertainty.

It's going to hurt the economy but I think not as bad as you might think in overall terms. It's going to be very uneven. Overall earnings in a lot of countries, and I assume ours, haven't actually dropped as much as you might think. This is because there's an uneveness in who loses their job. The well paying jobs are usually the ones that can be done from home, so average income hasn't really dropped. There is still plenty of consumer money being spent, if anything, supply can't keep up with demand. The people losing their jobs are mainly in the services industries, which were already low paid.

Socially this is very bad of course, because how the economy is doing doesn't really matter all that much on an individual level. There will be lots of people who already on the bottom rung getting a further kick in the teeth from life.

Anyway, I guess what I'm trying to say is whatever your position on various contentious things in this whole mess, it's just a reminder that we still need show as much empathy as possible to each other in these times. Everyones got their own set of pressures to deal with, whether they are working or not.

[Cold]

foyler, good post.

I think there's an interesting thing developing on the back of people not being able to travel. I learnt the other day that high-end restaurants in Stockholm are doing very well and are expanding. Crazy in the depth of a pandemic you'd think. Because the money is being spent locally. Countries full of people with money will benefit from the inability to travel because we're no longer going to Spain "to save money" eg this frankly idiotic obsession with how much a pint costs here and there. Swedish ski resorts are reporting massive amounts of repeat business because people have suddenly found that local facilities are very good. We have all developed this obsession with sitting on airplanes. "88% of people haven't planned a holiday" means 88% of people haven't bought a plane ticket. So flipping what. Go to foyler's world class hotel of the likes that you will not find in Spain in a million years.

Bottom line, in the short term we're going to get a mahoosive bump in local business because all of those of us who usually sit on airplanes now can't or won't or whatever and will spend money locally. And if no-one spends money on travel (which is in reality spending on oil and airplanes made somewhere else) they will have a lot money for having fun.

Global businesses are finding they're saving absolutely insane amounts of money by not sending people all over the place. Once they ditch their real estate it'll be even more savings. Of course someone used to get this money but I think a lot of it translates to oil consumption in reality and obviously that's a total waste of money if you don't sit on oil wells.

[Rennwagen]

I'm sure there must be a comparison somewhere the amount of money spent on holidays/travel in Ireland in 2019 Vs 2020?

That money is being hoarded, personal savings are at all time highs and we are seeing free money, and A state sponsored property bonanza on it's way,
I smell a tiger.

[Flet]

I'd like to think you're on the money and I agree that the offerings and things to do in Ireland genuinely are brilliant but a slight flaw with your logic is that we have a tourism industry that's geared at welcoming about 12m visitors per year. They spend €6bn and the sector employs 200-250k people. A lot of that is based on specific trade that was build up over years, eg. anglers, golfers, bus tours etc. which isn't replaceable 1:1. There is upside, for example I was in Derry and on one of the walking tours on the walls the guide said he'd never seen that sort of tourism from the Republic. And when I was down in Sheep's Head I met people from Newry who had never been south of Dublin and were bewildered by the scenery.

I do think that domestic tourism can bridge some of that gap of 12m visitors and the €6bn spend but last year when it was possible to travel I never felt like places were flying along as they would in a normal tourist season. Some were genuinely hopping - we had two nights in Dungarvan and the place was utterly alive with people - but elsewhere the major cities like Dublin and Belfast were dead quiet, which I suppose is a consequence of the entertainment and arts sector being closed.

An elephant in the room is UK tourism, where nearly 4m visitors pa originate and the CTA and the conclusion of the vaccinations in ROI/NI/GB at the same time could help that a lot with people travelling throughout Britain and Ireland, in fact I'm anticipating a trip to B in the summer sometime.

But I'll tell ya one thing and whatever about a general election, if that godless shower across the water are drinking pints before we are I reckon there'll be another Rising.

[Rennwagen]

Ha, There could be an Act of reunion.

[Roarsbaby]

Ha, There could be an Act of reunion.

A re-united Ireland would have a higher probability IMO and I'm no Shinner

"But I'll tell ya one thing and whatever about a general election, if that godless shower across the water are drinking pints before we are I reckon there'll be another Rising." Pure comedy gold Flet - serious question - are they more Godless than us?

[Mark F]

Latest testing update

938 positive swabs, 5.48% positivity on 17,104 tests.

[Mark F]

[alan b]

It's an actual embarrassment that we can only manage to vaccinate 3 thousand people a day? How is that figure so low

[Mark F]

[fester]

But I'll tell ya one thing and whatever about a general election, if that godless shower across the water are drinking pints before we are I reckon there'll be another Rising.

This alone has the power to bring down the current government and possibly install The Shinners.

[Cold]

Apparently cases need to go below 1,000 a day in the UK for pubs to open which is predicted to happen on April 7th at current trajectory. Maybe we’ll have another Easter Rising in Ireland around then?

[Wheelnut]

... how will we encourage folks back to work post covid now they've had a taste of sucking on the hind tit...

Nothing changes! At the end of WW1 (just over one hundred years ago) the authorities were worried about the same thing. How would they encourage American farm boys to go back to the farms after they had seen Paris? I don't know what the authorities did but somebody wrote a song about it:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VYflT3h6lCQ