Messages

White right-wingers in their echo chamber tend to "lose no sleep", alright.

That would be because they literally cannot comprehend of anything outside of that little echo chamber.

We had and still have a similar phenomenon among a large section of the population in the north of Ireland.

I don't recall him wheeling it out when white right wingers, armed to the teeth with battlefield weaponry, were taking over government buildings in the past month.

No, because he supported those white supremacist thugs, as he supports all white supremacist thugs.

It's the white supremacism, stoopid.

https://twitter.com/AaronBlake/status/1266333918858489856

Aaron Blake
@AaronBlake


12 a.m. Thursday: Trump RTs video saying "the only good Democrat is a dead Democrat."

12:53 a.m. Friday: Trump tweets "when the looting starts, the shooting starts."

Hows the racist face of US politics doing these days?

If this were a US reporter arrested in a foreign country - what would the outcry be like?

https://edition.cnn.com/us/live-news/george-floyd-protest-updates-05-28-20/index.html

The doom mongers, ie. those who have a basic understanding of history or better, should have been listened to.

Fascism is always what Trump has been about and white supremacism is what the Republican party has always been about.

Racism is what America was built on.

This isn't a new departure. This is an inevitable continuum of centuries of racism.

Never believe fascists when they make claims that show themselves in a positive light, because such claims are always lies.

Always believe fascists when they make threats about what they're going to do to others, because they're always telling the truth.

Covid Title-19

Cluxton looks like he's going to struggle to ever win a Leinster title in a year ending in 0.

It's something that has consistently eluded Dublin greats, with 1920 being the sole provincial winning team from the county in such years.

It's unlucky for Dubs when the year ends in 0.

Emily Maitlis has been removed from presenting tonight's edition of Newsnight by the BBC, simply for stating, correctly, that Dominic Cummings broke the lockdown rules.

This seems to be the way things are inexorably going under this Tory government, alright.

[We do not know]

No i am saying keep social distance going in every normal day life things where possible
Walking Shopping Work etc
But my point is life must start moving again for example sport
The common flu can be passed on do we stop everything? The Covid virus is not as deadly as predicted. No where near in fact

The GAA does not exist in isolation. The GAA is part of society. Gaelic football and hurling are amateur sports. In a normal week you have many hundreds, probably thousands of matches up and down the country. If the GAA starts playing again, that means all sports start playing again. More soccer matches take place in an average week than GAA matches. Then there are rugby matches and other sports. There are all kinds of civic social gatherings - educational, organisational, creative.

Every single one is a potential virus-spreading event.

If sport takes place, that sets an example to everybody else - an example that social distancing is not to be taken seriously.

The common flu is a known quantity. We know what it does, we know how to treat it.

We are learning more about Covid-19 everyday, but it is still not a known quantity in the real sense, we still do not have reliable treatments for it. It is a disease our bodies do not recognise. That's why it kills people.

353,000 people have died worldwide from Covid-19 wwith 5.7 million cases, and these are only the recorded figures. The real death figures could well be several times more, the real case figures are likely many times more.

And that's with lockdowns and social distancing. God knows what it would be without it.

This is a deadly virus. There is no room for debate about that. It is a fact.

We do not know how this virus will behave in the future. We hope it goes away, but there's no real evidence to suggest it will. We hope we will have effective treatments, but we currently don't. We hope we will have a vaccine, but that will take a significant length of time to emerge, if it ever does. We have to presume the virus will stick around and that another wave is likely, and if there's another wave, it could well be during the winter. We have to behave in a way that will reduce the spread of it, because if we don't we likely will have a public health catastrophe.

This is about basic morality. We are inconveniencing ourselves in what we hope and expect will be a temporary manner (but for how long we do not know, though it will likely be dependent on adherence to restrictions) to try and protect millions of people. Our policy makers (in some countries some of them, shamefully, do not act in good faith even on a matter of this seriousness - but in most countries they do - in Ireland they have done) are trying to create a situation where some sort of tenuous normality can occur within a framework of reducing the virus. Amateur sport comes near the bottom of priorities in that, and rightly so.

I have had little enough time for John Horan as GAA President, but on this issue he has acted in an examplary manner. He has shown leadership and has demonstrated that the GAA does not exist in isolation from society, and cannot behave as if it does. It is part of society. It cannot operate a pissing section in a swimming pool. It cannot operate a smoking section in an aeroplane.

People arguing the contrary are saying, "ah, it'll probably be grand". Wing and a prayer stuff. There is no evidence to back their rhetoric. That's not how public policy is supposed to work, it's exactly how it is not supposed to work.

There's a chance this virus may not turn out to be as not as catastrophic as feared (though it has already been catastrophic). Of course there's a chance. What chance that that chance will turn out to be the case? Nobody knows. Who operates on chances on such a matter, or advocates we operates on chances? Chancers, that's who. I don't want chancers in charge of policy. We already have a litany of evidence worldwide from contemporary politics and policy making as to why it's a very bad idea to put chancers in charge.

A lot of sense talked in this post and can't disagree with a lot of the first section of the post. However I genuinely don't understand what you think should happen. You say that we don't know about this virus, whether there will be a second wave etc...etc....  (which is all right). But you then go on the somewhat hint at praise for the Irish governments response. So I am left wondering, what you actually think should happen ? Alot of your posts have been in response to people advocating the restart of our games, yet everyone I have seen is advocating it in line with the guidelines set out (with exception to the walking paths), and you call them chancers. So if the government are doing a good job (relatively) and this is all new (therefore the medical and scientific community advising the government are best placed) then surely you should be advocating that we follow the government plan?? Or What do you think should happen?
This is not a dig it's a genuine question. It's all very well to lay out googled stats and a post big long post calling other people chancers but what do you want? What parameters do you think should be laid out before we integrate into whatever the 'new normal' is going to be? What if there is never a vaccine? 
I and others have said we should follow the guidelines which at present say we start football again in July. Personally I say this because I just don't know as I am not an expert so I am following what the experts are saying. So what's your opinion? And if it differs to the experts, why?

I think the government have made mistakes, the really big one being the care homes. Overall I would give them a low pass mark. I think their tone has been good, in practice they've been less impressive. They were slow off the mark back in February/March, everybody was, they simply couldn't believe the magnitude of the problem they were suddenly facing and the measures that would be needed. Their testing and contact tracing strategy claimed similarity to South Korea, but they were nowhere near it, because of a consistent running down of state capacity, not just by the recent Fine Gael governments, but by many governments over several decades. But I guess the cavalier and often disgraceful attitude of certain high profile governments internationally sort of helps the impression one gets of our government Small mercies.

I'm am uneasy at the prospect of sport returning on July 20th, and would prefer a later date, but I uneasily accept it on the proviso that it is still nearly two months away, and on the proviso that all reopening measures are subject to immediate reverse should numbers not continue on their current trajectory. That latter point has to be rammed home at every opportunity - that the recovery in the public health situation is very fragile. If we are down to daily single figures of cases by then, preferably low single figures, I will cautiously accept a tentative restart.

What I strongly object to is the generalised impatient rhetoric and tone of people (again, hello Colm O'Rourke) that the worst is categorically over, that we need "less caution" and it's time to "open things up ta fook". This sort of American style attitude is something that has become increasingly pervasive, particularly across social media platforms, and it has real life consequences, and puts at risk the downward trend of the numbers. Tone is everything. Tone can determine how large numbers of people think, whether they are careless or responsible. For a while now, I've felt that the tone of carelessness has been winning, the first time I heard such a tone was on the Brendan O'Connor radio show on RTE 1 as far back as April 5th. Since then, domestic professional contrarian voices have grown ever louder, and international professional contrarian voices have been deafening. Carelessness is our enemy, caution is our friend.

 


@DMuircheartaigh
· 1h
@DublinAirport What's going on here? Approaching 4 hours now?

https://twitter.com/DublinAirport/status/1265641616787767302

@DublinAirport

Apparently, the pilot is testing his eyesight just to make sure he'll be ok for a transatlantic flight in a day or two. Sorry, that's obviously not the case. It's collecting information for a mapping software company.

No i am saying keep social distance going in every normal day life things where possible
Walking Shopping Work etc
But my point is life must start moving again for example sport
The common flu can be passed on do we stop everything? The Covid virus is not as deadly as predicted. No where near in fact

The GAA does not exist in isolation. The GAA is part of society. Gaelic football and hurling are amateur sports. In a normal week you have many hundreds, probably thousands of matches up and down the country. If the GAA starts playing again, that means all sports start playing again. More soccer matches take place in an average week than GAA matches. Then there are rugby matches and other sports. There are all kinds of civic social gatherings - educational, organisational, creative.

Every single one is a potential virus-spreading event.

If sport takes place, that sets an example to everybody else - an example that social distancing is not to be taken seriously.

The common flu is a known quantity. We know what it does, we know how to treat it.

We are learning more about Covid-19 everyday, but it is still not a known quantity in the real sense, we still do not have reliable treatments for it. It is a disease our bodies do not recognise. That's why it kills people.

353,000 people have died worldwide from Covid-19 wwith 5.7 million cases, and these are only the recorded figures. The real death figures could well be several times more, the real case figures are likely many times more.

And that's with lockdowns and social distancing. God knows what it would be without it.

This is a deadly virus. There is no room for debate about that. It is a fact.

We do not know how this virus will behave in the future. We hope it goes away, but there's no real evidence to suggest it will. We hope we will have effective treatments, but we currently don't. We hope we will have a vaccine, but that will take a significant length of time to emerge, if it ever does. We have to presume the virus will stick around and that another wave is likely, and if there's another wave, it could well be during the winter. We have to behave in a way that will reduce the spread of it, because if we don't we likely will have a public health catastrophe.

This is about basic morality. We are inconveniencing ourselves in what we hope and expect will be a temporary manner (but for how long we do not know, though it will likely be dependent on adherence to restrictions) to try and protect millions of people. Our policy makers (in some countries some of them, shamefully, do not act in good faith even on a matter of this seriousness - but in most countries they do - in Ireland they have done) are trying to create a situation where some sort of tenuous normality can occur within a framework of reducing the virus. Amateur sport comes near the bottom of priorities in that, and rightly so.

I have had little enough time for John Horan as GAA President, but on this issue he has acted in an examplary manner. He has shown leadership and has demonstrated that the GAA does not exist in isolation from society, and cannot behave as if it does. It is part of society. It cannot operate a pissing section in a swimming pool. It cannot operate a smoking section in an aeroplane.

People arguing the contrary are saying, "ah, it'll probably be grand". Wing and a prayer stuff. There is no evidence to back their rhetoric. That's not how public policy is supposed to work, it's exactly how it is not supposed to work.

There's a chance this virus may not turn out to be as not as catastrophic as feared (though it has already been catastrophic). Of course there's a chance. What chance that that chance will turn out to be the case? Nobody knows. Who operates on chances on such a matter, or advocates we operates on chances? Chancers, that's who. I don't want chancers in charge of policy. We already have a litany of evidence worldwide from contemporary politics and policy making as to why it's a very bad idea to put chancers in charge.

Weird shit fit happening in this thread today. A stream of boys not liking any critique of their entitled opinions.


If your opinion is worth a shite you should have no issue with others challenging and dissecting its merits. Then come back and defend it with solid rationale and evidence (hi, Smurfy). That's a discussion, a debate.

Don't just have a wee cry about what you think you're 'entitled' to.

Exhibit A.

I will no longer engage in debate here or anywhere with anyone who appears unnecessarily confrontational or aggressive, as talk like "If your opinion is worth a shite" and the like suggests. On the other hand, if you are willing to debate on civil terms, game on.

Playing a fake victim is a great right-wing culture war trick.

If you're prescribed a course of antibiotics, say for a severe sore throat, do you not bother completing the course when you start to see an improvement in your condition?

Answers please.

There are people here who are literally suggesting the very thing that spreads the virus - lack of social distancing.

Why should anybody who suggests we do the very thing that could easily enable another large wave of the virus be taken seriously?

Answers please.

That's without even mentioning the worldwide nature of this crisis.

Ireland does not exist in isolation.

Accusing people who take restrictions on movement to stop a pandemic seriously of "wanting millions to die" or "wanting society to burn to the ground" or "not wanting life to return to what it was" are classic right-wing culture war "talking points".

Such "talking points" are a construction of fake victimhood, a substitute for thinking, and an admission of intellectual bankruptcy.

[Hypothetical scenario, absolutely no cases by next November for a sustained period of time , let's say three weeks , would that suffice ?]

At what point is there the possibility of a complete return to normal not the "new normal "?

I've asked this a few time's now in conversation and yet to receive any decent feedback other than "oh that might never happen for many years "

Hypothetical scenario, absolutely no cases by next November for a sustained period of time , let's say three weeks , would that suffice ?

That's the scenario we want to get to.

That's the question we want to be able to ask.

Which is why what happens over the next few weeks and months is crucial.

But we can't ask that question yet, because we aren't in that situation.

And if we do what the likes of Colm O'Rourke want, we're unlikely to any time soon get to the scenario where we can  reasonably can ask that question.

The Foot and Mouth outbreak in UK started around February 2001. The final case was on September 30th. The numbers now are going in the right direction. If we keep up that direction of travel, we might just be able to start asking this question by September 30th or thereabouts. But that's always subject to change.

When you're given antibiotics, there's a reason you're told to complete the course, not abandon it when you start to see an improvement.

Colm O'Rourke is the GAA's answer to Dominic Cummings. With all the same arrogance and entitlement dripping off him.

Why because he disagrees with your thought process.

I think he generally makes a lot of sense.

No, because Colm knows SFA about virology or epidemiology and yet he's telling everybody we need "less caution".

I don't think I need to explain any further why Colm is an idiot, it's self-evident on the basis of those comments, and indeed the entirety of what he has said during this entire crisis.

The pure selfishness and rejection of expertise on his part is exactly what you hope not to see from an educator.