Read on Twitter
I'm seeing a lot of 'who could have known' what would come of the decision to open pubs as restaurants at a high incidence rate. It was all too predictable, indeed even I managed to predict 1500 cases a day before NYE (on Dec 5) & possibly higher. And the collapse of tracing
In fact it was so predictable that on Nov 23rd as it became clear the lobbyists were pushing the government into a decision that was a disaster I was quite demoralised. The Nov30 post specially referenced risk takers who would have huge number of contacts based on past behaviour
This Nov 28 thread on the EY report point out that this report which the government had commissioned to give them the answers they wanted had in fact warned that opening restaurants was a high risk activity https://twitter.com/andrewflood/status/1332674434595958786?s=20
This short Nov 27 thread points to the exact problem and ends wondering "just how much of a sacrifice the government have imposed on us for their friends in the restaurant trade." https://twitter.com/andrewflood/status/1332439040629616640
Another aspect of 'yes this was predicted' is in frustration I set a 'remind me' tweet when PL came out pushing the government line with the entirely rubbish claim that risking several 100 cases a day was acceptable because the virus was magically 'less dangerous'
This from 28 Nov specifically points out that if we opened at 300 (that number looked likely then) we'd have 1200 cases by xmas day, we had 1296 on the 26th. I regret presuming R wouldn't go above 2 as seems to have happened later https://twitter.com/andrewflood/status/1332691217172357124?s=20
I missed this at the time but when the CMO rightly warned people that restaurants were not safe the demand from the industry & Fianna FĂĄil was that he should be silenced and not even allowed tweet without advance clearance. ânobody told usâ indeed. https://www.irishmirror.ie/news/irish-news/politics/hospitality-chief-slams-dr-tony-23202177
It appearâs the government has learned a lesson, if they put the âopen the pubs & restaurantsâ crew onto NPHET then presumably NPHET will then be less likely to warn against premature openings in future ensuring future âno one told usâ claims are more credible
As far back as August they were warned how risky opening restaurants and pubs was from international evidence including this bit of then hindsight âIf I could go back and redo anything, it probably would have been to slow down the opening of bars" https://www.irishtimes.com/news/ireland/irish-news/revealed-the-international-evidence-nphet-relied-on-to-keep-pubs-closed-1.4324174?mode=amp
The ISAG projection of 4500 on Jan 6th is quite close to the 5,6,7th sum(swab numbers - 10%)/3 for that date https://twitter.com/TJRyan_77/status/1347537960800030720?s=20
The Restaurant Association (RAI) was referenced in 100s of Covid articles in both major papers but @ISAGCOVID19 which did warn only appeared 1 for every 665 times the RAI got into The Irish Times & 1 for every 226 RAI was in the Independent.
