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https://www.irishtimes.com/news/ireland ... -1.4371810

Doesn't look good. It will be interesting to see if their Government accepts the Health Committee's recommendations.
There is an interesting and comprehensive "what it means" graphic at the bottom of the article.

It looks a bit knee-jerk to go from two areas at Level 3 and all the rest at Level 2 to the whole country at Level 5. It makes it even more strange when over a quarter of the new cases are in Dublin alone.

I wonder if there is a fear of disobedience if they are seen to be "picking" on one area, as is nearly the case in Madrid, Paris and Berlin. It has been hinted at for some places in the North in the UK.

I think this is what's been mooted as a "circuit breaker"; using a sledgehammer to try to break the cycle of rapidly increasing cases.

It will be interesting to see what happens over here, given that we can now see cases have been spiralling out of control.
And as an aside, I can't help wondering if the UK Government's attempts to explain the rise by claiming "technical issues" in reporting daily numbers was genuine or a bit of political obfuscation ....

I am afraid I'm becoming a bit sceptical about all this.
Am I the only one to notice that the focus has turned away from deaths to the number of infections? At it's peak Covid was killing 1,000 people a day and now it is circa 50. I really think that we are massively over reacting now. Boris just keeps doubling down on this particular mistake and it is going to come back to bite him.
People both here and in the RoI will not be overly pleased at news like the government might kindly allow us to have Christmas day with the family.
We aren't made like that and any such order will be widely ignored and ridiculed, and rightly so.

There has been significant resistance to a vaccine. I wonder if this focus on cases is being done to force the hand on vaccinations? i.e. Don't have a vaccine, no Christmas. Have a vaccine, go for it.

I have been thinking for a while now that it is coercion rather than actually functional policy.

Not helped by the press salivating at numbers like 12,000 and 15,000. When the reality is.

Updates
7,982 new cases and 33 new deaths in the United Kingdom. Note from the UK Government: "An issue was identified overnight on Friday 2 October in the automated process that transfers positive cases data to PHE. It has now been resolved. The cases by publish date for 3 and 4 October include 15,841 additional cases with specimen dates between 25 September and 2 October — they are therefore artificially high for England and the UK." Worldometer has distributed over the historical time series the backlogged cases, based on the information provided [source] [source]
Updates
7,070 new cases and 49 new deaths in the United Kingdom. NOTE: the 12,871 cases reported today included a backlog, which Worldometer has redistributed historically based on the testing date information provided for the 10,806 cases reported by England today and the official note provided by the UK Government: "Due to a technical issue, which has now been resolved, there has been a delay in publishing a number of COVID-19 cases to the dashboard in England. This means the total reported over the coming days will include some additional cases from the period between 24 September and 1 October, increasing the number of cases reported." [source]

We cross posted Suff on the other thread!
There is big resistance to the vaccine imo.

Mrs S was one of them. Now, realising just how difficult it is going to be without the vaccine, she's bemoaning the fact that it is going to be difficult to get it in France. Total about face when I explained the likely facts of life around ability to move freely.

Personally I never take the flu vaccine and wouldn't have this one if it wasn't absolutely necessary. Given the likely restrictions if I don't, I'll have it.

I was in a rapid response unit in the UK before I left the Army. I recon they gave me enough vaccines to last me for a lifetime...

Mind you when I last went for a Tetanus booster they forced me to have the triple. I had nausea for 3 months afterwards. So I have a good reason for avoiding the muck they want to push into me. I was fully inoculated for the other two but had to take them again because they "only" had the triple. They tried very hard to dissuade me from taking the shot, clearly because they knew how I would react having been fully inoculated for the other two. They even told me that Tetanus would not stop and active infection (something I have been told all my life it will). I insisted. It killed the infection.

Even after all of the above, if having a bit of paper saying they vaccinated me means the difference between being able to move freely and not, I'll take it and just move on.