Nailed it!
I miss all that…
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Not just a Dublin thing, used out west by us culchies too (along with “scatter” as a plural). Have heard it in Australia too
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Never heard Scatter before.
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Scatter as a noun means “a small collection” . But to say “a right scatter” conveys the same meaning as “a shower”
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The good news: The overall positivity rate in ny is under 10%
The bad news: …the rate in western ny is in between 17 to 25%.
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So I have a question for you since you live in Japan. My cousin moved to Japan in the early 2000s and lives there with his husband. He most definitely has gotten his vaccine, leans heavily to the left, and one of the things he said to me was that you simply cannot trust the numbers coming out of Japan with regards to cases and infections and vaccination rates. (This was earlier in the pandemic, I can’t speak for now.) What he said was there is a heavy culture of “appearances” and that much of this pandemic the government numbers have been incorrect. He cited the quite anecdotal part of when his prefecture had incredibly low numbers, but the school where he taught at had more teachers absent sick than present, and that total number of people was triple the cases listed for the prefecture. His husband apparently had similar things happen at his workplace.
Now I know this is anecdotal, but as my cousin said, Japan’s numbers are more “aspirational” than “factual” (at least last year mid summer when I last talked to him.) That they are meant to be a kind of “tool” to get people to see “Okay look, everyone’s getting vaccinated and look at our low numbers because of it” and not reflecting reality because reality gives a worse appearance.
Do you think my cousin has a good read of things, or are those anecdotes simply just anecdotes that got spread around? Just curious. We hear of things like Florida fudging numbers, there’s been allegations China is too, Brazil definitely is, many other states are being picky about it, I’m just wondering if Japan was as well at one point. Especially considering the olympics.
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Attenuation, I’ve found from a micro biochemist friend of mine, isn’t even supported in papers or even suggested in them. It’s just a made up belief structure that somehow has gotten traction in the media. There’s not only no scientific axiom for it, the evidence that does exist suggests otherwise.
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Oh yeah, but don’t you live in the states now? Aren’t you, much like me, an American? Or are I confuzed? Haven’t you become one of the many in the Irish diaspora we hear so much about since President Robinson?
The thinking is probably that citizens are sick of lockdowns (though I don’t know if there has been unrest like in other EU countries over lockdowns and mandates?) and it’s an attempt to give a measure of relief on that front?
Good to hear! If things go really tits up here in the next couple of years, Ireland seems like a good target for an escape hatch for me and mine… English speaking, part of the EU, and a beautiful place, so…
You lucked out there. It probably helps that a lot of folks who probably are conservative, are probably also Catholic, and Pope Francis has been pretty strong on the issue of vaccines being a necessary social good.
Much like @KathyPartdeux… I’ve never heard that before, so probably a Dublin special!
Thanks for the perspective!
If so, it’s probably a religious objection, same as people who oppose it here.
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Often a good way to get a sense of the accuracy of the numbers is to compare a country’s reported covid deaths with the total estimated “excess deaths” based on past years’ mortality numbers. In some countries they’re not terribly far off from each other, and in others (China being a prime example) the numbers diverge significantly.
Per this article there’s definitely a disconnect in Japan but the extent of the disconnect depends on whose model you’re using.
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You forgot the most important part: singing along. Singing is basically the single most dangerous activity in this pandemic.
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Shower is a thing over here in Scotland, too. If you want to kick the phrase up a notch, you’d specify exactly what the shower is composed of. e.g. “A right shower of bastards.”
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Hm. WDKS.
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I’m not convinced this will work, but FWIW:
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WDKE2FO?
(“We Do Know Enough To Freak Out”)
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Seriously, freaking out is not helping. I speak from experience. I did more harm with freaking out than I could otherwise have caused, I reckon. And I hurt myself by it, being now viewed as someone who freaks out.
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Yes, I’ve been here over 25 years now, so one of the diaspora. But home will always be home!
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It’s based on the idea that viruses that survive in the long term are ones that don’t kill off all their hosts, because those will go extinct along with them. That obviously leaves another possible outcome in the short term that said hosts might do well to worry about. 
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