“The whole thing was baffling, tbh.”
Viewers tuning in to last night’s Claire Byrne Live on RTÉ were baffled after a segment featuring a “Covid time capsule”
During the controversial segment, a biohazard-themed box was brought out to “mark the moment”.
The time capsule intended to serve as “’Something that will remind (viewers) of the pandemic and the times we’ve all been through as a country.”
The show said: “Some of these items our guests may not like to see for a while.”
Viewers expressed their confusion about the segment on social media, especially given that the pandemic isn’t over.
One Twitter user wrote: “Why are we acting as if it’s all over?”
Others felt that the segment was out of touch, given the amount of grief that so many people have experienced in the last two years.
On social media user tweeted: “Not one item recognizing the grief of so many families. Covid and all the non Covid families alone in their pain. Not one item recognizing the frontline trauma endured by healthcare workers…”
Another person wrote: “It’s not over just because Government has lifted restrictions. We may be in the eye of the storm.”
The segment follows the lifting of the majority of Covid-19 restrictions by the Irish government. However, Minister for Health Stephen Donnelly warned yesterday that we may see more variants of the virus in the coming months.
On RTE’s This Week, Minister Donnelly said: “The infectious disease experts community that I’m speaking to, and the virologists, say, look, we could have more variants of concern.
“We could have mutations of Omicron, that may be more severe, so obviously we have to keep an eye on that.”
