Coronavirus: Better Call Sol - CORONAMANIA (18 Viewers)

[dudley]

9 more weeks of this shit.

How could that be less economically cripping than dropping a fortnights worth of food and some jazz mags to everyone's house for a 14 day stay at home order. Eliminate the fecker....

 

[taubstumm]

gf’s mother got her first vaccine dose yesterday

 

[Lili Marlene]

I do actually find David Quinn occasionally insightful with his twitter criticisms but i also never understand why Mr. Catholic Ireland is so beholden to big business and pushing a protestant work ethic on everyone.

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He's basically a US style prosperity gospel guy half the time, still fighting the cold war in his head on behalf of America.

 

[Cormcolash]

9 more weeks of this shit.

How could that be less economically cripping than dropping a fortnights worth of food and some jazz mags to everyone's house for a 14 day stay at home order. Eliminate the fecker....

How could everything over the last year be less economically crippling than shutting down airports in Feb/March last year, requiring quarantine for any flights that were happening, and having a full lockdown until the end of last June to get rid of what small amounts of the virus are in the country?

It's not about whether it's good economically or not, it's just about where the government ministers are getting their brown envelopes from

 

[magicbastarder]

seriously though, can you imagine we'd asked arlene to do the same, without the rest of the UK following suit. we can't shut our borders unless NI do too.

 

[shitepipe]

How could everything over the last year be less economically crippling than shutting down airports in Feb/March last year, requiring quarantine for any flights that were happening, and having a full lockdown until the end of last June to get rid of what small amounts of the virus are in the country?

It's not about whether it's good economically or not, it's just about where the government ministers are getting their brown envelopes from

For this to have worked we would have had to implement one of two options last year

- Create a new border along the six counties, with checkpoints at each crossing, probably including Irish Army and Garda presence. All cross border trade would stop, although there probably would be some sort of goods quarantine for essential deliveries. All of this at a time when Brexit negotiations are ongoing, with the main point of negotiation for the Irish being- you can't reinstate a border between the North and the Republic

- Alternatively, convince the UK government that either a) they close the borders of NI with the exception of the Republic, introduce a border in the Irish Sea and cut off travel and significant amounts of trade between UK and NI (again, during Brexit negotiations) or b) they close the entire UK border to the outside world and adopt a zero Covid approach in solidairty with their neighbours..

Both of these are possible but very difficult. Which option are you advocating? And what were the chances of it happening?

 

[Lili Marlene]

seriously though, can you imagine we'd asked arlene to do the same, without the rest of the UK following suit. we can't shut our borders unless NI do too.

Arlene is kinda treated like McConnell in the US isn't she?

"She said no so we're all out of ideas. If only we knew someone whose job it is to do politics!"

Sure they've already put a Brexit border on the sea, the thing they said they would never, ever, EVER DO under any circumstances.

 

[Lili Marlene]

Not that I actually expect that to happen. My expectations are nothing will happen until vaccination, including the awkward period where 85% of the North are vaccinated and are back to normal while the south is at about 15%.

It's just awfully depressing to me when I sit down for a moment and consider that the one thing that politicians are supposed to be good at, doing politics, is an absolute non-starter.

 

[Cormcolash]

For this to have worked we would have had to implement one of two options last year

- Create a new border along the six counties, with checkpoints at each crossing, probably including Irish Army and Garda presence. All cross border trade would stop, although there probably would be some sort of goods quarantine for essential deliveries. All of this at a time when Brexit negotiations are ongoing, with the main point of negotiation for the Irish being- you can't reinstate a border between the North and the Republic

- Alternatively, convince the UK government that either a) they close the borders of NI with the exception of the Republic, introduce a border in the Irish Sea and cut off travel and significant amounts of trade between UK and NI (again, during Brexit negotiations) or b) they close the entire UK border to the outside world and adopt a zero Covid approach in solidairty with their neighbours..

Both of these are possible but very difficult. Which option are you advocating? And what were the chances of it happening?

You're right, sure why even try to contain the virus at all? We'll all have herd immunity in the end anyway.

 

[Cormcolash]

Not that I actually expect that to happen. My expectations are nothing will happen until vaccination, including the awkward period where 85% of the North are vaccinated and are back to normal while the south is at about 15%.

It's just awfully depressing to me when I sit down for a moment and consider that the one thing that politicians are supposed to be good at, doing politics, is an absolute non-starter.

Sure why even bother? Nothing will work anyway, unless we do what the UK do. You know, like we usually do.

 

[shitepipe]

You're right, sure why even try to contain the virus at all? We'll all have herd immunity in the end anyway.

It's a serious question. Which one? You are certain it can be done so you must have thought it through

PS i agree it would be best if we had gotten to zero covid last year but can't quite figure out how you would go about stopping transmission at the border.

 

[Cormcolash]

If you basically shut down passenger transport through airports and ports, wait until you see how quickly the UK start talking to you about how to manage travel with the virus.
You (and others) seem to be operating under this kind of all or nothing idea, where the UK wouldn't do it and nothing could ever possibly change their approach.
Introduce proper measures to curtail non-essential travel at Irish ports and airports, you'll have a flunkey of Joris on the phone within a day.

The thing is, taking this sort of initiative at the time would have required a measure of actual leadership, such as that shown in New Zealand for example. The spread of the virus around Europe could have been greatly reduced if anyone had been willing to show that kind of leadership in the region, but nobody was, and our crowd were definitely not going to try and change anything there, because as was said above, imagine if our politicians had to actually try and do political work??

 

[chris d]

Mad we are still at 1000 cases a day. That question is popping up more now, so maybe it will get addressed.

 

[magicbastarder]

Sure why even bother? Nothing will work anyway, unless we do what the UK do. You know, like we usually do.

but we share a border with the UK. a border which (pre brexit at least) may as well have not existed, for the effect it had on movement of goods and people. and a messy and complex border too, something like 50k people a day crossing the border daily before covid. NI was way worse that we were for a significant length of timeand you could see that in the stats on the border counties too.

NZ is not a direct comparison you can make with ireland; the NZ government have control over all the ports and airports on the contiguous landmass which makes up NZ. we don't. it'd be like locking our front door, thinking we're safe, while leaving the back door open.

look at the countries which have successfully contained this - NZ; australia; south korea, taiwan etc; notice a pattern?

 

[GARYXKNIFEDX]

Imagine having a conversation with your next door neighbour to work with them to solve a problem that effects both.

 

[Cormcolash]

but we share a border with the UK. a border which (pre brexit at least) may as well have not existed, for the effect it had on movement of goods and people. and a messy and complex border too, something like 50k people a day crossing the border daily before covid. NI was way worse that we were for a significant length of timeand you could see that in the stats on the border counties too.

NZ is not a direct comparison you can make with ireland; the NZ government have control over all the ports and airports on the contiguous landmass which makes up NZ. we don't. it'd be like locking our front door, thinking we're safe, while leaving the back door open.

look at the countries which have successfully contained this - NZ; australia; south korea, taiwan etc; notice a pattern?

None of this addresses the fact that if we had actually tried to do something about flights and ferries, the UK would absolutely have been forced to address the issue within a day.
The line you're putting across is exactly what the politicians responsible for the intensive care crisis want people to believe, simply because they couldn't be arsed doing their actual jobs to any remote degree of competence.

We already know what happened from doing fuck all to address the issue of travel in and out of Ireland – 50 odd thousand people arrived back in the country for Christmas, spread a new variant of the virus all over the country, and as a result over a thousand people died in January+February from catching it.
The government had a full 9 months before this happened to try and do anything to stop it, and rather than that they actually encouraged it so their hotel and airline mates could make a few bucks.

I completely fail to see how actually attempting to address the travel issue in ways that we do have control over isn't automatically better than just sitting around saying "well there's fuck all we can do about it, the UK", especially when the UK would necessarily have to react to any major changes we make.

There's now 3 cases of the Brazil variant of the virus in the country – more instances of the virus are still arriving into the country because the politicians have done fuck all to stop this happening, and this is basically a year into the pandemic at this point.
The way this has been handled transcends incompetence and ineptitude, it's practically criminal at this point, but sure we should expect nothing less when we have no problem electing politicians that are basically criminals in a lot of ways.

 

[Cormcolash]

Imagine having a conversation with your next door neighbour to work with them to solve a problem that effects both.

That's what massive fences are for

 

[magicbastarder]

if we had actually tried to do something about flights and ferries, the UK would absolutely have been forced to address the issue within a day.

while i agree with you on pretty much everything else about going for zero covid, and our politicians' reaction to the whole thing in general; the notion that the UK would have done so with NI (given the expected howls of outrage from arlene) is something i am *far* from convinced about.

 

[IFF]

I felt our biggest issue last March was that still about 5,000 Italian rugby fans came over despite the match being cancelled after the situation in Northern Italy being known as being bad at that stage.

The Monday after the weekend they all came back, the italian government announced restrictions on all movements in and out

 

[Cormcolash]

while i agree with you on pretty much everything else about going for zero covid, and our politicians' reaction to the whole thing in general; the notion that the UK would have done so with NI (given the expected howls of outrage from arlene) is something i am *far* from convinced about.

Dunno if you've noticed, but the Tories don't give a flying fuck about Arlene when they have a majority government that doesn't need DUP votes