Oh boy
So the masks eradicated cold and flu but not coronavirus? Guess we must have been wearing the cold and flu masks instead of the covid masks. Doh!
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They did introduce restrictions, as various countries have done at various points.
Would an extreme border restriction have massively changed our outcomes? No, I donât believe it would. The virus is prevalent in the country already, itâs there you need to manage it, keep it out is no longer the issue.
I do think there were lots of steps we could and should have taken that would have meant we could have managed or âlived with covidâ far better. I listed some. Itâs still the case that we could back down from our current stupid MHQ approach. But I absolutely reject everything coming from ISAG, McConkey, Ryan et al as bogus.
In any event, vaccination is the way out of this, and we are nearly there. Albeit having made ourselves EU fools and pariahs before we get there.
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The leaked emails should have been the finish of ISAGâs credibility but because it came from Gript it didnât get any traction in mainstream platforms
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Thatâs exactly it. People saying âfollow the scienceâ when the scientists themselves have openly spoken about having an agenda.
Speaking specifically about ISAG scientists here
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But you say theyâre scientifically correct. To me that doesnât tally with much of the rest of what you say.
Denmark imposed intra-EU borders and the EU couldnât do a thing, and they are not âEU fools and pariahsâ. Also NI is no longer part of the EU.
Iâm in no way way arguing against any other measures Denmark took and I respect your view on the subject in general, but I disagree with it.
But I also think your view of treating anything said by the Zero Covid advocates as âstupidâ, âbogusâ and that they are âlunaticsâ is a neat summing up of why we are in the situation we are in.
Incidentally Tomas Ryan went head to head against âyour manâ Mark Paul in a debate last September on the Eamon Dunphy podcast âThe Standâ. Itâs an interesting listen in light of what has happened over the last seven months and I donât think Paul comes out of it well at all.
I sincerely hope youâre right about vaccination being the way out of this and I would certainly be of the view that vaccination is by far the single most important tool we have at this stage, but I am fearful that not enough people may get vaccinated.
And because RTĂ had tied themselves so closely to the ISAG personalities. McConkey was on primetime and Claire Byrne and other programmes weekly.
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I donât think RTE have tied themselves to anybody in particular. Martin Feely, Sunetra Gupta, Carl Heneghan, Jack Lambert, Mark Paul etc. have all been platformed. Christ, they even platformed Johnny Arse, which didnât work out too well.
They are correct that if you seal off an island and then isolate everyone that has the virus on that island, you will eventually eliminate the virus.
All well and good on paper but it is impossible in practice on Ireland. They are scientifically correct, but yet they are utterly wrong.
To refuse to acknowledge that a zero covid policy is utterly incompatible with Ireland, and that there are gaping and fundamental differences between here and new Zealand, in my opinion is either lunacy or cold eyed dishonesty.
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I disagree. ISAG lunatics have gotten far more airtime than anyone else.
I respect your view but I disagree with it.
I expected so and thatâs entirely fair enough.
Good to have you back mate.
Well I would say the people who have gotten by far the most air time have been Tony Holohan and Ronan Glynn, and they are not Zero Covid advocates. Various people working on the front line have had significant air time. There has been a wide range of views platformed. ISAG have gotten some significant air time, but I think their views and arguments merits the platforming they have got. Whether you agree with them or not, they put forward serious arguments whereas in my view the âopen it upâ people have totally failed to do that.
Youâre on record as staring the ISAG leaks were a nothing burger. Presume you are ok with unaccountable âexpertsâ providing information to the democratically elected government that âmay or may not be trueâ at a critical time of the pandemic.
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Holohan and Glynn are government officials. ISAG are independent commentators, and their views have been given disproportionate airtime.
By the way the open up v shut it down discourse on here is inane and stupid. As it is in public discourse.
What we should have done at every stage is taken responsible and reasonable steps to manage our situation better. Many of them were obvious. But here we are anyway.
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Some lads will never have zen sadly.
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First of all ISAG donât have the ear of government, they are an independent group which are there to advocate for a particular position they believe to be the correct one, and thatâs entirely legitimate. But their views have as much official status as those of Gript.
The line âmay or may not be trueâ was in no way any sort of a scandal, it was an entirely reasonable line. It simply reflected the then reality. Around Christmas we knew there was a significant surge in cases happening. What we did not know then was how much exactly the B117 variant was contributing to that surge.
But we knew that either way, this variant was a very serious threat. What appears to have happened is that the truth was somewhere in the middle, that the variant was a contributor to that surge, but that a surge in the previously predominant version of Covid was a bigger contributor. The variant appears to have steadily gained predominance over the course of late December/the first half of January.
The really scary scenario was if the B117 variant was not contributing at all to the Christmas surge. Because then, the surge would have been entirely made up of the less transmissible variety of Covid, with the far more transmissible one still to come.
Gript is a trash US style right-wing propaganda outlet with links to Youth Defence, designed to try and create scandal where there is none. It is designed to try and destroy people it does not like. That is itâs raison dâetre.
Griptâs wider position as regards those emails was basically that people in the public eye should have dismissed the B117 variant as a threat. Because if thatâs not their position, there is no reason for their Simpsons âRock Bottomâ style angle on the ISAG emails.
Well I agree âopen upâ v âshut it downâ discourse is stupid. But that has happened because the âopen upâ angle has gained a far greater degree of prominence than it should have.
So we have an Indian variant now I see. Theyâre calling it the tandoori