Theyāre a shit show and letting this country go down the drain
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I suppose Israel in April is key.
Once they have everyone vaccinated by late-March, weāll know if we are wasting our time or not.
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The next two weeks (in Israel in April) are crucial
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Youāll be able to take your āusualā position in Parnell Park mate. Dont you worry.
2022 will be the pure solid finest.
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Basically Israelās experiment is clutch.
If thatās a success we can vaccinate our over 60s, vulnerable and obese? Surely we can go full belt then.
My one and only time wishing Israel well
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Is it time to hang up the Israeli flags ?
I will not be allowing my kids near this thing.
Any parent who is considering it needs to have a think about themselves
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The Phoenix should take the credit for that.
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Thereās a bit on education sector on Claire byrne this morning I think.
Ewan ewan ewan
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Joe Rogan is saying that thereās thousands of Californians moving to Texas at the moment Because lock down is so strict in Cali.
I might move to the Falls road for the summer.
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Fintan! Fintan! Fintan!
For thousands of years, governments trying to deal with plagues were overwhelmed in two ways. They didnāt have the practical systems to cope with disease and death on such a scale. But they were also overwhelmed conceptually. They couldnāt get their heads around what was happening. The same, alas, has been true of our Government and the pandemic.
For most of history, the conceptual problem was that people didnāt know what plagues were. The only way to understand them was as messages. The gods (or God) were using them to tell us something ā specifically that we had been very bad and must mend our ways.
So: make more sacrifices, kill the Jews, burn some heretics, scourge yourself with whips. These policies did not work, but they were somewhat satisfying. They interpreted the problem and reacted to it within the existing way of understanding the world.
Irish governments, like their counterparts all around the world, have had to respond to a threat they should have anticipated but didnāt. They faced in essence the same big challenge: donāt get overwhelmed.
Unlike those rulers in history, they did have the practical systems: the whole infrastructure of health and social care. And all their energy has gone into making sure that these systems are not inundated.
A mindset of openness was conceptually overwhelmed by the idea that we needed to seal the island
The results of this frantic effort have been equivocal. Nursing homes and residential care institutions have been engulfed at times, with devastating results. The hospital system is currently at breaking point.
Conceptual overload
But the underlying problem is conceptual overload. Over the last year, our governments have failed repeatedly to establish a framework of thought that would allow the island we inhabit to control the virus.
Pre-modern people had to fit the experience of plague into their fundamental worldview. If you assume that this horror must be a message from the gods, that assumption will shape the way you try to control and mitigate its effects.
āThe message has been that we must not only preserve and enhance our links to Europe, to Britain and to the United States, but also ensure that there is no hindrance to movement across our own Border.ā File photograph: Scott Olson/Getty
Contemporary Ireland does not believe in such cruel gods. But we have our own, more benign, deity: openness.
Being open rather than closed is the one really big idea the Irish State has had in my lifetime. It is the essence of the revolution set in train by SeƔn Lemass and TK Whitaker in 1958. We must open up.
Itās a very good idea, of course. It gradually transformed Ireland for the better, economically, socially and culturally. But its very success has made it foundational and therefore almost invisible. It is as hard for us to think our way out of it as would have been for King Oedipus in Thebes all those millenniums ago to say: āThe gods have nothing to do with this disease thatās killing the city. Itās spread by fleas.ā
This is our essential problem. The State could not get its head around the big thing it needed to do because it was the opposite of its governing assumption. A mindset of openness was conceptually overwhelmed by the idea that we needed to seal the island.
Maybe we were especially unlucky with the timing. Because of Brexit, the State has doubled down on a principle of unfettered connectivity. The message has been that we must not only preserve and enhance our links to Europe, to Britain and to the United States, but also ensure that there is no hindrance to movement across our own Border.
There was no serious attempt to create an all-island strategy, no controls on movement across the Border and, crucially, no real policy on international travel
Precisely because both of these things are so obviously true, it is very hard to step outside of the frame and say: we have to put up the shutters, hard and fast.
The advantage Ireland has is geographic. Being an island is not a prerequisite for crushing Covid, but it sure helps. We have consistently squandered that advantage.
From very early on, public-health experts advocated the zero-Covid strategy that would involve sealing the island, using a lockdown to get rid of the virus, heavily controlling movement on to the island and the rapid isolation of any local outbreaks that might occur.
International travel
And from very early on, the State has refused to take this approach seriously. There was no serious attempt to create an all-island strategy, no controls on movement across the Border and, crucially, no real policy on international travel.
There are two possible attitudes to international travel ā either itās not a problem or it is. If itās not, then restrictions are pointless. If it is, then restrictions have to be effective.
The cognitive confusion at the heart of government is shown most clearly in the answer to this basic question: international travel is a problem and weāre not going to have any effective restrictions.
For a full year, not just quarantine for incoming travellers, but even giving basic information on oneās movements was, in reality, voluntary. The Stateās policy was: be good, now, wonāt ye?
Between the start of December 2020 and January 11th this year, more than 190,000 people arrived into Ireland by air. Why? Because weāre open, thatās why. Itās the sacrifice we make to the gods of our modernity.
In the end, this conceptual overload has made it impossible to prevent the practical overwhelming of our systems. Open Ireland necessitates a shutdown of its own citizens. It also brings far too many of them to the final, terrible closure.
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Grand job. Any chance you could pay my mortgage when my mortgage break finishes next month?
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I didnāt watch it last night, but I see that horrible cunt Varadkarās comments being reported this morning. Did Claire Byrne challenge his assertion that zero Covid / mandatory quarantine would have to last the full year?
They were moving a long time before Covid ever hit. Spiralling costs of living main reason but there are moving to other states like Arizona and Nevada too. Austin is a popular destination for many Californians especially those who work in tech.
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It was bizarre from Varadkar. So out of touch with reality.
People just want pints and matches. Making tourists quarantine for two weeks is the least of our worries. He seemed to make it out like it was a big deal.