This is the point. The PCR test, and the other rules around travel arenât about safety, theyâre to discourage travel.
How can they have been proven right about a situation that hasnât even arisen yet?
Absolutely. Thereâs no way a PCR from 3 days ago is safer than an antigen from 5 minutes ago
Of course theyâre to discourage travel.
We should be discouraging travel as much as is possible because travel seeds chains of transmission.
The less travel there is, the safer things are as regards individual countries.
We should discourage everything. Forever
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Travel led to our October wave. Travel led to our December/January wave.
Itâs very easy to understand.
According to this, correct pal 
Youâre losing the plot, mate. Youâre using the well worn internet technique where you invent an extreme, caricatured position, ascribe it to your enemy and pretend this is a mainstream position that is actually in implementation already. This technique is used to avoid dealing with a sensible point.
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I dont think travel poses near the risk it did previously, given the vaccination levels in most of the countries with flights to Ireland.
âTravelâ is also a very broad term. Hundreds of people a day travel to Ireland for essential reasons. They could just as easily seed the virus as a visitor. Given that they will, and must, be allowed to continue coming, I dont think itâs a proportional response to ban, or de-facto ban, travel long term.
Clearly it does pose a risk given that the Delta (B.1.617.2) variant has spread fairly widely in both Britain and Ireland, ahead of where America has it in terms of proportion, though America is now catching up.
If 10,000 people a day come into Dublin Airport, yes, they could bring the variant in with them and seed more chains of transmission. But if 50,000 people a day are coming in, thatâs five times the risk. Therefore it is prudent to put measures in place which will discourage travel, which will make it awkward and annoying, because it puts people off travelling. Which is what we should want.
Any increased human interaction poses a risk, especially indoor interaction. Thatâs why we are not opening everything at once, weâre phasing it, while the immunity in the population is built up through vaccination.
So you agree the government and NPHET are disingenuous about the purpose of the measures. Good.
Nonsense.
But disproportionately blaming travel and having extra tough restrictions on that (which is what I think you are suggesting and correct me if Iâm wrong) is pointless unless you also what to restrict every other aspect of life (hence my comment above) because, the variant IS going to come in with an essential worker/truck driver/rule flouter/whatever and will then have every opportunity to spread among a mingling population. So it just comes back to discourage everything. And thatâs disproportionate to the risk, at least for now
I donât particularly care about court intrigue narratives. I find it incredibly boring. All I am stating is that, yes, we should want to discourage international travel as much as is possible.
Well of course travel led to those waves. We had case figures bouncing around in single figures and new variants were imported into the country by travel. The more transmissible variants only get in in one way - travel. And of course Covid was originally brought into the country in one way - travel. To say international travel makes no difference is a position that is so stupid and obviously wrong thereâs no reason to engage with it. Itâs wanton dismissal of reality. I thought you liked to leave that stuff to Trumpists and Brexiteers.
You find it boring that a government and officials lie or mislead about the purpose or design of a measure? Thatâs surprising to me.
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Itâs not pointless. What you are saying is that if something is not perfect - which it certainly isnât - it shouldnât be done. I honestly canât get my head around that mindset. Itâs effectively to say that if we canât have zero Covid like New Zealand, in other words a 100% effort to keep Covid out - we should do nothing at all, ie. a 0% effort. Thatâs the logic.
I donât think thatâs your position but it is the logic of your position.
I find the media environment around Covid to be a barrage of bullshit from almost everywhere. And I do find most of that to be very boring.
No thatâs not the logic of my position. My position is âwe cant stop a variant coming in, and unless we lockdown into perpetuity, we cant stop it spreading. So why are we denying people a right to travel to safe destinations?â
MHQ, stopping travel through fines and requiring expensive PCR tests are token gestures that do nothing except disproportionately effect poorer people, the vast majority of whom are travelling because they have to, not because they want to. MHQ is 1800 quid. Thatâs a savage amount of money and most of the people paying it right now are Indian nurses or people returning to Ireland after urgent family matters.
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To attribute an outcome to a single factor ignoring all else is simplistic to the point of stupidity. Or even, wanton dismissal of reality. I thought you liked to leave that stuff to Trumpists and Brexiteers?