Ireland vs New Zealand

ednwireland

Dravokivich wrote: »

Rugby doesn't have a particularly big following in Italy. How many people would have actually come over for it? I keep seeing references to thousands of'em on Boards. I've no idea where thousands of Italian rugby fans could have come from.

id say school trips flying back and going into school the next day spread a lot more

Podge_irl

Gretas Gonna Get Ya! wrote: »

Even now, our government is just straight up refusing to take a position on something like face masks... even though other countries have taken a strong position on them. We're just sitting there, not sure what to do!

And equally a large number of countries are similarly not taking a view on them. It is ultimately pointless to recommend masks if sufficient supply of them does not exist.

RandomName2

ednwireland wrote: »

id say school trips flying back and going into school the next day spread a lot more

Well naturally. As I said, the HSE was more than happy for this to happen. These students were told to go back to school despite the fact that it was clear a number of them would already be infected with the virus.

I am unsure why people on this thread are implicitly defending this decision.

Richard Hillman wrote: »

A couple of thousand maybe. The big thing is that rugby's heart land in Italy is up north. Their 2 Pro14 Clubs come from Veneto and Emilia-Romagna which were both under lockdown a week or 2 before the game was due tó take place.

https://www.irishmirror.ie/sport/rugby-union/italian-rugby-fans-still-come-21636519

Buswells Hotel manager Paul Gallagher insisted he is not worried about welcoming Italian fans this weekend.

He told the newspaper: "I think everybody in the world now knows the symptoms and to self-isolate, so we're not worried at all about any of our guests from Italy, we welcome them," he told the Irish Independent.

"There's no question of not allowing them to come over. I think it would be wholly unusual for our country to cut ourselves off from visitors.

"In this hotel if we had a case we would ensure the space was safe, so far as removing all soft furnishing including carpets, curtains, beds, towels, everything."


I wonder how that hotel is doing now.

Ultimately we don't know how many people came over from Italy, nor how many were infected. I mean, nobody was counting, nobody cared. There was no testing, no isolation. I don't even think they cleaned the planes. It was the most ridiculous thing I have witnessed in my lifetime, and I have seem some pretty stupid shít.

joseywhales

There are so many factors being ignored, beyond the main one of population density. There are cultural factors, the size of families, the dominant industries in a country(how most people work) and the number of connections between clusters of the population. It's to big of a problem for me to figure out that's for sure. This thing is ridiculously hard to benchmark.

RandomName2

Podge_irl wrote: »

And equally a large number of countries are similarly not taking a view on them. It is ultimately pointless to recommend masks if sufficient supply of them does not exist.

The first step to solving a problem is to admit you have one.

While they perpetuate the lie that masks provide no protection there will be less chance of masks being developed.

People in this thread don't seem to like looking at other countries doing a better job, but most of Asia has done a pretty decent job, and all of them have very consistent mask wearing as part of their strategy.

joseywhales

Also I suspect that the virus was already in Ireland weeks before we started looking for it.

banie01

beggars_bush wrote: »

You do realise how far away from almost everwhere NZ is?

It's much more sparsely populated

It's much easier to lockdown. Especially when most travellers reach it, via Australia which already has strict measures in place

100% agreed!
This is a vital point that too many miss in comparing Ire/NZ.

NZ is incredibly isolated and International travel is in the main via only 2 airports.

They made all the right calls early, locked down early and imposed decent quarantine measures.
NZ as a comparator to Ireland isn't really valid tho.

We are a very open country, being tied to the EU as we are and treating the whole EU as basically a weekend city break destination.

Even discounting the amount of business/industry related intra-EU travel, it is honestly far easier in Ireland to hop on a flight and spend a few days in another EU city.

I mean I've flown to London just to pick up some bits I didn't fancy waiting for delivery on.

Ireland/UK/EU is far more integrated, fluid and mobile than NZ.
Even the "island" similarity is wrong, we are connected by ferry to multiple European destinations all travelable within a days sail.

NZ isn't, it's 1700km to Sydney like.

Only in population is the comparison a valid one.
In all other terms, we are far more susceptible to virus spread.

Mrs OBumble

SEPT 23 1989 wrote: »

They wouldn't have had much human traffic from the Uk or northern Italy

In fairness,though, they have a LOT from China, and acted decisively in February to stop it.


But for Ireland to be like NZ, we'd need to remove two thirds of our population. Its about density not numbers.

cloudatlas

hmmm wrote: »

New Zealand also doesn't share a land border with a country which had decided to on a strategy of herd immunity early in the epidemic.

1. There are less cases in NI and deaths.

2. The strict lockdown happened earlier in NI than the south.

3. The first case in NI came through a connecting flight through Dublin airport because the airspace had not be closed, the first case in NI did not, I REPEAT did not come from the U.K.

timsey tiger

Xterminator wrote: »

New Zealand is about 3.8 times bigger than Ireland. but has less population. 4.886 vs approx 5 million. Now even basic maths will tell you the population density cannot be comparable.

Populations are concentrated in cities and towns not spread uniformly through out the country.

Muahahaha

Dr. Kenneth Noisewater wrote: »

NZ obviously had an advantage from the start with it's relative remoteness from large populations and the fact that they closed the borders very early on. What they've also done was put in place one of the tightest lockdowns in the world, announcing Alert Level 4 on 23rd March, at which stage there were still only 102 cases in the country and nobody had died. Level 4 meant absolutely everything was closed apart from Supermarkets and Pharmacies and people were effectively on 23 hour lockdown apart from being allowed out to exercise or buy food.

Yeah I think Jacinda Arden being fast out of the traps gave them a big advantage. Also when she locked the borders any Kiwi coming back had to undergo 14 days mandatory isolation. Her going straight to Level 4 must have helped too while governments in Europe were introducing the lockdown piecemeal week by week. Her strategy of going fast and going early has paid serious dividends. Whilst NZ isnt as connected as Ireland you still got to think its a virus where carriers infect up too 5 people, you dont necessarily need to have lots of tourists for it to spread. Sure wasnt there a case in South Korea where one woman infected over 1,000 people.

I was also reading about the Aussie response. They have huge numbers who travel from China and the largest cohort is thousands and thousands of Chinese students, foreign university education in Australia is big business and the Chinese are the biggest market worth billions to the Aussie economy every year. Despite this Scott Morrison ordered for no Chinese student to return to Australia after they were all back in China for Chinese New Year in February. That was a big call and he faced intense lobbying from the university sector to allow them back into Australia but he stuck to his guns. If he had of relented Id say Australia could be in a very bad position right now but instead they've weathered it very well.

sandbelter

Biosecurity: if there is anything I would pick it is this. Australia and NZ have already a strong and active Biosecurity screening at the airports that's designed to prevent invasive species and diseases from entering both countries. You sign detail landing cards arriving in both countries which lead to very efficient tracing in both countries; the contact cards have contact details for the passenger in NZ as well. They didn't just trace more, they also traced more efficiently.

Specifically it allowed them to trace travellers, particularly from China and cruise boats, the early conduits of the disease very stages and prevent widespread community transmission. It was having these legacy systems in place was a serious departure point for both…and something the whole EU could learn from.

Another country that did very well is Greece. Greece put itself in lock down before the disease was even uncovered in Greece. With a land boarder an even crazier neighbour in Turkey it has done probably the best of the lot give the cards it had to play with.

What all three countries point to you have to respond, even if it is with legacy systems, even before the first case is detected.

Dravokivich

cloudatlas wrote: »

1. There are less cases in NI and deaths.

2. The strict lockdown happened earlier in NI than the south.

3. The first case in NI came through a connecting flight through Dublin airport because the airspace had not be closed, the first case in NI did not, I REPEAT did not come from the U.K.

The first case in N.I I figured was they didn't have an option to fly to belfast? Why would they go out of their way to come through Dublin otherwise?

hmmm

cloudatlas wrote: »

1. There are less cases in NI and deaths.

2. The strict lockdown happened earlier in NI than the south.

3. The first case in NI came through a connecting flight through Dublin airport because the airspace had not be closed, the first case in NI did not, I REPEAT did not come from the U.K.

NI lockdown was on March 20th, 8 days after us.

NI is significantly smaller than the Republic? Maybe misunderstanding your point.

The first detected case yes. Detected.

The whole argument in this thread is irrelevant - we could never adopt the NZ strategy, even if it was a good idea, because we have a land border with a country which was taking a different approach.

The Tetrarch

They kicked our ass.
We should learn. There must be something we can learn. This epidemic isn't over.

timsey tiger

The Tetrarch wrote: »

They kicked our ass.
We should learn. There must be something we can learn. This epidemic isn't over.

I don'r think we were competing with them. I'm not sure we can learn anything of use to us, seeing as we don't have a time machine.

JL555

They'd hammer us if we played them now.

cloudatlas

hmmm wrote: »

NI lockdown was on March 20th, 8 days after us.

NI is significantly smaller than the Republic? Maybe misunderstanding your point.

The first detected case yes. Detected.

The whole argument in this thread is irrelevant - we could never adopt the NZ strategy, even if it was a good idea, because we have a land border with a country which was taking a different approach.

No it was before, all the south did was close schools. I’m in Northern Ireland now a full lockdown happened in the north before the south. Your argument was that NI was a threat to the stability of the souths approach to dealing with vivid 19. That is absolutely false, if anything it’s the exact reverse, more cases across the boarder on the same land mass equals a larger threat.

cloudatlas

Dravokivich wrote: »

The first case in N.I I figured was they didn't have an option to fly to belfast? Why would they go out of their way to come through Dublin otherwise?

Your point was the mainland was a threat it wasn’t the flight was routed through open republic airspace. Also the flight did not originate from mainland uk so wrong on both counts. The flight came from Italy via Irish airspace.

the_syco

RandomName2 wrote: »

Everything that I read has pointed to patient zero traveling into Lombardy, from Germany, at the end of January.

A few are questioning how badly the US military team did when they were staying close to Wuhan back in October, as if a couple of CIA pencil pushers were sent instead of elite US military units... :pac:

Water John

A comparison between any two countries is valid. One will always learn something. Yes it's obvious NZ is far more isolated than we are. They too however have a lot of tourism. The two key differences in political terms are, us having a land border with the UK and the ROI being a member of the EU.
Both of these factors affected our response. The UK was reacting differently to us and the DUP were following the UK, right or wrong. Secondly, being members of the EU affected how we dealt with people coming from other countries, including our own returning from EU countries.
I remember in early March, we as a family were analysing this. It looked, at that time, from the earlystats coming from China, that we could be looking at deaths of 20/25,000 in this country. It looked that serious, at that time. We knew, people incl medics were returning from Italy and not isolating for 14 days. It was a concern at that time. This is before Cheltenham. We were wondering why the Irish Govn't weren't cancelling St Patrick's Day parade in Dublin. Some local parades in different parts of the country were already cancelling.
That is the time of the delay in this country in comparison to NZ.

Looking back at this thread, one can see NZ were also a bit lucky, with their isolated location. Stopping the Chinese students coming back after the Chinese holiday was key. The parallel here were our own returning from ski holidays not isolating for 14 days.
https://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2058061172

endacl

ChikiChiki wrote: »

****ing sick of seeing this absolutely **** comparison. This is the stick being used to beat our response to the virus in the past 24 hours.

Apart from population size It's apples and oranges potatoes and kiwis.

Better

Muahahaha

Water John wrote: »

A comparison between any two countries is valid. One will always learn something. Yes it's obvious NZ is far more isolated than we are. They too however have a lot of tourism.

Also December, January and February are peak summertime in NZ, I would say arguably there were far more tourists in NZ in those months than there were in Ireland at the same time. Having lived there the south island is extremely busy during those months whereas you'd see few tourists here during the winter months.

Water John

I was there for the month of April last year, love the place and people.

mandrake04

Water John wrote: »

I was there for the month of April last year, love the place and people.

I have to agree it’s a great country and great people, I can’t understand the level of begrudgement on Irish social media towards NZ for simply getting it right.

Dr. Kenneth Noisewater

mandrake04 wrote: »

I have to agree it’s a great country and great people, I can’t understand the level of begrudgement on Irish social media towards NZ for simply getting it right.

Yep. Commenting on NZ doing better than Ireland does not necessarily mean that anyone is saying Ireland is full of idiots. It's just people getting defensive, as if the figures are somehow a slight on Ireland. Every country has its own set of unique challenges.

Cupatae

RandomName2 wrote: »

I'm merely reiterating what I said back in February

https://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?p=112646596

When I saw how stupid and incompetent they were I knew were were fcked. Thankfully the government brought in a full lockdown, but a lot of damage had already occurred.

The HSE did invest in a leaflet stand at Dublin airport though. They did that alright.

Cupatae

mandrake04 wrote: »

I have to agree it’s a great country and great people, I can’t understand the level of begrudgement on Irish social media towards NZ for simply getting it right.

Are you implying we got it wrong? i think were doing fairly good.

But as has been stated to death, they are two different countries with two different sets of circumstances... but because of pop and both being islands we have the geniuses who instantly compare em and then use the success of NZ to criticize Irelands response.

73bc61lyohr0mu

Water John wrote: »

I was there for the month of April last year, love the place and people.

I lived there for 3 years. Absolutely loved the place. Still have heaps of mates over there I keep in touch with.

mandrake04

Cupatae wrote: »

Are you implying we got it wrong? i think were doing fairly good.

But as has been stated to death, they are two different countries with two different sets of circumstances... but because of pop and both being islands we have the geniuses who instantly compare em and then use the success of NZ to criticize Irelands response.

I’m not implying that at all, but on some social media like FB instead of congratulating NZ some people are commenting that they hope the virus returns there.

I know it’s not that bad here on this thread, but there’s very few saying well done.... and eh plenty of excuses rather than look at the positives of NZ success.

So yes there there is different circumstances but if the circumstances like geographic location, density (which is a feeble excuse anyway) and NZ still had the same result there would still be some BS excuse used anyway.

So from me...WELL DONE NZ