Advertisement
If you have a new account but are having problems posting or verifying your account, please email us on hello@boards.ie for help. Thanks :)
Hello all! Please ensure that you are posting a new thread or question in the appropriate forum. The Feedback forum is overwhelmed with questions that are having to be moved elsewhere. If you need help to verify your account contact hello@boards.ie

Can we have some fcuking control on the airports from high risk countries please?

Options
1207208209211213

Comments

  • Registered Users Posts: 8,208 ✭✭✭saabsaab


    The sources are valid. From RTE and IT and prove my point. You may have picked one week that seems to back your case.

    MHQ has successfully played a central role in protecting the population, maintaining control of the disease and enabling the safe relaxation of restrictions on our economy and society.



  • Registered Users Posts: 715 ✭✭✭gral6


    MHQs were proved to be complete and useless mess. Huge waste of taxpayers money. Such a bad page in our history.



  • Registered Users Posts: 9,805 ✭✭✭hynesie08




  • Registered Users Posts: 8,208 ✭✭✭saabsaab


    It doesn't take a genius to figure out that stopping/slowing the importing of new variants into the country during that period was going to lower the numbers/rate of spread here.



  • Registered Users Posts: 3,038 ✭✭✭Blut2


    That "one week" shows that MHQ did absolutely nothing - Delta got in here just as fast as it did in Northern Ireland when it started to spread in both. As many, many people said it would - because we have a completely open 400 mile long border with the North, with hundreds of unmonitored border crossings, that 60,000 people a day cross. So once anything got into Northern Ireland it was always going to be down here within days.

    No other EU country implemented MHQ, yet they all had slower Delta outbreaks than us.

    Which meant the hundreds of millions of tax payer money, the countless children kept away from their parents deathbeds, the families kept apart for months, the vast economic damage to the transportation and tourism industries... was all for nothing.

    Closing the airports (or almost doing so) when leaving the land border fully open is like closing the windows of your house to keep people out, while leaving the front door completely open... utterly pointless.



  • Advertisement
  • Registered Users Posts: 715 ✭✭✭gral6


    Proved by statistics. Learn some basic maths, it'll help a lot!



  • Registered Users Posts: 8,208 ✭✭✭saabsaab


    Lets see them?

    If your boat has several leaks do you leave them all unblocked or try and stop the ones you can get to easily?



  • Registered Users Posts: 715 ✭✭✭gral6


    I would not call it a leak. The door with North was wide opened. What was the point of closing ajar window?



  • Moderators, Category Moderators, Arts Moderators, Entertainment Moderators, Social & Fun Moderators Posts: 16,641 CMod ✭✭✭✭faceman


    You’ve a short memory. Ireland had one of the worse rates of covid since MHQ began. Ireland despite the high rate of vaccination, still has some of the highest covid rates in the EU.



  • Registered Users Posts: 8,208 ✭✭✭saabsaab


    You have to do what you can besides there was no non essential inter county travel.



  • Advertisement
  • Registered Users Posts: 8,208 ✭✭✭saabsaab


    It would have been worse at the time without it. As for now at least most of us are vaccinated and chances fo death or serious illness is greatly reduced unlike March.



  • Registered Users Posts: 715 ✭✭✭gral6


    Other countries managed much better than us without this totally useless MHQ Gulag. What a waste of public funds.



  • Registered Users Posts: 8,208 ✭✭✭saabsaab


    What public cost? from the website.

    'Before traveling to Ireland, you must reserve and pay for a place in mandatory hotel quarantine.'

    Whatever else it cost it was minuscule in the overall lockdown costs.



  • Registered Users Posts: 3,038 ✭✭✭Blut2


    What public cost? Do you think it was magically free? Most arrivals didn't pay for their own MHQ stays, the state covered it - for students, or anyone else too poor or obstinate to pay. And even those that did pay in full didn't cover the cost of policing and administrating the scheme, just the hotel stay itself.

    MHQ directly cost the state tens of millions of euros, that could have been spent employing more doctors and nurses, or purchasing more ICU beds. You know, actually useful things.

    At an occupancy of 200 rooms the estimated cost was €22.4mn -- https://www.irishexaminer.com/news/arid-40324172.html -- and the occupancy was much higher than this.

    And this isn't even touching on the wider loss of revenue to the Irish state from killing our tourism industry for months, which employs 250,000 people (1/10th of our working adults). Or the aviation industry that employees 40,000...



  • Registered Users Posts: 8,208 ✭✭✭saabsaab


    The tourism industry wasn't going to magically recover at the time in any case. As for payment it was to be in advance! Where do you get the figure you quote?

    In case we forget how did the bloody virus and the new variants get here and around the world in the first place? If a deadly virus comes again will we not shut down non essential travel from the country of origin in time, yet again!



  • Registered Users Posts: 604 ✭✭✭a_squirrelman


    Yeah hopefully they close the bloody border this time. The issue wasn't a handful of flights.



  • Registered Users Posts: 494 ✭✭Billgirlylegs


    It is a respiratory infection. More contagious than other colds and in some cases more serious(ie deadly).

    There is no "Stopping" it outside of an airtight environment. Even your own comment about "non essential travel" is meaningless.

    Firstly who decides what is "essential"

    Secondly, why do you think the virus travel won't be spread by "essential" travel, or trade?.

    On the seperate issue of the cost of MHQ. What happens if the traveller refuses to pay? Were they jailed immediately, or what penalty was imposed?

    Was there no "retainer" paid to book rooms?

    MHQ was a dumb, nasty idea, never mind the implementation here. Box ticking stuff to demonstrate that "the experts" were doing something.



  • Registered Users Posts: 8,208 ✭✭✭saabsaab


    The elected Government can define what is non essential as is their right. Mainly obvious holidays visits etc.

    From 23 June 2021

    'Foreign travel is helping to fuel the Delta variant spiral, as 800 virus cases were linked to trips abroad in the last fortnight, including among fully-vaccinated people.'

    Whatever anyone says it stopped much unneeded travel to here as well as stopping some with the virus entering and mixing here before they finished the infection.



  • Registered Users Posts: 3,038 ✭✭✭Blut2


    They why did we have the fastest infection rate of Delta of any EU country? Despite the fact that none of them had expensive, economically damaging, and socially destructive MHQ schemes?

    That by itself is a completely damning indictment of the whole scheme.



  • Registered Users Posts: 8,208 ✭✭✭saabsaab


    Can't be true see below..

    From the RTE news 18 June 2021..

    'It’s ten weeks since the first case of Delta was detected in Ireland. It is made up about 5% of cases that have been analysed for the variant recently.

    By comparison, about 60% of cases in England were Delta ten weeks after the first detection in the country.'

    Proof that MHQ was working.



  • Advertisement
  • Registered Users Posts: 3,038 ✭✭✭Blut2


    England isn't part of the EU...

    You are aware of that right?



  • Registered Users Posts: 8,208 ✭✭✭saabsaab




  • Registered Users Posts: 3,038 ✭✭✭Blut2


    That 5% in Ireland was significantly higher than the rest of the EU at the time, which had no MHQ...

    The UK had their own MHQ, yet had the highest Delta rate on the continent.

    How do you account for that? That the two countries with MHQ had the highest Delta rates?



  • Registered Users Posts: 8,208 ✭✭✭saabsaab




  • Registered Users Posts: 3,038 ✭✭✭Blut2


    On June 25th, in the cases of the preceding 4 weeks:

    Ireland was 8.9% Delta

    Switzerland 7.8%

    France 6.5%

    Netherlands 6.4%

    Denmark 3.8%

    Slovakia 2.4%

    Lithuania 1.0%

    Poland 1.7%

    Finland, Croatia, Slovenia, Greece, Bulgaria 0.0%

    etc

    None of those countries had MHQ. Ireland had MHQ. At great cost to our country financially and socially.

    Surely if MHQ was such a roaring success as you claim, and it successfully kept out variants, we'd have had the lowest Delta infection rate in Europe, well below that of all those other countries with dangerously open borders, no?



  • Registered Users Posts: 8,208 ✭✭✭saabsaab


    The UK had a very high incidence of Delta and there was bound to be crossover here being next door. The UK delayed putting India the source of Delta onto their MHQ for far too long. The rest of the EU didn't have the same historic links to India.

    The only fault with our MHQ was it was not out into action early enough and strict enough. It still had a beneficial effect.



  • Registered Users Posts: 3,038 ✭✭✭Blut2


    So you're admitting that Ireland having a completely open, uncontrolled border with the UK meant any attempt to keep Delta out was never going to work, there was "bound to be crossover"? ie that MHQ wasn't in a position to stop the spread of the variant?

    Which is exactly what everyone has been saying from the start...



  • Registered Users Posts: 8,208 ✭✭✭saabsaab


    No that isn't what I am saying at all. The border is an issue but we stopped extra seeding of new variants using MHQ. Remember at this time people weren't to go beyond their county so how on earth was it reasonable to travel abroad. Logic dictated that MHQ would slow the spread of Delta and it worked.



  • Moderators, Category Moderators, Arts Moderators, Entertainment Moderators, Social & Fun Moderators Posts: 16,641 CMod ✭✭✭✭faceman


    Ireland’s 14 day rate per 100,000 people: 544

    Spain’s 14 day rate per 100,000 people: 43

    Ireland had MHQ for over 6 months, Spain didn’t

    Spain has had far more British tourists than ireland has, not to mention far more international tourists.

    Ireland has a higher percentage of the population fully vaccinated.

    Up until yesterday, ireland had stricter restrictions than Spain throughout 2021


    MHQ made feck all difference with covid in ireland. The government’s policy on travel made feck all difference to covid in ireland.


    I had to go looking for Spain’s covid data. The media stopped reporting daily cases some time ago. Some scientists are claiming herd immunity has been achieved. Covid doesn’t make the headlines as much anymore.

    The ideology of MHQ and blaming the dirty travellers and holiday makers was a failure. There’s no evidence to show MHQ worked. you can prove me wrong if you wish, but you’ll be hard pressed to produce evidence beyond speculative.



  • Advertisement
  • Registered Users Posts: 8,208 ✭✭✭saabsaab


    Mandatory quarantine was introduced on March 26 and since then, 10,398 people checked into quarantine hotels, 593 of them tested positive for Covid-19. Cases that didn't go on to spread new variants at the time. It also put many of traveling here due to cost. Its only flaw was that it wasn't introduced early enough and enforced strictly enough.



Advertisement