What is our plan?

YellowBucket

GazzaL wrote: »

Ah sure what's a few billion to our economy and a few hundred thousand jobs? Not to mention the importance of business travel for non-tourism related industries.

Domestic tourism spend abroad is worth over 6 bn - redirect it with decent products and incentives.

The cost to the economy of COVID-19 rolling on and on and on is also astronomical

Choices are going to have to be made. We can’t just continue to operate as if the coronavirus isn’t there.

Tourism in bound at the moment is a trickle anyway and will remain that way for a long time. I can’t see any reason why we would want to open mass tourism from the USA for example. It would be a net huge cost to the economy.

Business travel and small volume travel can be facilitated with testing.

Throwing off the restrictions doesn’t make the virus magically go away and business as usual simply isn’t possible until there’s a solution to the virus. It’s going to have to be about doing what’s least risk most and most risk least.

If we keep having outbreaks for example, we may see years go by with notability to have pubs, normal festivals and so on and most of that spend is domestic.

We risk disrupting schools, universities, retail, offices etc etc etc

Only a relatively small % of the Irish economy is driven by inbound tourism and that has effectively dried up anyway due to the international situation.

Without a vaccine and an end to this pandemic we can’t just magically go back to 2019, as much as we all would love to. The economy is going to be different and we aren’t going to be as well off as we were in a lot of ways.

It’s horrible but wishing it away doesn’t really help. Facts are facts.

gabeeg

Literally none of us have a good plan.

There isn't one to be had.

snotboogie

[Deleted User] wrote: »

And you think we can keep our borders closed for years in that scenario? I don’t know what kind of world you think we live in

Its awful. However unless a vaccine comes out the alternative is living like we have from April until now.

bluelamp

YellowBucket wrote: »

Given that we aren’t very dependent on foreign tourism, we can and have put a buffer between us and the rest of the world.

No not very dependent at all, sure it just supports over 350,000 jobs, pumps over 9 Billion Euro into the economy every year - and we have probably lost over 10,000 job already even with wage subsidies still in place.

But sure yeah, we can take it or leave it :rolleyes:

snotboogie

bluelamp wrote: »

No not very dependent at all, sure it just supports over 350,000 jobs, pumps over 9 Billion Euro into the economy every year - and we have probably lost over 10,000 job already even with wage subsidies still in place.

But sure yeah, we can take it or leave it :rolleyes:

People won't travel until covid is under control anyway. The Irish government can't control this.

Bit cynical

i_surge wrote: »

It is a big problem for sure but there is more that can be done on the compliance side.

Put it to a vote

Get public support, or not. Fair is fair

I agree. If you can get support for it and it is realistic to expect that support for it to continue for the duration then it is realistic to have it as part of the plan.

But if you can't get support for it or people circumvent it when no one is looking then a plan that depends on people complying won't succeed. And there's no point in blaming the people in this case. It was the wrong plan. The planner needs to assess what is going to be complied with and for how long.

bluelamp

snotboogie wrote: »

People won't travel until covid is under control anyway. The Irish government can't control this.

Yeah I agree with you - many won't.

I'm just saying it's untrue to suggest it's not an important part of our economy.

It's hugely important.

Bit cynical

snotboogie wrote: »

New Zealand will open up when there is a safe vaccine and continue to run their economy at 100% capacity with no social distancing until that time. If we follow our current path we will lumber in and out of rolling lockdown stages with the economy chugging along at 40-80% until there is a vaccine.

It is impossible to walk into New Zealand without getting very wet.

YellowBucket

I’m not sure where you’re getting your figures but tourism from North America is around 1.96 billion. It’s gone one way or the other due to the pandemic. Very few people are rushing to go on long haul flights for the craic and the airlines are in a total mess.

In total Irish tourism from overseas is about 4% of GNP. We spend similar amounts on overseas trips ourselves and that needs to be refocused domestically for a couple of years.

For context’s sake, COVID-19 has put us into deficit of €5.3 billion by June, and that’s just public expenditure, not opportunity cost and most of that has been an impact of lack of domestic activity.

You’re not going to solve those issues by throwing open the airports, without any kind of buffer to keep covid out.

The few billion it might bring in would easily be cost on an outbreak and the international tourism market is extremely depressed anyway.

Realistically, it will be 2024 before we have serious overseas inbound or outbound tourism back to normal and in the meantime we need to be getting irish people to spend at least some of the 6bn or so a year they usually spend abroad on domestic tourism and hospitality.

It’s about risk management and balancing costs and benefits. If the cost and risk of throwing open the door, without testing and proper controls outweighs the benefits, it makes no economic sense to so and there simply isn’t a demand there anyway.

You’re not going to get a flood of tourism from the USA right now - domestic chaos, pandemic, an impending recession, weak USD etc etc etc

What we should be looking at is trying to keep access to and from safer places in Europe and possibly growing Asian tourism over the next couple of years, not chasing high risk places like the USA, until they get their act together and deal with the pandemic, we just can’t risk it.

We also can’t magic back to how things were. That economy and set of benign circumstances no longer exists. We need to adapt and deal with the reality of where we are and what we can realistically do to move forward.

snotboogie

Bit cynical wrote: »

It is impossible to walk into New Zealand without getting very wet.

Would need some agreement with Belfast, obvs

YellowBucket

Take a look at how open Germany is:

High risk area, refuse to take a test / slip though = €25000 fine.

The USA is in an extreme risk list - you can’t travel to Germany from there AT ALL.

https://twitter.com/dwnews/status/1291461477128441864?s=20

aido79

snotboogie wrote: »

Same as New Zealand. Two weeks quartine on arrival with tests. He's answered the question nearly every time I've heard him speak.

So everyone including truck drivers would have to be placed in quarantine for 14 days on arrival? How do you plan on dealing with arrivals into Northern Ireland?

dubrov

aido79 wrote:

So everyone including truck drivers would have to be placed in quarantine for 14 days on arrival? How do you plan on dealing with arrivals into Northern Ireland?

Even quarantine isn't 100% effective. Eventually a case will slip through

aido79

i_surge wrote: »

Yeah but i can just point that back at you and ask how do we justify sending kids back to school and the like on the same basis?

It is awful pessimism to nit pick a plan to improve the situation while accepting the status quo.

Similar to the people who say wearing a mask puts you more at risk because you will touch your face. A tactic acceptance of the problem while trying to deny it.

I'm not sure how the schools are going to work to be honest. It's an impossible situation. They can't remain closed indefinitely.

You don't have a plan though. You have an idea to get the cases down to zero which is the easy part but nothing after that. You are relying on a vaccine which may or may not be found. I don't have much faith in the Irish health system to efficiently vaccinate the majority of the population so your plan might drag out for a very long time even after a vaccine is found. How long do you think it would take to vaccinate the population of Ireland?

I believe the best we can hope for now is rapid testing which will give results in hours rather than days. This along with being able to manage acute cases is the best we can hope for for the next couple of years.

munchkin_utd

snotboogie wrote: »

Would need some agreement with Belfast, obvs

would need either the UK as a whole to go into psycho covid killer mode (not likely to happen, but some experts are pushing it) or the unionionst to agree to quarantining anyone travelling internally in the UK between NI and GB, which they have not only rejected but have said they arent even going to discuss the possibility in the slightest.

Theres more chance of the irish government growing a pair and quarantining the Pale to protect the rest of the mainly covid free island than the north isolating themselves from the rest of the UK.

HeidiHeidi

snotboogie wrote: »

Would need some agreement with Belfast, obvs

If you say that really quickly, it sounds easy.

You also need Belfast to come to some agreement (that also suits us) with London. Not sure you can say that quickly enough to make it easy, tbh.....

YFlyer

Drink gin. Kills virus in the oesophagus region.

aido79

dubrov wrote: »

Even quarantine isn't 100% effective. Eventually a case will slip through

Definitely. And this will always be the case with quarantine being effectively optional in Ireland. It's completely unworkable without an all island approach which looks very unlikely to ever happen.

snotboogie

munchkin_utd wrote: »

would need either the UK as a whole to go into psycho covid killer mode (not likely to happen, but some experts are pushing it) or the unionionst to agree to quarantining anyone travelling internally in the UK between NI and GB, which they have not only rejected but have said they arent even going to discuss the possibility in the slightest.

Theres more chance of the irish government growing a pair and quarantining the Pale to protect the rest of the mainly covid free island than the north isolating themselves from the rest of the UK.

Can you link to where Northern Ireland have shot down an all Ireland solution?

aido79 wrote: »

So everyone including truck drivers would have to be placed in quarantine for 14 days on arrival? How do you plan on dealing with arrivals into Northern Ireland?

I'm not familiar with the industry but i'd be shocked if there was no solution other than putting the driver from the UK in quarantine. Off the top of my head:

(i) have the driver from the UK drop the truck on the ferry and have another driver from Ireland pick it up on the other side.

(ii) have strict regulations for drivers who drivers coming from the UK: have regulations that they are tested once a week in the UK, check these certs on entry and test them again on arrival, make it mandatory for them to have the contact tracing app and have regulations limiting their time outside of the truck.

I'm sure these solutions could be refined and that there are plenty of others. It wouldn't be ideal but it would be worth it for reopening our economy 100% again

aido79

munchkin_utd wrote: »

Theres more chance of the irish government growing a pair and quarantining the Pale to protect the rest of the mainly covid free island than the north isolating themselves from the rest of the UK.

What's the point of quarantining the Pale? Half of the new cases this week are in Laois, Offaly and Kildare.

aido79

snotboogie wrote: »

Can you link to where Northern Ireland have shot down an all Ireland solution?

This might help give you a little insight into the thinking of the DUP. They are against anything that separates the North from Britain. The union is more important to them than life itself.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.bbc.com/news/amp/uk-northern-ireland-53477661

snotboogie wrote: »

I'm not familiar with the industry but i'd be shocked if there was no solution other than putting the driver from the UK in quarantine. Off the top of my head:

(i) have the driver from the UK drop the truck on the ferry and have another driver from Ireland pick it up on the other side.

(ii) have strict regulations for drivers who drivers coming from the UK: have regulations that they are tested once a week in the UK, check these certs on entry and test them again on arrival, make it mandatory for them to have the contact tracing app and have regulations limiting their time outside of the truck.

I'm sure these solutions could be refined and that there are plenty of others. It wouldn't be ideal but it would be worth it for reopening our economy 100% again

In theory this would be a solution to truck drivers but how many extra drivers would be needed, where would they be found and much would it add to the cost of each delivery? The cost of which will always be passed onto the customer.

Diarmuid

YFlyer wrote: »

Drink gin. Kills virus in the oesophagus region.

Having scanned this thread, I think that's the approach i_surge was taking last night

snotboogie

aido79 wrote: »

This might help give you a little insight into the thinking of the DUP. They are against anything that separates the North from Britain. The union is more important to them than life itself.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.bbc.com/news/amp/uk-northern-ireland-53477661



In theory this would be a solution to truck drivers but how many extra drivers would be needed, where would they be found and much would it add to the cost of each delivery? The cost of which will always be passed onto the customer.

That's one politician, not a statement from Stormont. No question that it's a tough sell but maybe when the long term consequences of our current solution become clear, possible years of seesawing back and forth between stage 2 and stage 4, it will be an easier sell.

How much are businesses losing by being forced to close or needing to enforce social distancing? How much are the government paying to the staff out of work because of restrictions? A truck drivers wages pale in comparison to the economic cost of long term social distancing.

munchkin_utd

snotboogie wrote: »

Can you link to where Northern Ireland have shot down an all Ireland solution?

yep,

Sinn Féin's call for travellers from Great Britain to Northern Ireland to quarantine is a "non-starter", DUP MP Sir Jeffrey Donaldson has said.

Speaking on Talkback, Sir Jeffrey said: "There is a far greater risk to populations along the border from people travelling back and forward every day from the Republic of Ireland to Northern Ireland for work or social engagements, so we would have to look at that also if the deputy first minister is in the basis of pushing these issues.

He said the DUP would not support any such proposal to make GB-NI travellers quarantine and he said the medical and scientific advice did not support the move.

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-northern-ireland-53477661

aido79

snotboogie wrote: »

That's one politician, not a statement from Stormont. No question that it's a tough sell but maybe when the long term consequences of our current solution become clear, possible years of seesawing back and forth between stage 2 and stage 4, it will be an easier sell.

How much are businesses losing by being forced to close or needing to enforce social distancing? How much are the government paying to the staff out of work because of restrictions? A truck drivers wages pale in comparison to the economic cost of long term social distancing.

I said it's an insight into the DUP's thinking not an official statement. We can see from the Brexit negotiations that they will do anything to stick with the union. They take their orders from Westminster so will not listen to the Irish government even if it seems like a common sense approach.

I agree with you that it has a huge effect on businesses. I just don't agree that closing the borders for 3 months and then opening them up again will solve anything.

munchkin_utd

snotboogie wrote: »

That's one politician, not a statement from Stormont. No question that it's a tough sell but maybe when the long term consequences of our current solution become clear, possible years of seesawing back and forth between stage 2 and stage 4, it will be an easier sell.
.

If theres years of low level infection then its years of the unionists cutting themselves off from the rest of the UK, maybe decades. Thats not going to happen.

You might see a temporary emergency measure for a few weeks, like in Germany, Italy France etc, where a region is isolated (to keep out, or in, infections) but theres zero chance that the unionists will allow any bill to pass to have a rolliing separation of NI from the rest of the UK. They would be killed at the ballot box the next time round.

snotboogie

aido79 wrote: »

I said it's an insight into the DUP's thinking not an official statement. We can see from the Brexit negotiations that they will do anything to stick with the union. They take their orders from Westminster so will not listen to the Irish government even if it seems like a common sense approach.

I agree with you that it has a huge effect on businesses. I just don't agree that closing the borders for 3 months and then opening them up again will solve anything.

I don't see it happening unless we find out vaccines are a long way off, which is fine in my opinion. We are right to chug along between Phase 2 and 4 if there is a way out of this in 2021. However if we see that vaccines are not coming anytime in the next 5 years or so we will have to take radical action.

jackal

I think for the various reasons outlined in previous posts here the eradication approach taken by NZ (and literally nobody else) is a complete non starter.

So what I would be interested in is... what is the plan for living with the virus?

That means that the government/NPHET put out an outline of key milestones and what the effect of reaching those would be. At the moment decisions are made behind closed doors and we are treated like children, not given the information but scolded about behaviour. Its wearing very thin with me.

So what I would like to see would be something along the lines of:

x cases per day on average = y actions taken, and why we are doing it
x cases hospitalised = y actions taken, and why we are doing it
x cases in ICU = y actions taken, and why we are doing it
x deaths per day (hopefully not) = y actions taken, and why we are doing it

Imaging they actually treat the population like adults and say what the "magic numbers" (that the clearly have in mind but just wont tell us) are and what actions will be taken.

Maybe I would not like the plan, maybe it would be too conservative or too risky, but I would be happy for some clarity. We have been given no plan since "stop the surge". The easing of lockdowns plan has gone off the rails at this point with no clarity given on what the numbers that they need to be seeing are, just vague, ominous sounding statements on "not looking good" etc.

Bit cynical

Bit cynical wrote: »

So there is no plan at the moment. I don't know what we were thinking. Maybe we thought there would be a vaccine in September.

I think initially when there was serious talk of 500k deaths in Ireland it was the sensible thing to do. Now we seem to be stuck in a holding pattern of going for zero cases while allowing the world to visit us unimpeded. Now it makes far less sense. We have to accept there will be clusters and outbreaks and bring the country back to some sort of socially distanced normality. Especially schools and medical services. People are dying every day of preventable conditions, but no one is talking about that in the news.

aido79

snotboogie wrote: »

I don't see it happening unless we find out vaccines are a long way off, which is fine in my opinion. We are right to chug along between Phase 2 and 4 if there is a way out of this in 2021. However if we see that vaccines are not coming anytime in the next 5 years or so we will have to take radical action.

What radical action do you suggest?