Covid 19 Part XXXV-956,720 ROI (5,952 deaths) 452,946 NI (3,002 deaths) (08/01) Read OP

Oh, it can continue without restrictions. Just don't be expecting easy access to a hospital bed if you become acutely unwell.

I think you're seeing multiple issues in Ireland. I'm not sure that you could say that we're compliant with authority. There's got to be a level of trust in the system for that to happen. There isn't really any distance here between politics and the public.

The issues in France for example are not the same. You've a country that has a history of powerful, long lasting (7 year terms until 2000) executive presidency vs one with very much the opposite, a proportional representation parliamentary democracy. One listens or it will collapse, the other ploughs on regardless. That's pretty much why France has a history of street protests and riots. People felt it was the only means of getting heard.

Irish politics is also structured in a consensus finding way, and increasingly so as no party will ever hold an overall majority. You'll notice every major party and even the minor ones are on more or less the same page in this crisis. That's not the case in countries with highly polarised politics where covid is politicised. The US for example. Most of our conspiracy theorists seem to be basically online overspill from that too, I mean you literally had Trump and MAGA stuff appearing at some of the protests.

The biggest thing I think has damaged trust has been the constant spin from the Department of Education. Talking to a lot of parents and teachers, I think the trust has evaporated. They feel spun to and I think that's likely to have political consequences for FF and FG and very deservedly so. They've really annoyed and patronised the 30-40 somethings.

The other issue in Ireland is it's small. You can't really distance or abstract the impact of anything. So if someone has covid or someone's granny died of COVID half the country knows and there's genuine empathy.

Finally, I think the biggest issue is we don't and cannot reasonably assume that we have a robust health system. It can barely cope (often can't cope) with the normal flu season. Everyone knows that and I think that's also been something we've probably accepted as reality when it has come to the cautious approach. The vaccine rollout efficiency had been impressive, and I think it also shows what the system could be if it all worked like that.

Hopefully COVID shines a spotlight on it because it's a massive infrastructural weakness. I have read review of Ireland and time and time again it's one of the factors that puts people off moving and living here long term and I don't think that's understood by the likes of the IDA. I know quite a few people who moved here, had some horror story about A&E, wound up IT jobs and never came back. It comes up in various surveys too. Compared to many of our counterparts the health system here is crap. There's no getting around that and we're still failing to fix it.

I think though this narrative that we're a nanny state or that we're somehow being pushovers doesn't hold true at all. It's just a cohesive society with a barely functioning public health system and it's treading carefully.