Reflection on the pandemic: questions about the authorities' response.

We should remind ourselves of the Galway family (doctors) who returned from a ski trip in Italy in February 2020, only for the HSE to tell them to return to work immediately because they were not symptomatic.

Anyone paying attention to global news at the time would have been aware of the reported delay between infection and symptoms. It should have been no surprise when they came down with symptoms several days later, after having already returned to work.

I read an unbelievable comment claiming the minister for health had had not even heard of Covid as of mid-February. Considering they were preoccupied with the general election at the start of February, this isn't as far fetched as it sounds.

I remember seeing news reports out of China of a mystery illness around the new year 2019/2020. It was a concern because I had just had surgery and was immune compromised. It beggars belief that the Minster for health could have missed all this, unless our politicians really are living in their own bubble.

I'm curious how someone would compile a list of images from media they saw 3 years ago.

That Xmas would bring a surge should be surprise to noone considering how much social mixing would go on and many people would bend the rules as far as they could.

... and you're back to the pub ...

I didn't make any judgement of right or wrong about it. I just said from a point view of models and statistics it was predictable outcome.

Flights are irrelevant. Its like shutting the back door and pretending its keeping people out while leaving the windows and front doors wide wide open and having people walking in and out 24/7.

Truck drivers travel cross borders ie travel internationally to provide us with goods to keep the country going. At least some of them will be bringing in Covid.

The border with Northern Ireland is even worse because if really want to go outside the island just get a flight from one of the airports there. That's ignoring the fact going into Northern Ireland can be classed as international travel. Again the politics of the border meant we were never going to have an island wide plan.

Stopping international flights does and did not stop international travel to and from Ireland. It was just optics to placate people who were frustrated about being limited to 5km. There was a reason it took over a year for it to be introduced. It was obvious to anyone remotely familiar with the politics and logistics chains of the island that stopping international flights was pointless. It didn't come remotely close to stopping international travel and did nothing to stop Covid coming in.

Introducing pointless restrictions and I would class limiting flights as pointless was a bad idea as it eroded the public goodwill that was a requirement for the restrictions to work.

I'd agree with NEPHTs approach here not to stop international flights. Again the international travel situation was very far from ideal but its a perfect example of the challenges and limitations NEPHT and the government faced.

Two things you are using post pandemic figures, figures during the pandemic were far far lower. You are not including cross border movements. Remember Northern Ireland had different restrictions and generally looser restrictions when compared to the rest of the island.

Even ignoring my two points above the figures you quote are irrelevant in the context of Covid unfortunately. You seem to be forgetting that Covid is a highly infectious disease and a large percentage of people are asymptomatic. You only need a handful of people coming into the country who are infected and the virus spread throughout the entire population. And more than a handful were travelling to and from the Irish state on a daily basis even if you ignore international flights. Even though the figures were magnitudes lower during Covid when compared to normal years.

Countries like Australia, New Zealand etc had very very strict restrictions on international travel and even introduced tight lockdowns when even a small number of cases were found. That was impossible to do in Ireland for the reasons I've outlined.

Again I actually agree with NEPHTs approach to international flights. The recognised the futility of stopping them and focused measures on other areas. I'd agree with you though that the international travel situation was far from ideal. NEPHT were at times deaf to the practicalities of some of their plans. Its important to point out where they recognised a limitation and worked around it.

Because all those people driving back and forth across the border every day are not considered "passengers".

Christ, this isn't even complicated, you'd need to try damn hard to not understand the point made.

How can people even think this is a conspiracy?

Tony Holohan actually talked about it at every Briefing and plotted a 'worry Index' over time. When level of worry went down he said he was concerned 'people would drop their Guard.

His comments made me look up the stats.

The big disparity in COVID figures between NI and Rep. Suggests that there wasn't a big transmission of COVID between the North (much worse) and the South.

There would be no reason for someone to go UK > NI > R.Ireland, when there is nothing (no restrictions) stopping them from going UK > R.Ireland directly.

Ironically

A lot more people travel between UK and NI using Irish Ports and Airports than directly to NI Ports and Airports. I expect thats even more true of travel places other than UK to NI. The majority (86%) of travel across the border between NI and R.Ireland start and end near the border. They are short local rural journeys.

That's gas!

I'd say it's 1 or less now.

There's a worry index? Can you post a link to where you got that, that would be interesting to explore.

I got that image from the RTE article in the previous post, click it and you will see.

You’ve posted a link from August 2020 the worry o meter in the article goes up to December that year.

in any case it was a real thing in which NPHET based their recommendations.

Ah come on any you obviously don't understand how Covid or how similar diseases work. Virus spread from person to person. So person A from say Italy (any country will do) visits the UK and infects person B in the UK. Person B visits Northern Ireland and infects person C. Person C then crosses the border and infects person D in the Republic. Here's a simple chain of transmission that makes limiting international flights pointless. You can add in person E,F,G etc to the chain and the end result is the same. The particular strain of Covid is in the community and it will spread throughout the entire country. The fact that Ireland limited flights from Italy(again the exact country isn't relevant)was only a minor speed bump at best for the virus.

So fact there was any and I mean any cross border transmission meant the numbers coming in on international flights were absolutely irrelevant and shows a complete lack of understanding of Covid. I haven't even touched on the people who worked in international logistics and kept the country going in my example.

So personally limiting international flights was purely optics and experts said as much at the time. Again NEPHT made mistakes but their approach to international travel was practical and reflected the position of the state.

Look at the countries were stopping international flights was effective(ie not Europe) Countries like Australia, New Zealand China etc had very strict quarantine procedures, harsh lockdowns for even a handful of cases and put a lot of work into finding close contacts and stopping transmission at source. They recognised that fact that even one infected person had the potential to spread the virus throughout their country. Those measures are and were impossible to replicate in Ireland.