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Also Irish. +1 on your assessment here. The virulent strain narrative was peddled by the Irish government who went against medical advice and tried to deflect b

Also Irish. +1 on your assessment here. The virulent strain narrative was peddled by the Irish government who went against medical advice and tried to deflect blame. The evidence doesn’t support the narrative. I think the COVID-fatigue angle is quite interesting though. As critical as I am of the government they were under a lot of pressure from the populous to provide some sort of respite.

ls612 6y ago
Isn’t this last bit in some sense a good thing? Representative government changing policies to reflect a shift in the population’s preference after ten months of dealing with these restrictions?
- Barrin92 6y ago
  Representative government caving to demands when the demands are terrible, like in this case, is not a good thing. In that moment what is needed is enough guts to see the measures through and fend interest groups off. Loss of leadership and movement towards "the customer is king" politics is responsible for a lot of mistakes in the response to this virus.
  - mam2 6y ago
    Hindsight is 10/10.
    - mschuster91 6y ago
      Uh, there was and is no "hindsight" involved here. The scientific consensus about coronavirus and how to fight it (wearing masks, lockdowns and contact tracing) was clear pretty shortly after the whole drama began. The problem was politicians, not just in the US, didn't have the guts to tell and explain their citizens that. The governments that did (New Zealand) or had prior epidemics experience / a population with a high compliance rate/trust in government (Japan, Taiwan) fared pretty well, as did the governments that resorted to authoritarian scale (China, Vietnam, Thailand). For what it's worth even European countries such as Italy showed that hard lockdowns were and are effective, but politicians chose to disregard that evidence and prayed for the second wave to never appear...
      - Nomentatus 6y ago
        Right. The mask data goes back a century and very good studies were published re SARS and masks after mask data was discarded and ignored by many during that illness. Quarantines and social distancing aren't new, never were.
      - mam2 6y ago
        the hindsight is not about what we should "ideally do to fight the pandemic regardless of everything else". But if people really wanted it (for economic reason for start, you know poor people like being able to eat)...
  - nickelcitymario 6y ago
    If we believe in democracy, we necessarily must believe that the crowd - the mob, if you're feeling less generous - is better at making decisions than any small group of people. Which means believing that it's better to implement a terrible but popular decision than to override the will of the people. So in this case, IF the majority supported lifting restrictions (and I'm not Irish so I have no idea what the public sentiment was), then the politicians did the right thing: They obeyed the will of the people. Which also means that in this case, the people of Ireland f'd up and need to take responsibility for that, rather than blame the politicians who simply implemented their will. We can't have it both ways. We can't demand a government of the people, by the people, for the people, and also let ourselves off the hook whenever our collective decisions suck. Maybe we, the people, suck at governing in a crisis.
    - azinman2 6y ago
      This is why democracies are usually republics versus direct vote democracies -- the will of the majority will always throw the minority under the bus. This is why you have laws, checks and balances against mob rule.
    - pizza 6y ago
      One way I look at democracy is that it’s the will of the majority + the rights of the minority. It gets a little.. speculative.. once that minority in this case is “(future) victims of covid”. Not sure how to fully and clearly articulate the principle behind why we should give up a little impatience now, in a somewhat unpopular way, and how that is compatible with democracy, but I believe it is.
    - georgeecollins 6y ago
      The US government is based on the idea that "citizens" (note: lots of problems with the way they defined them at the time) elect people who make decisions on their behalf. It was designed to have more and less democratic institutions so that there would be block on the popular will. They believed that the purpose of democracy was to be able to remove the people who ruled you, to ultimately prevent autocracy. They didn't believe every decision should be a plebiscite.
    - 6y ago
- joe_the_user 6y ago
  I don't know about Ireland in particular. But my sense is Covid restrictions many places in the Western world have begun crude and unfriendly to the individual because that's what's simple, cheap and what doesn't cost businesses money (with the US the worst but not the only offender). The US still isn't requiring sick-leave, isn't requiring safe working conditions around Covid. Basically, not considerate of people's situation until people are at the breaking point and then just opening the flood gates.
- lynchdt 6y ago
  Yeah, it’s really hard to be overly critical. You could argue the government did its civic duty here, public sentiment was overwhelming in favor of reduced restrictions. Unfortunately, as detailed elsewhere in comments, enough of the populous didn’t respond in kind in fulfilling theirs - which is what the decision needed to work. That said you could also argue this was predictable. Our diaspora are scattered about the globe, and coming home for Christmas is a common event and our UK border basically doesn’t exist. Similarly, folks who are originally from elsewhere in the EU flying home for Christmas then back. Overlay the drinking/socializing culture, which hits its busiest period around December and watch the R number tip upwards. Full disclosure: I agreed with this government decision at the time, but was quite surprised / shocked at the resultant case explosion.
jnsie 6y ago
Also Irish. 100% agree with the both of you. I have a limited amount of sympathy for the government as Christmas is hugely culturally significant, but I think they did a poor job (especially the handwaving over flights from abroad that can be paraphrased as "we recommend that people don't come home for Christmas unless they feel they really need to") and what we're seeing now is largely CYA.
secfirstmd 6y ago
Agreed. To be honest the minute Fianna Fail came into government things slipped a bit and it feels like the pressure from business was allowed overwhelm the health advice. It was plainly obvious what was going to happen when they opened up. The annoying thing was that the last year was wasted by not increasing emergency capacity in ICU and getting the correct processes in place to create a fast roll-out of vaccination. Right now they are two weeks in a one one week delayed and only doing 40k a week at max. I think also we allowed ourself to be "ah sure we can't do that here" compared to New Zealand. The short term economic aspect of things blinded us. If you were coming to the country as the case in the NZ, you should be in mandatory hotel quarantine which all the strict rules in place as needed. With the exception of essential services like hauliers. Every one says in Ireland things can't be done, they can be and people will die because we weren't brave enough to make tougher calls. We would be in much better shape if we had of. Don't get me started on the mess up North throughout the whole thing. Ultimately though this is about people taking individual responsibility. It's frustrating everyone blaming the government, I have many friends in frontline services and the irresponsibility of some over christmas was crazy. People's friends and family are suffering for it now.
- randompwd 6y ago
  Any Irish response or strategy is gonna be hobbled by the Northern Ireland lax response. We can't just shut the NI border, either legally or politically. Which is unfortunate.

ls612 6y ago

Isn’t this last bit in some sense a good thing? Representative government changing policies to reflect a shift in the population’s preference after ten months of dealing with these restrictions?

Barrin92 6y ago
Representative government caving to demands when the demands are terrible, like in this case, is not a good thing. In that moment what is needed is enough guts to see the measures through and fend interest groups off. Loss of leadership and movement towards "the customer is king" politics is responsible for a lot of mistakes in the response to this virus.
- mam2 6y ago
  Hindsight is 10/10.
  - mschuster91 6y ago
    Uh, there was and is no "hindsight" involved here. The scientific consensus about coronavirus and how to fight it (wearing masks, lockdowns and contact tracing) was clear pretty shortly after the whole drama began. The problem was politicians, not just in the US, didn't have the guts to tell and explain their citizens that. The governments that did (New Zealand) or had prior epidemics experience / a population with a high compliance rate/trust in government (Japan, Taiwan) fared pretty well, as did the governments that resorted to authoritarian scale (China, Vietnam, Thailand). For what it's worth even European countries such as Italy showed that hard lockdowns were and are effective, but politicians chose to disregard that evidence and prayed for the second wave to never appear...
    - Nomentatus 6y ago
      Right. The mask data goes back a century and very good studies were published re SARS and masks after mask data was discarded and ignored by many during that illness. Quarantines and social distancing aren't new, never were.
    - mam2 6y ago
      the hindsight is not about what we should "ideally do to fight the pandemic regardless of everything else". But if people really wanted it (for economic reason for start, you know poor people like being able to eat)...
- nickelcitymario 6y ago
  If we believe in democracy, we necessarily must believe that the crowd - the mob, if you're feeling less generous - is better at making decisions than any small group of people. Which means believing that it's better to implement a terrible but popular decision than to override the will of the people. So in this case, IF the majority supported lifting restrictions (and I'm not Irish so I have no idea what the public sentiment was), then the politicians did the right thing: They obeyed the will of the people. Which also means that in this case, the people of Ireland f'd up and need to take responsibility for that, rather than blame the politicians who simply implemented their will. We can't have it both ways. We can't demand a government of the people, by the people, for the people, and also let ourselves off the hook whenever our collective decisions suck. Maybe we, the people, suck at governing in a crisis.
  - azinman2 6y ago
    This is why democracies are usually republics versus direct vote democracies -- the will of the majority will always throw the minority under the bus. This is why you have laws, checks and balances against mob rule.
  - pizza 6y ago
    One way I look at democracy is that it’s the will of the majority + the rights of the minority. It gets a little.. speculative.. once that minority in this case is “(future) victims of covid”. Not sure how to fully and clearly articulate the principle behind why we should give up a little impatience now, in a somewhat unpopular way, and how that is compatible with democracy, but I believe it is.
  - georgeecollins 6y ago
    The US government is based on the idea that "citizens" (note: lots of problems with the way they defined them at the time) elect people who make decisions on their behalf. It was designed to have more and less democratic institutions so that there would be block on the popular will. They believed that the purpose of democracy was to be able to remove the people who ruled you, to ultimately prevent autocracy. They didn't believe every decision should be a plebiscite.
  - 6y ago
joe_the_user 6y ago
I don't know about Ireland in particular. But my sense is Covid restrictions many places in the Western world have begun crude and unfriendly to the individual because that's what's simple, cheap and what doesn't cost businesses money (with the US the worst but not the only offender). The US still isn't requiring sick-leave, isn't requiring safe working conditions around Covid. Basically, not considerate of people's situation until people are at the breaking point and then just opening the flood gates.
lynchdt 6y ago
Yeah, it’s really hard to be overly critical. You could argue the government did its civic duty here, public sentiment was overwhelming in favor of reduced restrictions. Unfortunately, as detailed elsewhere in comments, enough of the populous didn’t respond in kind in fulfilling theirs - which is what the decision needed to work. That said you could also argue this was predictable. Our diaspora are scattered about the globe, and coming home for Christmas is a common event and our UK border basically doesn’t exist. Similarly, folks who are originally from elsewhere in the EU flying home for Christmas then back. Overlay the drinking/socializing culture, which hits its busiest period around December and watch the R number tip upwards. Full disclosure: I agreed with this government decision at the time, but was quite surprised / shocked at the resultant case explosion.

jnsie 6y ago

Also Irish. 100% agree with the both of you. I have a limited amount of sympathy for the government as Christmas is hugely culturally significant, but I think they did a poor job (especially the handwaving over flights from abroad that can be paraphrased as "we recommend that people don't come home for Christmas unless they feel they really need to") and what we're seeing now is largely CYA.

secfirstmd 6y ago

Agreed. To be honest the minute Fianna Fail came into government things slipped a bit and it feels like the pressure from business was allowed overwhelm the health advice. It was plainly obvious what was going to happen when they opened up. The annoying thing was that the last year was wasted by not increasing emergency capacity in ICU and getting the correct processes in place to create a fast roll-out of vaccination. Right now they are two weeks in a one one week delayed and only doing 40k a week at max. I think also we allowed ourself to be "ah sure we can't do that here" compared to New Zealand. The short term economic aspect of things blinded us. If you were coming to the country as the case in the NZ, you should be in mandatory hotel quarantine which all the strict rules in place as needed. With the exception of essential services like hauliers. Every one says in Ireland things can't be done, they can be and people will die because we weren't brave enough to make tougher calls. We would be in much better shape if we had of. Don't get me started on the mess up North throughout the whole thing. Ultimately though this is about people taking individual responsibility. It's frustrating everyone blaming the government, I have many friends in frontline services and the irresponsibility of some over christmas was crazy. People's friends and family are suffering for it now.

randompwd 6y ago
Any Irish response or strategy is gonna be hobbled by the Northern Ireland lax response. We can't just shut the NI border, either legally or politically. Which is unfortunate.