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
Hi all! We have been experiencing an issue on site where threads have been missing the latest postings. The platform host Vanilla are working on this issue. A workaround that has been used by some is to navigate back from 1 to 10+ pages to re-sync the thread and this will then show the latest posts. Thanks, Mike.
Hi there,
There is an issue with role permissions that is being worked on at the moment.
If you are having trouble with access or permissions on regional forums please post here to get access: https://www.boards.ie/discussion/2058365403/you-do-not-have-permission-for-that#latest

Ireland vs New Zealand

  • 28-04-2020 9:08am
    #1
    RandomName2
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 5,570 ✭✭✭RandomName2


    No this is isn't about that horrific 46-14 score back in the 2019 Rugby World Cup, this thread is about a different way in which New Zealand is beating us.

    0arc7c4sj8v41.png

    Not only does New Zealand have way fewer deaths than us, it has called its conflict against COVID-19 all but over.

    new-zealand-elimination-coronavirus


    Obviously the HSE was determined initially to have COVID-19 spread liberally though the population by only suggesting that people that developed symptoms should self-isolate, while other people coming back from high risk areas should go to work and school. Ad-hoc secretive closures of schools took place only after an outbreak in each school had been guaranteed. Testing was not mandatory, was barred to people who were asymptomatic, and a ramp up of testing capacity was only conducted after the only lab in the country set to do testing collapsed under the predictable demand.

    But okay, that's in the past, so how do we make ourselves more like New Zealand now? New Zealand always kept its active cases low, and while we have been great at stopping it from rapidly rising, people still seem to be getting infected, and infecting others. So at the moment we only have a stalemate with COVID-19, how do we push it back into the ocean? More to the point, how do we ensure that our advantage isn't lost the moment we ease restrictions?

    Again the Kiwis may be ones to watch in relation to this

    could-new-zealand-s-bubble-strategy-offer-a-way-out-of-lockdown


«13456789

Comments

  • #2
    beggars_bush
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 4,647 ✭✭✭beggars_bush


    You do realise how far away from almost everwhere NZ is?

    It's much more sparsely populated

    It's much easier to lockdown. Especially when most travellers reach it, via Australia which already has strict measures in place


  • #3
    ChikiChiki
    Closed Accounts Posts: 4,950 ✭✭✭ChikiChiki


    ****ing sick of seeing this absolutely **** comparison. This is the stick being used to beat our response to the virus in the past 24 hours.

    Apart from population size It's apples and oranges.


  • #4
    SEPT 23 1989
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 43,028 ✭✭✭✭SEPT 23 1989


    They wouldn't have had much human traffic from the Uk or northern Italy


  • #5
    ninebeanrows
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 12,780 ✭✭✭✭ninebeanrows


    Is this a wind up thread? Apart from population total Ireland and NZ have fup all in common in this situation.


  • #6
    RandomName2
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 5,570 ✭✭✭RandomName2


    ChikiChiki wrote: »
    ****ing sick of seeing this absolutely **** comparison. This is the stick being used to beat our response to the virus in the past 24 hours.

    Apart from population size It's apples and oranges.

    It's three times as big

    1st world country, an island, a former UK colony, large farming sector, predominantly Caucasian population, English speaking, much smaller than its neighbors.

    Ireland ranked 45/187 in terms of GDP (PPP) while New Zealand ranked 67/187

    Life expectancy Ireland: 80.560 years. Life expectancy New Zealand: 80.930 years

    But feel free to defend the retarded policy of the HSE in the opening weeks of the virus coming here. Feel free to defend the lack of containment. Say that our one thousand dead is just bad luck if you like. New Zealand is a case in point showing that it didn't have to be like this. Now perhaps it would be useful to start seeing what measures they took that were useful in combating the spread of the disease and how we might use them here.

    Ireland is not a densely populated country.
    https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/european-countries-by-population-density.html

    Sleety_Rain wrote: »
    Is this a wind up thread? Apart from population total Ireland and NZ have fup all in common in this situation.

    It might be an idea - just an idea - to look at another country that has beaten this to get some tips. Not China, not South Korea, not Singapore, not Vietnam. You could say those are apples and oranges in comparison to Ireland. I don't think you are going to get many countries that are more similar to each other than Ireland and New Zealand. Go ahead, name a country. Give it a shot. Name a country more similar than Ireland and New Zealand.


  • Advertisement
  • #7
    RandomName2
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 5,570 ✭✭✭RandomName2


    SEPT 23 1989 wrote: »
    They wouldn't have had much human traffic from the Uk or northern Italy

    I think that if they had a large international rugby match against Italy and they cancelled it due to fears concerning the spread of COVID-19, they probably would have stopped the supporters from coming into the country or at least subjected them to two weeks quarantine.


  • #8
    tucker1971
    Registered Users Posts: 177 ✭✭tucker1971


    This is an interesting stat from last week the 20th April.
    Ireland 3rd worse in the world for cases per head of population.
    Also out of the 12 countries mentioned we are the only island.

    Not good.
    Attached Images
    File Type: jpeg 21176.jpeg (462.2 KB, 0 views)


  • #9
    fatknacker
    Registered Users Posts: 2,342 ✭✭✭fatknacker


    That’s great regarding social and cultural similarities but can you tell us geographical similarities? What countries are closest to NZ? Their distances? How many more square KMs is it?

    And how about migration? How many planes landed in NZ from Europe compared to Ireland in 2020?


  • #10
    [Deleted User]
    Posts: 5,121 ✭✭✭ [Deleted User]


    tucker1971 wrote: »
    This is an interesting stat from last week the 20th April.
    Ireland 3rd worse in the world for cases per head of population.
    Also out of the 12 countries mentioned we are the only island.

    Not good.
    Attached Images
    File Type: jpeg 21176.jpeg (462.2 KB, 0 views)
    Your image doesn't work.
    We aren't an island. We have an open land border with the UK.


  • #11
    mandrake04
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 4,435 ✭✭✭mandrake04


    NZ had excellent Test and Trace capabilities.


    NZ did 126,066 tests with results back in 1-2 days

    Ireland did 127,319 minus 30,000-40,000 samples Germany did after they sat around for 2-3 weeks which was pointless for tracing, and there lots of samples missing.

    Missing samples is fine though, that keeps the case numbers down.


  • Advertisement
  • #12
    RandomName2
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 5,570 ✭✭✭RandomName2


    fatknacker wrote: »
    That’s great regarding social and cultural similarities but can you tell us geographical similarities?

    Both are islands that are sparsely populated. New Zealand is significantly larger and thus more sparsely populated.
    fatknacker wrote: »
    What countries are closest to NZ? Their distances? How many more square KMs is it?

    NZ is as close to the source of outbreak in Wuhan as Ireland. However the containment policies of the other Asian countries certainly would have helped. A lot of New Zealand's cases originate from Iran, a country which badly mismanaged its outbreak.
    fatknacker wrote: »
    And how about migration? How many planes landed in NZ from Europe compared to Ireland in 2020?

    Presumably only a small fraction of the same. After all Ireland is in Europe, and New Zealand is in the Pacific. However Europe wasn't where the virus originated, and within Europe Ireland was one of the last to be infected. From a European point of view Ireland is a very small, albeit well developed, backwater (a bit like New Zealand in the Pacific).


  • #13
    RandomName2
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 5,570 ✭✭✭RandomName2


    Deleted User wrote: »
    We aren't an island. We have an open land border with the UK.

    This wasn't actually important in terms of the outbreak. Northern Ireland's first case came through Dublin, not the other way around. It is a significant worry though going forward. When Boris Johnson was still talking about herd immunity it made me very worried about the implications here.


  • #14
    Xertz
    Closed Accounts Posts: 1,069 ✭✭✭Xertz


    Seems the key things to do are:

    1) Rant about lack of testing, despite reality being the tests per capita have been amongst the highest in the world.
    2) When tests find cases, compare those to countries doing far less testing and rant about the fact said cases are detected.
    3) Compare with NZ, similar to Ireland except remote from basically everywhere else, whereas we are a short (and very, very frequent flight) away from London (a massive hotspot) and almost everywhere else in Europe and also the East Coast of the US. It’s quite plausible that there was an outbreak in NYC before in was noticed and we are more connected by air to NYC than many US states are...
    We also have a common travel area and land border with the U.K.

    Unless you were to place Ireland thousands of KM away from any other major market, it’s just not comparable to NZ.

    Our entire economy is about being a gateway to/from Europe and also one between North America and Europe.

    There was vastly more frequent travel in and out of Ireland and to far more diverse destinations than there was in NZ ahead of detecting the pandemic. We were probably infected weeks before we began to even notice.

    Italy and the US most definitely has it weeks before it was really flaring up and given the hub status of London, Paris and so on it’s almost impossible to see how Ireland wasn’t too.

    Even on leisure travel, we make 1.3 million trips per year (for just 4.8 million pop) to Spain alone!!

    When the pandemic was called, we had loads of schools on ski trips to Northern Italy. How many NZers would be doing that at any given time?

    Trips to/from the U.K. and most of near Europe are about as regular as getting a bus. We don’t even think about them.


  • #15
    Xterminator
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 4,757 ✭✭✭Xterminator


    Hi Op

    New Zealand is about 3.8 times bigger than Ireland. but has less population. 4.886 vs approx 5 million. Now even basic maths will tell you the population density cannot be comparable.


    Ireland is in the EU and has free movment to a bloc of 446 million inhabitants via treaty while new zealand has reciprocal agreement with australia pop 24.99 million.

    There are some similarities but you are being very selective is your acknowlegment of the facts, (very trump like) if you ignore the obvious facts that dont suit your argument.


  • #16
    tucker1971
    Registered Users Posts: 177 ✭✭tucker1971


    Here is the attached stat that failed to upload.


  • #17
    cloudatlas
    Registered Users Posts: 3,709 ✭✭✭cloudatlas


    beggars_bush wrote: »
    You do realise how far away from almost everwhere NZ is?

    It's much more sparsely populated

    It's much easier to lockdown. Especially when most travellers reach it, via Australia which already has strict measures in place

    I've used the same arguments for why people shouldn't be comparing Ireland to the U.K. and nobody listened. Why should they listen to you?


  • #18
    plodder
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 7,402 ✭✭✭plodder


    Dublin airport has 50% more passengers per year compared to Auckland and I would guess a higher percentage of international travelers. It's fairly obvious that New Zealand is more isolated than Ireland.
    Obviously the HSE was determined initially to have COVID-19 spread liberally though the population...
    I'm sure lessons can and will be learned from a comparison, but certainly not starting from statements like the above.


  • #19
    Xertz
    Closed Accounts Posts: 1,069 ✭✭✭Xertz


    Actually on population density, New Zealand developed much later in the sense of towns and cities, so is far more “new world” and very urbanised.

    Ireland tends to have an unusually low density development pattern with a lot of scattered housing. So on that metric, we should be doing well in this.

    It would be more reasonable to compare Ireland to the Nordic countries, Austria, and less populated distinct places that aren’t sovereign countries like: Western France, Scotland, some of the German Lander etc

    Ireland also has no physical border between two jurisdictions on the island. For all intents and purposes the border is as relevant to movement of people as one between two counties in most countries. It’s not been marked.

    So in reality Ireland has 6.6 million people and there’s effectively massive free flow between those areas and also into and out of Britain. The U.K. response is both beyond our control and of huge impact, particularly in the early days of this outbreak and in this instance seem to have really dropped the ball. For whatever reasons, the U.K. has managed to have one of the highest per capita death rates in the world and that is mostly occurring in England. Scotland, Wales and particularly NI have had far less of an issue.


  • #20
    ednwireland
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 14,452 ✭✭✭✭ednwireland


    open land border with uk , lots of ferry traffic, lots of people going on mini breaks to europe, seemed to be lots of skiing trips as it was mid term to one of the hotspots.

    oh and the rugby match

    no isolating of people as they came in which once the lockdown started should have been compulsory - seems to be how any countries that got a handle on it did it

    the weekend before st patricks day my boss flew back into belfast international and said he was amazed at the packed flights heading out to spain. we were prepping the company to go home working that weekend

    My weather

    https://www.ecowitt.net/home/share?authorize=96CT1F



  • #21
    mandrake04
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 4,435 ✭✭✭mandrake04


    Xterminator wrote: »
    Hi Op

    New Zealand is about 3.8 times bigger than Ireland. but has less population. 4.886 vs approx 5 million. Now even basic maths will tell you the population density cannot be comparable.
    .

    Explain why population density would be relevant?


  • Advertisement
  • #22
    manlad
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 474 ✭✭manlad


    mandrake04 wrote: »
    Explain why population density would be relevant?

    Eh social distancing???


  • #23
    RandomName2
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 5,570 ✭✭✭RandomName2


    Xterminator wrote: »
    Hi Op

    New Zealand is about 3.8 times bigger than Ireland. but has less population. 4.886 vs approx 5 million. Now even basic maths will tell you the population density cannot be comparable.

    Look at the post two above this one.
    Xterminator wrote: »
    Ireland is in the EU and has free movment to a bloc of 446 million inhabitants via treaty while new zealand has reciprocal agreement with australia pop 24.99 million.

    And yet all the countries of Europe have unilaterally restricted movement with each other on the foot of COVID-19. Ireland decided not to do this. Pascal O'Donohoe said that it would be offensive to Italy if this were done.
    Xterminator wrote: »
    There are some similarities but you are being very selective is your acknowlegment of the facts, (very trump like) if you ignore the obvious facts that dont suit your argument.

    Some similarities? I can't think of a country more similar to Ireland than New Zealand. None. The UK, Iceland, and Australia come closest, but the differences between them and Ireland are more striking than between New Zealand and Ireland.

    Leaving aside the possibility of alternate universes we will see no facsimile of Ireland. To say that New Zealand's success does not merit investigation because of its differences is a bit of a crock, particularly when considering the striking social, political, and economic similarities between the two countries. Some people may say that Ireland cannot look to Singapore for inspiration, but I have little patience if they pretend that New Zealand isn't comparable.


  • #24
    Xertz
    Closed Accounts Posts: 1,069 ✭✭✭Xertz


    The comparison with NZ is a bit like a comparison with say Newfoundland or trying to compare Spain and South Australia.

    There are similarities eg maybe climate, aspects of economics, etc but the factor that matters with this was exposure to vectors for community infection and being very far way from anywhere else is a HUGE factor.

    You could basically say NZ is naturally socially distanced and cocooned, as entire country.

    It’s one of the reasons tech billionaires had been buying up property in remote parts of NZ. It was considered to be far enough away to be safe from any global incident. Many of them were looking at what might happen more in a war type situation, or where there was a melt down of some sort in the USA.

    They weren’t rushing to move to remote locations in Ireland, Scotland, Sweden, the Austrian alps or anywhere in Europe because it isn’t far away enough.

    The ironic thing was many didn’t consider that in a pandemic they wouldn’t be easily able to get there and may be considered to be carriers of the disease and locked out.


  • #25
    RandomName2
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 5,570 ✭✭✭RandomName2


    plodder wrote: »

    I'm sure lessons can and will be learned from a comparison, but certainly not starting from statements like the above.

    I'm merely reiterating what I said back in February

    https://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?p=112646596

    When I saw how stupid and incompetent they were I knew were were fcked. Thankfully the government brought in a full lockdown, but a lot of damage had already occurred.

    The HSE did invest in a leaflet stand at Dublin airport though. They did that alright.

    hse-staff-who-are-activating-the-public-awareness-campaign-for-covid-19-coronavirus-in-the-baggage-hall-of-terminal-2-at-dublin-airport-2B204BF.jpg


  • #26
    Xertz
    Closed Accounts Posts: 1,069 ✭✭✭Xertz


    Given the evidence available in February, completely locking down the entire country was unthinkable from a policy point of view.

    It’s different now as we’ve the benefit of hindsight and the fact that it rapidly became normality in March and April.

    This thing has move at a very rapid pace and the world has changed over a few weeks.

    Can you imagine if in say early Feb the government has said that it would just seal the borders, or ask the whole country to basically stay at home and only go within 2km of their homes?!

    They’d have been laughed out of it by most.

    Also at any given time we have hundreds of thousands of people abroad or in transit. It’s not exactly possible to just say : “sorry Mary, you were on holidays in Spain, you made your bed! You’ll never be allowed to come home again and perhaps you should find a nice spot on the beach when your cards max out or the hotel closes down. Sure we’ll see you in 2021 sometime! Good luck now..”


  • #27
    RandomName2
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 5,570 ✭✭✭RandomName2


    Xertz wrote: »
    Given the evidence available in February, completely locking down the entire country was unthinkable from a policy point of view.

    It’s different now as we’ve the benefit of hindsight and the fact that it rapidly became normality in March and April.

    This thing has move at a very rapid pace and the world has changed over a few weeks.

    Can you imagine if in day early Feb the government has said that it would just seal the borders, or ask the whole country to basically stay at home and only go within 2km of their homes?!

    They’d have been laughed out of it by most.

    Also at any given time we have hundreds of thousands of people abroad or in transit. It’s not exactly possible to just say : “sorry Mary, you were on holidays in Spain, you made your bed! You’ll never be allowed to come home again and perhaps you should find a nice spot on the beach when your cards max out or the hotel closes down.”



    They could have just quarantined anybody coming into the country for two weeks. That's it.

    If that was too extreme, you could decide to quarantine only people coming into the country from regions with active outbreaks (e.g. northern Italy). A riskier approach but one that might have worked.

    In the end they decided for a free-for-all and lockdown when the inevitable happened. Inevitable? Inevitable because anybody with hands can use the internet and see what had already happened in both Italy and China. This is the reason I didn't excuse Boris Johnson being mislead by advisors, because you could just look up the news. Trump doesn't get a by on his medical knowledge just because he hasn't been specifically briefed on how bleach works.

    Now the example of New Zealand is clear as day, and posters in this thread are hostile to the comparison because New Zealand is three times as big as Ireland. Perhaps a more comprehensive assessment is merited.


  • #28
    Gidea
    Registered Users Posts: 468 ✭✭Gidea


    beggars_bush wrote: »
    You do realise how far away from almost everwhere NZ is?

    It's much more sparsely populated

    It's much easier to lockdown. Especially when most travellers reach it, via Australia which already has strict measures in place

    Add in the fact that we get alomst 4x as many tourist than NZ (quick google showed around 3.5mill annualy for NZ to our 12) and the fact that europe is an epicentre of the disease and has easy travel for its member states, this comparison is basicaly nonsense


  • #29
    wakka12
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 9,786 ✭✭✭wakka12


    First COVID case here probably in reality around the start of February and widespread outbreaks occurring throughout the country before the first case was even confirmed

    Much less likely an outbreak occurred in New Zealand earlier than us given how much less travellers from Europe they recieve


  • #30
    wakka12
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 9,786 ✭✭✭wakka12


    Auckland council area population density
    1200 km2

    Dublin county pop density

    4588 km2


  • Advertisement
  • #31
    Dr. Kenneth Noisewater
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 3,236 ✭✭✭Dr. Kenneth Noisewater


    Comparing the population density is pointless, something like 83% of New Zealanders live in urban areas, with more than half of the urban population living in the 4 biggest cities of Auckland, Wellington, Christchurch and Hamilton. Those cities are all well interconnected, and Kiwis do a lot of travelling around the country, both for business and recreation. Every reasonably large town has an airport.

    NZ obviously had an advantage from the start with it's relative remoteness from large populations and the fact that they closed the borders very early on. What they've also done was put in place one of the tightest lockdowns in the world, announcing Alert Level 4 on 23rd March, at which stage there were still only 102 cases in the country and nobody had died. Level 4 meant absolutely everything was closed apart from Supermarkets and Pharmacies and people were effectively on 23 hour lockdown apart from being allowed out to exercise or buy food.

    We've gone down to Level 3 from today, which just means that restaurants and cafes can now serve food and beverage for takeaway or delivery only (people still aren't allowed inside the store, and it must be done contactlessly).

    Jacinda Ardern said it was important to "go hard and go early" and that's exactly what happened here. The economy will suffer the same as anywhere else, but they got the major calls right and I will say one thing for the Kiwi public, they by and large adhered to it extremely vigilantly.


  • #32
    wakka12
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 9,786 ✭✭✭wakka12


    Dr. Kenneth Noisewater wrote: »
    Comparing the population density is pointless, something like 83% of New Zealanders live in urban areas, with more than half of the urban population living in the 4 biggest cities of Auckland, Wellington, Christchurch and Hamilton. Those cities are all well interconnected, and Kiwis do a lot of travelling around the country, both for business and recreation. Every reasonably large town has an airport.

    NZ obviously had an advantage from the start with it's relative remoteness from large populations and the fact that they closed the borders very early on. What they've also done was put in place one of the tightest lockdowns in the world, announcing Alert Level 4 on 23rd March, at which stage there were still only 102 cases in the country and nobody had died. Level 4 meant absolutely everything was closed apart from Supermarkets and Pharmacies and people were effectively on 23 hour lockdown apart from being allowed out to exercise or buy food.

    We've gone down to Level 3 from today, which just means that restaurants and cafes can now serve food and beverage for takeaway or delivery only (people still aren't allowed inside the store, and it must be done contactlessly).

    Jacinda Ardern said it was important to "go hard and go early" and that's exactly what happened here. The economy will suffer the same as anywhere else, but they got the major calls right and I will say one thing for the Kiwi public, they by and large adhered to it extremely vigilantly.

    POpulation density of an entire country is pointless as you have completely remote areas inflating the figure for how spread out the population is if most people live in cities

    But comparing the population density of urban areas between countries is extremely relevant


  • #33
    RandomName2
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 5,570 ✭✭✭RandomName2


    Gidea wrote: »
    and the fact that europe is an epicentre of the disease

    The epicenter of the disease is China. It occurred in Wuhan in December 2019 and grew exponentially. Any country that subsequently got infected either had to get it from China, or got it from a country that got it from China.

    Europe wanted to protect business so put no restrictions on movement to China. It did not have any contingency plans for epidemics. It did not have face masks. It had populations that considered any preventative measures to be hysterical.

    Asia was where this occurred. Not Europe. The fact that Europe and America have become badly effected has nothing to do with the epicenter of the disease.

    All it takes is one case and a country that does not care.


  • #34
    Dr. Kenneth Noisewater
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 3,236 ✭✭✭Dr. Kenneth Noisewater


    wakka12 wrote: »
    But comparing the population density of urban areas between countries is extremely relevant

    That's fair to a point, but I think that's more a comparison you should be making for somewhere like New York rather than Dublin v Auckland which are both low density cities with sprawling suburbs.


  • #35
    Gidea
    Registered Users Posts: 468 ✭✭Gidea


    RandomName2 wrote: »
    The epicenter of the disease is China. It occurred in Wuhan in December 2019 and grew exponentially. Any country that subsequently got infected either had to get it from China, or got it from a country that got it from China.

    Europe wanted to protect business so put no restrictions on movement to China. It did not have any contingency plans for epidemics. It did not have face masks. It had populations that considered any preventative measures to be hysterical.

    Asia was where this occurred. Not Europe. The fact that Europe and America have become badly effected has nothing to do with the epicenter of the disease.

    All it takes is one case and a country that does not care.

    Epicenter does not mean origin.


  • #36
    plodder
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 7,402 ✭✭✭plodder


    I liked this idea of having distinct alert levels which shows, or at least appears to show a plan that they had in advance. I think that would have been a good idea on the way into this. Maybe less so on the way out of it, where maximum flexibility will be needed to get the most effect out of the restrictions are still in place.


  • Advertisement
  • #37
    Xertz
    Closed Accounts Posts: 1,069 ✭✭✭Xertz


    RandomName2 wrote: »
    They could have just quarantined anybody coming into the country for two weeks. That's it.

    If that was too extreme, you could decide to quarantine only people coming into the country from regions with active outbreaks (e.g. northern Italy). A riskier approach but one that might have worked.

    In the end they decided for a free-for-all and lockdown when the inevitable happened. Inevitable? Inevitable because anybody with hands can use the internet and see what had already happened in both Italy and China. This is the reason I didn't excuse Boris Johnson being mislead by advisors, because you could just look up the news. Trump doesn't get a by on his medical knowledge just because he hasn't been specifically briefed on how bleach works.

    Now the example of New Zealand is clear as day, and posters in this thread are hostile to the comparison because New Zealand is three times as big as Ireland. Perhaps a more comprehensive assessment is merited.

    Quarantined them where exactly?

    In normal times there are roughly 51,900 people arriving at Dublin, Cork, Shannon and the other airports every day.

    I guess you could put them into tent cities at the Curragh?

    They were asked to self isolate early on, I hope most did.


  • #38
    Richard Hillman
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 12,033 ✭✭✭✭Richard Hillman


    It is a nonsense comparison. They are on the edge of the world.

    If you want to use comparisons then use European countries of similar size. Croatia, Austria, Slovenia, Slovakia, Czech Rep, Hungary, Portugal, Finland, Denmark etc.

    And yes, we have done terribly compared to them. The NZ comparison is unhelpful and doesn't help debunk the Irish media consensus of that we've played a blinder.


  • #39
    mandrake04
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 4,435 ✭✭✭mandrake04


    manlad wrote: »
    Eh social distancing???

    Thanks I’m just interested in you way of thinking, so I assume your thinking the lower the density the more advantageous?


  • #40
    wakka12
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 9,786 ✭✭✭wakka12


    Dr. Kenneth Noisewater wrote: »
    That's fair to a point, but I think that's more a comparison you should be making for somewhere like New York rather than Dublin v Auckland which are both low density cities with sprawling suburbs.

    I think it still makes a difference though, Dublin in a lot of the city is 2-3 story terraces, and semi d's. Auckland, is all detached one story. It's incredibly low density even compared to Dublin

    Dublin also has much more people in the residential core, tenement flat shares. Auckland's centre is just commercial and office


  • #41
    the_syco
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 37,304 ✭✭✭✭the_syco


    RandomName2 wrote: »
    Both are islands that are sparsely populated. New Zealand is significantly larger and thus more sparsely populated.
    People from Ireland went to Italy for skiing in Jan & Feb. Italy had deaths similar to COVID19 before China told the world about COVID19.

    New Zealand has it's own snow in August, so people there don't need to fly abroad to go skiing.


  • Advertisement
  • #42
    RandomName2
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 5,570 ✭✭✭RandomName2


    Gidea wrote: »
    Epicenter does not mean origin.

    It doesn't, but when 99% of the world's cases were in Wuhan until the middle of February I think it's pretty safe to say that not only was it the origin, it was the epicenter too.

    Now the highest number of cases in the world is in America, but since it became a pandemic talking about epicenters is a bit redundant.
    the_syco wrote: »
    Italy had deaths similar to COVID19 before China told the world about COVID19.


    Everything that I read has pointed to patient zero traveling into Lombardy, from Germany, at the end of January.


  • #43
    RandomName2
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 5,570 ✭✭✭RandomName2


    Xertz wrote: »
    Quarantined them where exactly?

    In normal times there are roughly 51,900 people arriving at Dublin, Cork, Shannon and the other airports every day.

    I guess you could put them into tent cities at the Curragh?

    If locking down the country was possible then it was possible to provide for the quarantining of people coming from COVID-19 regions. Are you genuinely saying that nothing more than a leaflet stand was possible? You know what country quarantines people for two weeks? New Zealand. You know what country has less than 20 deaths? Yes, you guessed it, New Zealand.

    Xertz wrote: »
    They were asked to self isolate early on, I hope most did.

    No, they weren't. They were told to go about their normal lives unless they developed symptoms. As I said, policy of spreading the disease liberally.. quite successfully.


  • #44
    Xertz
    Closed Accounts Posts: 1,069 ✭✭✭Xertz


    wakka12 wrote: »
    Auckland council area population density
    1200 km2

    Dublin county pop density

    4588 km2

    Dublin City Council only covers the older (numbered) urban areas of Dublin City taking in 114.99 km2.

    Auckland Council is a large regional authority that came about from a local authorities mergers project, and covers 4,894 km2, an area roughly the size of Dublin and several surrounding counties.

    The project itself was considered somewhat controversial, and was also the model used to support the city/county council mergers here.

    The argument made in Ireland (and by European commentators generally) was that they merged a dense urban area with a sparsely populated rural area - the net result of which is not a 'super city' but a big messy authority that's neither urban nor rural.

    Perhaps in NZ there's more a collection of small, defined towns and cities in an agglomeration, but in the Irish context it would have meant merging, for example, Cork City with a rural area that's nearly half the size of Northern Ireland and has nothing much in common with it, other than the word Cork. So policies would have been inappropriate for the city and the county. The jury's still out on whether it was a good idea in Waterford and Limerick, particularly as those cities sat on the edge of county lines. E.g. Limerick is now a unitary council, but Limerick City straddles the border of Clare, which isn't merged into it.

    Anyway, comparing Dublin City Council and Auckland Council is a bit like comparing Dublin City Council to East Leinster.

    Making direct comparisons between Ireland and NZ isn't always a great idea as beyond the look of the landscape (especially the north of South Island), the similarities stop. Ireland's very much an old European country with development patterns that reflect its history and New Zealand is a 'new world' country that was colonised quite rapidly and recently, so things tend to reflect mostly 20th century planning.

    The population of NZ in 1800 was 120,000 vs Ireland at the same time was almost 6 million.
    By 1920 New Zealand was only a little over 1 million and growing rapidly.

    So basically you're looking at a remote, "new world" country that developed largely in the 20th century and a very proximate part of Europe "old world" country that has development patterns that reflect centuries of agrarian society, 19th and 20th century urbanisation, and also even impacts of a massive famine in the 19th century.

    It's just not like-with-like at all, beyond the superficial stuff.


  • #45
    hmmm
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 11,205 ✭✭✭✭hmmm


    New Zealand also doesn't share a land border with a country which had decided to on a strategy of herd immunity early in the epidemic.


  • #46
    mandrake04
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 4,435 ✭✭✭mandrake04


    Dr. Kenneth Noisewater wrote: »
    Comparing the population density is pointless, something like 83% of New Zealanders live in urban areas, with more than half of the urban population living in the 4 biggest cities of Auckland, Wellington, Christchurch and Hamilton. Those cities are all well interconnected, and Kiwis do a lot of travelling around the country, both for business and recreation. Every reasonably large town has an airport. .

    Actually if you check 87% of the population live in urban areas, 73% (3.5m) live in main urban areas which is 1.9% of the land mass of NZ

    That land mass is believe it or not is 25% the size of Leinster.


  • #47
    Xertz
    Closed Accounts Posts: 1,069 ✭✭✭Xertz


    hmmm wrote: »
    New Zealand also doesn't share a land border with a country which had decided to on a strategy of herd immunity early in the epidemic.

    Apart from Northern Ireland, the border between Britain and Ireland is as permeable as the border between NZ's North and South Islands.

    Also, even if we could practically close off Northern Ireland's land border, the political implications of that are rather uniquely difficult and could result in things like border guards / customs / health officials being targeted by paramilitaries.

    That isn't a situation that exists between very many countries to be quite honest.

    Also the level of interconnectedness across that border is profound. So, unlike say US-Canada, you can't really just close it down without having all sorts of implications for things like shopping, education, healthcare etc etc.

    There are a LOT of similarities between Ireland and New Zealand across many areas and they are quite familiar looking societies from each other's point of view (and increasingly so) but on this topic it's geography that's the key factor.

    You're comparing an Irish apple and a Kiwi fruit. They're both round and fruit. They both taste pretty good, but beyond that there are a lot of fundamental differences.


  • #48
    Laois_Man
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 5,758 ✭✭✭Laois_Man


    Dr. Kenneth Noisewater wrote: »
    Comparing the population density is pointless, something like 83% of New Zealanders live in urban areas, with more than half of the urban population living in the 4 biggest cities of Auckland, Wellington, Christchurch and Hamilton. Those cities are all well interconnected, and Kiwis do a lot of travelling around the country, both for business and recreation. Every reasonably large town has an airport.

    NZ obviously had an advantage from the start with it's relative remoteness from large populations and the fact that they closed the borders very early on. What they've also done was put in place one of the tightest lockdowns in the world, announcing Alert Level 4 on 23rd March, at which stage there were still only 102 cases in the country and nobody had died. Level 4 meant absolutely everything was closed apart from Supermarkets and Pharmacies and people were effectively on 23 hour lockdown apart from being allowed out to exercise or buy food.

    We've gone down to Level 3 from today, which just means that restaurants and cafes can now serve food and beverage for takeaway or delivery only (people still aren't allowed inside the store, and it must be done contactlessly).

    Jacinda Ardern said it was important to "go hard and go early" and that's exactly what happened here. The economy will suffer the same as anywhere else, but they got the major calls right and I will say one thing for the Kiwi public, they by and large adhered to it extremely vigilantly.

    The highlighted bit is the only thing NZ did differently to Ireland. But they have an advantage there too. Being part of the European Union means we were/are probably legally unable to close our borders - we've signed up to free movement - not free movement unless there's a pandemic or some other time we don't feel like it. We can't even close our borders to Northern Ireland without creating the very thing we've been taking the moral high-ground on against the Brits for the last 4-years...a hard border.


  • #49
    Xertz
    Closed Accounts Posts: 1,069 ✭✭✭Xertz


    Laois_Man wrote: »
    The highlighted bit is the only thing NZ did differently to Ireland. But they have an advantage there too. Being part of the European Union means we were/are probably legally unable to close our borders - we've signed up to free movement - not free movement unless there's a pandemic or some other time we don't feel like it. We can't even close our borders to Northern Ireland without creating the very thing we've been taking the moral high-ground on against the Brits for the last 4-years...a hard border.

    To be fair to the EU on this, they don't and didn't have any particular problem with countries closing borders to movement of people, as long as they kept them open for movement of goods to prevent market disruption and potentially serious social/economic consequences like loss of food, medicine or essential goods supplies.

    Almost all of the EU's rules are circumscribed by rights for member states to roll back on key aspects in situations like this and with scenarios exactly like this in mind.

    What the EU did have a major issue with was countries taking knee jerk reactions in a totally uncoordinated way, which resulted for a few days in disruption of goods and could have turned into a major problem very quickly, but was solved quite fast by the European Commission coming up with those green-lanes that allowed rapid movement of goods across closed borders and that's been bolstered with improved support for supply chains.

    Also Ireland is not in the Schengen area, and does not offer passport free / check free travel to/from the rest of the EU and never has.

    The big issue for us was the Common Travel Area and the fact that it's effectively entirely open. We actually implement checks at airports (inbound only) while the UK tends not to bother checking Irish outbound passengers at all, unless there's some kind of security issue going on.

    That's a border that doesn't require any form of ID and we have no concept of national ID cards or anything like that in either jurisdiction. Any ID we have is entirely optional.

    Also the land border with Northern Ireland simply does not exist in any shape or form. There's no physical presence at all and it's hugely controversial.

    In theory you could, if it weren't for the DUP being so impractical, lock down the entire island for health reasons and have a common island-wide border control but trying to get agreement on that with the loopers politics up North is more or less impossible as it would be absolutely bogged down in identity politics up there. You would immediately and without any doubt have a conspiracy that this was all about "Dublin" trying to create a united Ireland by stealth. We all know how paranoid the DUP in particular is about that topic and it's played out around Brexit, where they turned down a deal that could have been a massive boon to the Northern Ireland economy, giving it a special status in the UK and EU simultaneously because they do not want to be treated any differently to the rest of the UK

    On this one, you can only really blame the unique set of circumstances that exist within the CTA and they come about due to Irish-British historical relationships, not because of the EU.


  • #50
    RandomName2
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 5,570 ✭✭✭RandomName2


    hmmm wrote: »
    New Zealand also doesn't share a land border with a country which had decided to on a strategy of herd immunity early in the epidemic.

    While that is true it doesn't seem to have made any real impact to date. Irish policy was not informed by Whitehall's strategy and Ireland was infected, as was expected, by people returning from vacation in northern Italy.


  • #51
    mandrake04
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 4,435 ✭✭✭mandrake04


    RandomName2 wrote: »
    While that is true it doesn't seem to have made any real impact to date. Irish policy was not informed by Whitehall's strategy and Ireland was infected, as was expected, by people returning from vacation in northern Italy.

    I would say most of the cases came from the 4000 Italian Rugby fans and a lot from Cheltenham.


  • Advertisement
Advertisement