The Stand With Eamon Dunphy

I find it hard to make out what you are saying at points but I think that I get the gist of it.

The thing is that cattle are stored on farms. Locked up effectively.

People are not stored on farms.

You can't just lock people up in farms - not even the politicians can do that.

They move around a lot. They interact.

it's infinitely more simple to control the movement of a small number of cattle trucks. infinitely.

it's infinitely more simple to agree measures to control the movement of cattle trucks between different governments than telling and even more so controlling their populations re border movements in a free movement area

The foot and mouth comparison is about as good as your Finland-Sweden artic circle land border.

It's a moot point in any case because the cases in the Republic were not at a level in its own region where it could be then about keeping Covid from entering from an outside area

nor was it a strategy at any point in either jurisdiction ever to aim towards 0 covid or to start talking about a joint agreement.

padd b1975 wrote: »

Where's Brady these days?

hasn't been on in over 2 months

kowloonkev wrote: »

With the new variant of Covid and the Brexit deal and the fact he can't go anywhere over Christmas he might find time to do a couple of hours over the holidays. I would actually like Tomas Ryan's interpretation of the state of play right now.

A Tomas Ryan joint has just dropped.

Haven't listened to it yet but no doubt it's packed full of misery porn.

I suppose that he's blaming everything on the 2 weeks or so that restaurants were back open....

Arghus wrote: »

I don't think zero covid is politically possible, but to be fair to Thomas Ryan he was calling it exactly right all through the Summer and lots thought he was demented - the virus will return and there'll be multiple rolling lockdowns to contain it.

Cue the cries of "misery porn" and "doom monger" when in actual fact all he was was completely right.

that's the thing imo - Ryan never offered a solution for how it could be achieved here on this island that shares a border with the north - just went on about it that it should be pursued as a strategy - which offers nothing really except some sort of repetitive point.

he also never suggested / predicted that the high levels of the current time would come about in this timeframe.

John Hutton wrote: »

Lol the doom monger didn't say it would get this bad so he is full of crap. I've heard it all now.

Lots of things which "were impossible" have happened already. If there was the political will zero covid could be done, it wasnt even tried. It should be even at this stage.

His point all along is that rolling lockdowns are worse and more damaging than zero covid.

When zero covid was first brought up we were told that it wasnt necessary that there would not be rolling lockdowns because track and trace would deal with it, that was wrong. We were told that zero covid would destroy the economy, 3 lockdowns (and there will be more) have proved much worse. Ryan and co have been proved right on every count.

he never offered a solution to get to the mythical zero covid for Ireland and it's shared jurisdiction with the north - just kept alluding to it with no actual way to get there. it's a fantasy concept unless there is some path outlined to it.

in his last podcast with Dunphy before this he was not talking about the levels we are now seeing.

Nuclear fusion power is a great idea.

I'm all for it.

John Hutton wrote: »

He isnt suggesting something that has not been done before, all island approaches have happened in the past.

At this point the All-Ireland approach and closing borders is completely irrelevant in any case as the rate is so high.

That only becomes relevant when the rate is low / very low to keep it low or get it lower.

As a general comment it's obvious that adherence to Level 5 in the overall population has unfortunately not been happening internally in the Republic of Ireland due to fatigue of the whole situation going on so long.

The level of compliance on lockdown 1 vs 2 was completely different.

Even allowing for schools and construction this is blindingly obvious from something as simple as the levels of traffic about the place.

my main issue with him is that he was simply repeating the same high-level point about "strategy" and that in itself doesn't really offer much if anything

him frankly going on about New Zealand as a comparative was pretty pointless as a comparison and make him look less credible as a voice.

it's a whole different matter to actually seal off the country in terms of airports and ports, get the completely different jurisdiction of the north on board somehow and in perfect alignment at the exact right time with all the considerations that come with it and with on the other side of the equation another lot of muppets clamouring for the "wet" pubs to be opened at the same time as well as not dealing with the internal issues that came up - meat factories, asylum seeker accommodation etc that led to cases going back up