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Covid Hotel Quarantine starts in Ireland…but NOTHING will change!

Written by Joerg Steegmueller

After a very long long delay, the Irish Government finally managed to “turn on” the mandatory Hotel Quarantine for some specific people coming to Ireland. It took a long time until all laws were in place and the whole scheme was organised and on Friday, the first people (rumours has it that they came to Ireland on a flight from Saudi Arabia) have moved into their hotel room where they will have to stay for 12 days and will to pay EUR 1850 for the pleasure.

On the list of countries of people that will be forced to stay in hotel quarantine are the usual holiday destinations like Botswana, Burundi and Angola and without a doubt a LOT of tourists will come from these locations. NOT! Also on it are countries like Brazil where there is a big problem at the moment. But there is no USA or France or Italy on the list where the problems are ALSO big. Instead from the countries we seem to like more, you just need a PCR test and then you won’t be forced into hotel quarantine. How can we apply completely different rules? Oddly the only European country on the list is Austria, which is definitely not the worst in Europe. And also very oddly: Mauritius is on the list that has a super low infection rate but that unfairly got involved in some mud throwing by the UK. (www.joergsteegmueller.com/2021/02/27/trust-in-authorities-during-covid-times/) So the UK added them to the list and magically, they appear on the Irish list as well.

In addition to arrivals from 33 countries (www.citizensinformation.ie/en/travel_and_recreation/travel_to_ireland/hotel_quarantine.html) everyone has to go into hotel quarantine that arrives from any other country but does not have a negative or not detected PCR test that was taken within 72 hours.

The quarantine MIGHT have made sense in March 2020, but now it is a joke! The HSE estimates that approx. 1.7% of all cases are brought into Ireland through international travel. So you can expect that that complicated scheme that involves a whole range of hotels with income guarantees and even utilises the army to escort the prisoners, sorry…arriving travelers to the hotels.

A totally mad and ineffective system at the totally wrong time with totally wrong rules.

Here are the rules if you want to know more: www.gov.ie/en/publication/3b8e1-mandatory-hotel-quarantine-your-questions-answered/

Irish, Justice, Overexaggerations, Politics, Taoiseach, Tourism, , , , , , ,

Trust in authorities during Covid times

Written by Joerg Steegmueller

I have to admit that when it comes to authorities (governments, “experts”, “expert” groups, WHO and official groups with an agenda) I am extremely suspicious regarding their credibility and reliability and I question nearly everything.

Many do the best they can, but is the best they can maybe very biased information? We saw that the WHO gave totally wrong advice right from the beginning for the wrong reasons. We were told that masks are not needed and won’t help, because they were concerned that any other information would “hoover up” all the masks and then nothing would be left for healthcarers. Then the WHO told us that spread of the virus through aerosols is not an issue, now we know it is the MAIN issue.

So if you can’t trust the World Health Organisation, then you can’t trust anyone.

But does that really apply to local governments? Even to ours? Yes! And you sometimes just have to find one or two contradictions to find out that they have NO clue about what they are telling us.
In this case it is the “mandatory quarantine list”. On Friday 13 more Central and South American countries were added to that list (www.thejournal.ie/mandatory-quarantine-countries-5367064-Feb2021/) and you might be surprised that with the odd exception of Austria the countries on the list are all from outside the EU. As if EU countries have no virus problem!? Sure they do! But it is seriously complex to forbid EU citizens to travel within the EU, so we will quickly add the non-EU countries and give the EU countries a different treatment.

When you look through the list further and ponder over every country, you will find Mauritius on it! Mauritius is a small with just a fourth of the population of Ireland. It is an island about 2000km away from Africa. From 1810 until 1968 it was occupied by the Brits and that will be relevant in a moment.
Mauritius has NO virus problem! The total cases since the beginning was 610 and the total deaths was 10. Cases per 1 mio population is 479, whereby in Ireland we have 43,879 cases per 1 mio population. So WHY is Mauritius on that list? There are not even direct flights from there to Ireland.

Well, on 21 Dec 2020 Mauritius has decided to ban people from the UK to enter their country (travelbans.org/africa/mauritius/). A decision that made a lot of sense, considering the situation in the UK. As a payback, the British “if you step on my toes, I will step on yours”-government has banned people from Mauritius to enter the UK from 09 Jan 2021.

And why does Ireland ban people from Mauritius, because our great government seemingly just copied the British list unchecked. FAIL!

It is a tiny, close to irrelevant issue, but if you can’t trust on the super simple things, can you trust on the big things??

Covid-19, Politics, , , , , ,

Covid-19 Fines – Have they lost it?

Written by Joerg Steegmueller
Covid-19 Fines – Have they lost it?

For the speedy resolution of wars, insurgency and other conflicts, the concept of “Winning Hearts and Minds” is used in modern times. It means that one side is trying to win the conflict not by the use of superior force, but by making emotional or intellectual appeals to convince supporters of the other side.

The idea behind it is that if you convince the other side of the sense of your actions, then you need to fight less and you will ultimately be MUCH more effective, efficient AND there will be less victims.

Our (previous) government made a weak attempt in using this strategy in early days. We were told that laws can’t be enacted to prevent people from breaking the lockdown and Simon Harris kept telling us that we should just hold together for one more push before things would get better.

The current  government is clearly taking a different route. Laws are suddenly possible and they are in place and are used a LOT. This week the RTE News reported that the crazy amount of 4500 people have been fined for breaching Covid-19 regulations. www.rte.ie/news/coronavirus/2021/0205/1195336-garda-restrictions-fines/

The total amount of serious crimes that lead to a charge or summons in 2019 was just measly 550 and out of more than 16,000 burglaries that happened, it seems that just 13 were punished appropriately, based on Central Statistics Office details. www.cso.ie/en/releasesandpublications/ep/p-rcd/recordedcrimedetection2019/crimesleadingtochargeorsummons/

I really hope that I am misinterpreting the numbers and that someone can tell me that I made a big mistake, but if not, then this means that breaking the (random) 5km movement restriction is pursued with significantly more vigor than burglaries. :-O
I think we can clearly say that the government has lost the support from the people. Maybe a serious “Winning Hears and Minds” approach would have us in a different place?

Corona Virus, Covid-19, Politics, , , , , ,

How to lose the people’s support for anti-Covid measures!

Written by Joerg Steegmueller
1 Comment
How to lose the people’s support for anti-Covid measures!

You would think that people who are doing something the second time around will have learned from the first time and will do everything better, right? But strangely it seems that leopards really don’t change their spots, as the saying goes, at least not easily. :-O And it also seems that learning is harder than we think. We do make mistakes even if they stare us in the face. I know that and you might know that too!?

But before this turns into a psychotherapy session ;-) I should explain that I am (at least in part) referring to our politicians and their learning from the first lockdown. We will be for another good while in this lockdown… but they really didn’t learn!!

Things weren’t perfect the first time around, but we largely did what we were told, because it was quite clear and because we thought we understood why we did it. But then we realised that the politicians and “experts” really had no clue either and so the second time around the approach should have been to explain things better and to make it easier to adhere to the rules. More laws, threats (penalties, even prison) for breaking some of the rules and sending gardai to stop shops from selling their normal items (as they we allowed the first time around) is NOT the way to do it.

Instead it is a guarantee to lose the support from the people! And being out on the streets and in shops, it is clear that the trust and support is gone. The current nonsensical rules over “essential products” show that the government has no clue of what lockdowns mean to you and me. Closing SOME aisles of supermarkets, making it illegal to buy stationary or a towel, but legal to buy alcohol is a ridiculous over exaggeration.

Leo Varadkar who didn’t do too badly the first time around has totally screwed up this time (www.rte.ie/news/coronavirus/2020/1025/1173788-coronavirus-ireland/) and our temporary other Taoiseach, Micheal Martin is just continuing his non-impressive handling of an admittedly challenging situation.

There are two effects that the “making illegal” of selling any extra products in supermarkets apart from things that are required for survival will have: The first effect is that as soon as shops are open fully again, there will be a mad run on shops with the consequence that even before Christmas the infection numbers will increase like crazy again. And the second effect is that even the bit of money that is made through selling a chainsaw in Lidl or a fleece jacket in Aldi or a child’s runners in Dunnes during the lockdown will now make its way to Amazon, instead of staying in Ireland. The government is showing the middle finger to any “buy local” campaign and in the end the small retailers that they allegedly want to protect with this stupid rule will not get the business anyway.

Corona Virus, Overexaggerations, Politics, Taoiseach, , , , , , ,

The Corona Files: Next step of lifting restrictions will NOT be taken

Written by Joerg Steegmueller
The Corona Files: Next step of lifting restrictions will NOT be taken

The news is out and it is not good!

Pubs will stay closed for AT LEAST another four weeks until 31 August and – let’s face it – it is highly unlikely that anything significant will change in the next three weeks, considering the worldwide Covid situation. So who knows until when they will stay closed.

This obviously also has a significant impact on any live entertainment going forward and will not only leave pub owners and employees in a challenging situation, but will be devastating news for all the musicians that we have in Ireland.

A curfew for restaurants and pubs serving food of 23:00 was introduced as well (takeaways are allowed to stay open longer) and face masks will be mandatory in shops from 10 August.

And if you were hoping that there will be SOME good news elsewhere….not so!

Malta, Cyprus, Gibraltar, San Marino and Monaco were taken off the green list and seemingly no other countries were added.

The limits for crowds will also stay in place: 50 for indoor events and 200 for outdoor events.

———

And ALL this while we currently only have 448 cases of reported Covid infections in Ireland. If we multiply this by 10 to catch non-reported infections, then we have in the whole country just 4480 active cases. If we assume a population of 4,921,500, you need to meet 1098 (!!) people before you meet ONE Covid sufferer. 😮

Can we survive another while without pubs? Sure we can if we have to! But looking at how public health policy is made at the moment, the makers of the rules seem to believe in the fairy tale that Ireland can eradicate the Coronavirus. Does that sound likely to you? What is your guess, when will pubs open? And will we have to cancel Christmas?

(Clarification: The number 448 is the sum of all cases that were reported in the last 14 days and is therefore the number of the cases that can assumed to be still active.)

Corona Virus, Dublin, Economy, Events, Politics, Taoiseach, Tourism, , , , ,
 
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