# Zero Covid



## Purple

I'm happy to see NPHET rejecting the idea of zero Covid. It's a stupid idea which is only gaining legs because of opportunist populist opposition politicians. 

We need to concentrate on following the Level 5 restrictions and not be distracted by side issues such as foreign travel, meat plants, teenagers or the like.
The reason there was a huge spike in infections over Christmas was because of the UK variant and people going to each others houses.


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## Leo

Blue Money Day said:


> It has worked a treat in island nations like Taiwan, Australia and New Zealand.



While it has worked well in a few isolated cases, in order for it to be successful in the long run is for every country and region in the world to adopt it rigorously for a protracted period. 

There's no point in being COVID-free for 12 months and living with the scales of restrictions that entail only to relax after 12 months and see it enter then. 



Blue Money Day said:


> But a couple of months of hard lockdown followed by zero Covid cases and zero Covid deaths is tempting.



Tempting, but is it remotely possible? How do you think that would work here in practical terms? With current restrictions we still have people sneaking to sheebeens and house parties.


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## Paul O Mahoney

And its impossible....Covid 19, Sars, etc aren't magically going to disappear the virus will live on in some form. 
We will simply need to be ready to deal with it when it affects us .


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## Paul O Mahoney

Blue Money Day said:


> Vaccines.


And a lot more than that. 
We simply need to rethink everything but humans being humans we are kinda slow in our reactions.


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## Purple

Blue Money Day said:


> New Zealand will eventually vaccinate everybody. But they’re in no hurry. There’s no rush. In 12 months time they’ll be able to get the best vaccine they want, and get it for a relative bargain.


New Zealand has no land border with another country. We do. Their nearest neighbour is over 4,000Km away. That's 1000Km longer than the distance from Ireland to North America.
We are not like them and cannot be like them. We are a very open economy and part of an highly integrated trade and supply ecosystem. It is nonsense to think we can be.



Blue Money Day said:


> Ireland is Zero TB and Zero Small Pox today.
> Zero Covid is the same concept.


Smallpox has been eradicated globally since 1978.
Ireland had over 300 cases of TB in 2017.

We can aim for zero Covid when we and our neighbours have vaccinated over 80% of their population.


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## Purple

Blue Money Day said:


> I’m in favour of Zero Covid. I find “living with the virus” very wishy-washy, an approach which is soooooo Micheal Martin.


It's also soooo NEPHT, Professor Philip Nolan, Dr. Tony Holohan, Leo Varadkar and Paul Reid. Reid said that the discussion was frustrating and the idea was just "displaced anger".

The Shinners, Slogans Before Logic (or whatever they are called now), Richard Boyd Barrett  and some of the other populist pseudo-socialist parties who play to the frightened and stupid are using it as a political tool. It is highly irresponsible of them but so are most of their stupid populist policies. It's another thing added to the list of good reason to hold the lot of them in utter contempt.


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## Sunny

Have to laugh at people comparing us to New Zealand and how we can close our borders for over a year just as easily....When New Zealand is as open a economy  as us and is part of the largest single market in the world, when they share a land border with another nation that is so politically and socially vulnerable , when they have the same amount of foreign workers, same amount of multinationals, same of amount of trade, same amount of connectivity and proximity to other countries,  then we can compare the two Countries.


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## RedOnion

Purple said:


> The Shinners,


Ah, the old "I want mandatory quarantine for everyone else, so that I can travel for IRA funerals"


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## Purple

Sunny said:


> Have to laugh at people comparing us to New Zealand and how we can close our borders for over a year just as easily....When New Zealand is as open a economy  as us and is part of the largest single market in the world, when they share a land border with another nation that is so politically and socially vulnerable , when they have the same amount of foreign workers, same amount of multinationals, same of amount of trade, same amount of connectivity and proximity to other countries,  then we can compare the two Countries.


Yep, I think it's fair to say that we are all in favour of Zero Covid just like we are all in favour of nice weather and world peace but it's not an achievable aim and attempting it would cause more harm than good while still failing.


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## Purple

Blue Money Day said:


> Vietnam has adopted Zero Covid. It has a population of almost 100 million people.
> Total Covid death is 35. Daily cases yesterday was 34.
> It has land borders with Cambodia, China, Laos and Myanmar. And some of those borders are very lengthy.


It had a plan in place, acted early; there were only 2 deaths in China when it put that plan into action, and it had the infrastructure there from previous major outbreaks.


Blue Money Day said:


> I don’t understand why the anti-Zero-Covid brigade are so vehemently opposed to it. It’s like the Covid-deniers and anti-Vaxxers.


I'm not vehemently opposed to it. I just agree with the Government and State agencies when thy say that it won't work.
We'd need tens of thousands more contact tracers, quarantine facilities for thousands of people, maybe tens of thousands, a curfew, thousands more police enforcing the rules, closed borders, and a big new prison to lock up all the people who broke the rules.


Blue Money Day said:


> @Purple stats on TB and Pox are make ZC even more appealing.


So we've had a TB vaccine since 1937 but we still get cases.


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## joe sod

I heard the head of the nz covid implementation group discussing nz zero covid policy. She said it's not easy and took a awful lot of organization down to the minutiae. She said it's not something to be considered lightly. If nz found this difficult to implement and they probably entering the most difficult phase now with a possible tsunami and with the rest of the world opening up as they get vaccinated. If nz found it difficult it would be impossible for a country like Ireland to implement. Look at the difficulty with applying hotel quarantine with everything having to be checked for consent and whether constitutional


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## joe sod

It looks like Australia and new zealand are now reaping the big downside of their "zero cOvid" policy, very few of their population have bothered to get vaccinated and they are unable to open up to the rest of the world until every single person has been vaccinated. 
Sinn Fein, much of the left wing and many experts were also cheer leaders for this which reached its peak last winter. It looks like they have been proven wrong. Obviously "zero covid" was an extreme and ultimately unrealistic aspiration.


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## Purple

Yet more bad news from Australia in what officials are calling a national emergency. I hope the exponents of Zero Covid in the Dail and in the media will now admit they were utterly and completely wrong and thank this and the previous Government for ignoring them and getting it right in their approach to how they handled the virus. Well done Leo and Micheál and Simon and all those who set the stage at the start of this crisis.


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## odyssey06

I'm sorry to see how things are playing out in Australia.
At the time I thought it reasonable for them to pursue the strategy they did, while also thinking it unrealistic for most countries and certainly any EU country.


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## Bobbyg

Zero COVID was never an option for us with a boarder on the island with the UK and some of the dail advocates were just doing the usual and saying it for the sake of opposing. I wouldn't go as far to say it was a genius decision by Leo and Micheál's though and I am not anti government by any means.


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## Purple

Bobbyg said:


> Zero COVID was never an option for us with a boarder on the island with the UK and some of the dail advocates were just doing the usual and saying it for the sake of opposing. I wouldn't go as far to say it was a genius decision by Leo and Micheál's though and I am not anti government by any means.


No, it was a no-brainer of a decision but they've generally done a good job, especially considering how generally inept our health service is.


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## Bobbyg

Purple said:


> No, it was a no-brainer of a decision but they've generally done a good job, especially considering how generally inept our health service is.


yes I agree


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## Paul O Mahoney

Purple said:


> Yet more bad news from Australia in what officials are calling a national emergency. I hope the exponents of Zero Covid in the Dail and in the media will now admit they were utterly and completely wrong and thank this and the previous Government for ignoring them and getting it right in their approach to how they handled the virus. Well done Leo and Micheál and Simon and all those who set the stage at the start of this crisis.


I was talking to a close friend who lives in Melbourne and I know him 30 plus years and never heard him so down. He said people are so angry with the strategy and many are now asking why it was pursued. Remember even Australian citizens cant go home,  and of course the Katie Hopkins incident hasn't calmed the mood.

Their PM is a bit of a Trump/Boris type who apparently hasn't even ordered enough vaccines.


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## Brendan Burgess

I think that it shows the unpredictability of the virus and the uncertainty over the right strategy. 

We thought we had it beaten, then the variants came along. 

Germany did very well and then things got much worse for them.

The UK was way ahead of most countries in vaccinations, but now their infection rate is very high.

Sweden took a calculated gamble, which looks wrong in retrospect.

As of now, experts disagree with the English strategy of dropping all the restrictions.  There is no way of knowing in advance whether it will turn out right or not. 

Why is  sealing the borders and going for Zero Covid so obviously wrong for Australia?  Has it not worked well for a long time and kept total infections down? Sure, they have to change their strategy now with the new variant.

Brendan


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## Bluefin

Its shocking really. there zero covid approach should have given them a great opportunity to have gotten their population vaccinated after protecting their older people


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## Brendan Burgess

Paul O Mahoney said:


> He said people are so angry with the strategy and many are now asking why it was pursued.



What is the new development that is so terrible?


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## Purple

Brendan Burgess said:


> What is the new development that is so terrible?
> 
> View attachment 5723


It's terrible because they are now facing the Delta Strain, and whatever comes next, and they are months behind the rest of the developed world in their vaccination program.


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## Purple

Brendan Burgess said:


> We thought we had it beaten, then the variants came along.


Only people who ignored the WHO and their scientists thought it was beaten. They told us in March that this would happen if we acted selfishly and did the morally wrong thing when it came to vaccinations.


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## Brendan Burgess

Ah, I see. 

I had not realised that. 

So Zero Covid was an alternative to vaccination? That was not a great idea.

Brendan


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## EmmDee

Purple said:


> It's terrible because they are now facing the Delta Strain, and whatever comes next, and they are months behind the rest of the developed world in their vaccination program.



But is their failure not that they didn't use the time they gained with the "zero covid" policy to get the vaccine rolled out - rather than the original strategy. The zero covid policy was pretty successful but the problem was that either the government didn't understand they also needed to get a vaccination program running quickly - or that the initial success meant the general population became complacent


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## Purple

EmmDee said:


> But is their failure not that they didn't use the time they gained with the "zero covid" policy to get the vaccine rolled out - rather than the original strategy. The zero covid policy was pretty successful but the problem was that either the government didn't understand they also needed to get a vaccination program running quickly - or that the initial success meant the general population became complacent


Zero Covid is a stupid strategy because it's not possible to keep it out. A policy to minimise Covid so that it doesn't overwhelm your health service is a good idea. A policy that allows you to protect the vulnerable while balancing the other needs of society and the economy is a good idea. Acting like you can close your borders and ride it out until the rest of the world gets rid of the virus? That's a stupid idea and that's what Zero Covid really means.


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## joe sod

Wasn't China also effectively doing zero covid , havn't heard much lately about how they are handing the delta strain given their very large population and closeness to India. I think a large part of population is vaccinated with the sinovac vaccine although in think it is particularly ineffective against the delta variant of all the vaccines


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## Paul O Mahoney

Brendan Burgess said:


> I think that it shows the unpredictability of the virus and the uncertainty over the right strategy.
> 
> We thought we had it beaten, then the variants came along.
> 
> Germany did very well and then things got much worse for them.
> 
> The UK was way ahead of most countries in vaccinations, but now their infection rate is very high.
> 
> Sweden took a calculated gamble, which looks wrong in retrospect.
> 
> As of now, experts disagree with the English strategy of dropping all the restrictions.  There is no way of knowing in advance whether it will turn out right or not.
> 
> Why is  sealing the borders and going for Zero Covid so obviously wrong for Australia?  Has it not worked well for a long time and kept total infections down? Sure, they have to change their strategy now with the new variant.
> 
> Brendan


They were also meant to build a plant that was going to supply vaccines to Australia and Australia alone,  I believe it was initially going to produce AZ , but that fell through. 

They went down a cul d' sac and are still trying to get out by reversing into traffic. 

They deem themselves and their country unique, and it is , but they really made a dogs dinner of this.

I can't go into specifics but there other options available to them on the vaccine front but they declined.


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## Paul O Mahoney

joe sod said:


> Wasn't China also effectively doing zero covid , havn't heard much lately about how they are handing the delta strain given their very large population and closeness to India. I think a large part of population is vaccinated with the sinovac vaccine although in think it is particularly ineffective against the delta variant of all the vaccines


And you won't hear much Joe. The great wall got higher,  my wife has a weekly meeting with her people and its not lollipops and sunshine..........but that's just her interpretation,  as words aren't used.


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## Leo

Australia may have thought Zero Covid was a viable approach on an assumption that it would have been close to eliminated worldwide at this point. 

Once you take that approach, and control exit and entry as tightly as they did, it's very difficult to convince sufficient numbers to opt in to vaccination.


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## Paul O Mahoney

Leo said:


> Australia may have thought Zero Covid was a viable approach on an assumption that it would have been close to eliminated worldwide at this point.
> 
> Once you take that approach, and control exit and entry as tightly as they did, it's very difficult to convince sufficient numbers to opt in to vaccination.


But they have done that forever,  there are even TV programmes on it.

They have now literally gone down a road that may cause them more issues because they declined to allow " anyone in" and yet the virus has gotten in.

Now , they don't have sufficient vaccines and the country is essentially on the brink of closure,  not only physically but also socially and economically,  where does that work out well?


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## joe sod

I see "covid shaming" is now rife in Australia having lost their zero covid state they are trying to pin the blame on the individuals that may have spread it, limousine driver man and barbecue man are being blamed. We had a particularly unpleasant form of this last year, the dubs on holidays in wexford, the keelings fruit pickers. It's completely counterproductive and fuelled by the media because it prevents people presenting themselves for testing.


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## ClubMan

Interesting article on the Australian situation - particularly about the alleged spread of the virus in quarantining accommodation because the air con was running and about their big stocks of AZ which people won't take because of the minor risk of clotting.









						Australia makes world-class mess of its vaccine rollout
					

Sydney Letter: Poor planning, shortages and ‘common sense’ plunge cities into lockdown




					www.irishtimes.com


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## Purple

ClubMan said:


> Interesting article on the Australian situation - particularly about the alleged spread of the virus in quarantining accommodation because the air con was running and about their big stocks of AZ which people won't take because of the minor risk of clotting.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Australia makes world-class mess of its vaccine rollout
> 
> 
> Sydney Letter: Poor planning, shortages and ‘common sense’ plunge cities into lockdown
> 
> 
> 
> 
> www.irishtimes.com


Air-con a big factor is the spread of SARS during an outbreak in a hospital. You'd think people would remember that sort of thing, especially with a new version of what is, in so many ways, the same virus. Then again some people thought a Perspex face mask was a useful form of protection.


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## joe sod

I'd say they will be rushing to get their AZ vaccines now, it just shows you that nobody got it right with this virus, we were all laughing at trump and Johnson a year ago, eventually after some wrong turns they got their act together, in fact Johnson probably embarrassed the eu into getting its act together much quicker and they cut out a lot of the bureaucracy to get the vaccines authorized and administered.
We indulged in a bit of brit bashing ourselves but actually the government learned a lot from the British roll out and used their data to speed up our on roll out and opening up.


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## Purple

joe sod said:


> I'd say they will be rushing to get their AZ vaccines now, it just shows you that nobody got it right with this virus, we were all laughing at trump and Johnson a year ago, eventually after some wrong turns they got their act together, in fact Johnson probably embarrassed the eu into getting its act together much quicker and they cut out a lot of the bureaucracy to get the vaccines authorized and administered.


We still haven't got to the bottom of what happened with the vaccine approvals but I don't think it was down to bureaucracy. That said the UK did a great job of rolling out their vaccines, albeit at the cost of not exporting a single vaccine to the parts of the world that need them most. The same goes for the US.



joe sod said:


> We indulged in a bit of brit bashing ourselves but actually the government learned a lot from the British roll out and used their data to speed up our on roll out and opening up.


If that's the case I'd hate to see where we'd be with opening up without their data as our approach has been ultra cautious. Way too cautious in my opinion.


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## joe sod

I see covid outbreak in New Zealand now and they are back in lockdown. The final bastion of the "zero covid" approach has now fallen. Remember the most vociferous proponents of this including many experts turned out to be wrong because the delta variant has rendered this impossible. The new zealand outbreak was traced to Sydney and this was always new zealand weak point, they might be able seal themselves off from the wider world but they couldn't isolate themselves from their bigger neighbour they are simply too small.


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## Purple

joe sod said:


> they couldn't isolate themselves from their bigger neighbour they are simply too small.


It's also worth remembering that Australia is further away from them than we are from continental North America.


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## Purple

New Zealand abandons their Zero Covid strategy.
I like Jacinta Ardern and I admire the political courage it takes to change strategy like that but it was a stupid idea from the start.
​


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## EmmDee

Purple said:


> New Zealand abandons their Zero Covid strategy.
> I like Jacinta Ardern and I admire the political courage it takes to change strategy like that but it was a stupid idea from the start.
> ​



If bought them time - if that time had been used to fully vaccinate and then move back to normal then it would have been fine. NZ and even more Aus seem to have been slow to vaccinate


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## odyssey06

I thought it was to buy time to vaccinate, so they could avoid the cases and fatalities of a 'naive' population being exposed to the virus.

They only have 40% fully vaccinated though probably that's health care workers and the most vulnerable.

So I can see for NZ as a measure to buy time, rather than an end goal, that there was some merit in it.


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## Paul O Mahoney

I'll stand corrected here, but weren't AZ meant to build or fit out a plant in Australia to produce for itself and New Zealand?
I can't go into detail but there were other options open to Australia for supply from outside and it was coming from a state of the art plant that was idle at the time but Australia rejected it. 

The idea that they would "ride it out" was silly, and now they are going into summer with under 50% vaccinated, one only has to look at the US to see what 50% vaccinated does during summer months. 

They've put themselves behind an 8 ball now and they still seem unsure of what to do next.


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## joe sod

Remember the cacophony of people calling for this last january, lots of politicians , and health "experts", but it wasn't just a constructive debate there was a hysterical overtone to the whole thing. A year ago the Australian expert responsible for pursuing the zero covid strategy when asked said that Ireland should not do it because it was very difficult to achieve and that Australia would have a big problem opening up due to its zero exposure to the virus, how prescient this advice turned out to be.


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## Sophrosyne

To be fair to both Australia and New Zealand, in the beginning nobody really knew what to do for the best and _no_ strategy was fully successful.

Australia with a population of almost 26m and New Zealand with a little over 5m have reported fatalities of only 1,346 and 27 respectively.

Neither economy suffered seriously – Australia also had to contend with the bushfires.

The fact that they have changed their strategies consequent to the Delta variant is to their credit.


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## Paul O Mahoney

Sophrosyne said:


> To be fair to both Australia and New Zealand, in the beginning nobody really knew what to do for the best and _no_ strategy was fully successful.
> 
> Australia with a population of almost 26m and New Zealand with a little over 5m have reported fatalities of only 1,346 and 27 respectively.
> 
> Neither economy suffered seriously – Australia also had to contend with the bushfires.
> 
> The fact that they have changed their strategies consequent to the Delta variant is to their credit.


I agree nobody knew at the start of this however many did question the decisions of zero covid,  Australia essentially abandoned 40,000 of its citizens that lived overseas but allowed Katie Hopkins into the country for some reality show.

The PM of Australia said after the EU stopped shipments from Italy,  that it didn't matter as they were controlling the disease and would be producing its own vaccine.

NZ aren't doing what they're doing because of science its because Auckland is locked down and protests are getting bigger and more serious,  as they are in Melbourne and Sydney.

This is a fundamental failure in leadership by 2 countries that could have had its entire population vaccinated by now they maybe opening up Airports from next month but that's really closing the stable door,  the horse is long gone. A lifetime friend lives in Melbourne and says it's like Ireland in the 80s.

They pride themselves as being different and they are, they control borders vigorously and somehow they thought it would be as easy to do so against a virus, its naivety and arrogance mixed together and now the "emperor's have no clothes ".


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## Sophrosyne

All that may be true but it is difficult to view their case and fatality numbers as an unmitigated failure.


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## Paul O Mahoney

Sophrosyne said:


> All that may be true but it is difficult to view their case and fatality numbers as an unmitigated failure.


I'm not they did a good job in that but this strategy in a global pandemic was wrong in my view.
If they were even more successful there was a threat,  being western style democracies, that the virus could have travelled from other countries, for example via freight, undetected and found a place to harbour and evolve into a new strain, and again put the world at risk.

My arguments might seem very subjective but we knew nothing at the start of all this but once the vaccines were identified as been the way to get some control on the virus globally they should have embraced that strategy not continue with single country strategies.

I know I'm idealistic but this type of nationalism has been seen to be the main cause of probably all the ills the planet and its citizens have suffered and endured for the  last 200 years since Thomas Malthus proposed his theory, and its time to change it .


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## Purple

Paul O Mahoney said:


> I'm not they did a good job in that but this strategy in a global pandemic was wrong in my view.
> If they were even more successful there was a threat,  being western style democracies, that the virus could have travelled from other countries, for example via freight, undetected and found a place to harbour and evolve into a new strain, and again put the world at risk.
> 
> My arguments might seem very subjective but we knew nothing at the start of all this but once the vaccines were identified as been the way to get some control on the virus globally they should have embraced that strategy not continue with single country strategies.
> 
> I know I'm idealistic but this type of nationalism has been seen to be the main cause of probably all the ills the planet and its citizens have suffered and endured for the  last 200 years since Thomas Malthus proposed his theory, and its time to change it .


Excellent post Paul.


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## Leo

Sophrosyne said:


> All that may be true but it is difficult to view their case and fatality numbers as an unmitigated failure.


The tens of thousands of their own citizens stranded abroad would have a very different view


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## Paul O Mahoney

Leo said:


> The tens of thousands of their own citizens stranded abroad would have a very different view


And in all probability most of these were vaccinated.
It was and still is until November needless and I think that's the frustration that is being seen now by way of protests. 

The ashes series is going ahead in December and England might be without some of their better players as the bubble they will have to stay in could be 5 months long, meanwhile the world is practically open to all sporting events.


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## joe sod

I see the Chinese now having big problems with their zero covid policy.  Apparently people looking at the world Cup on TV could see that everyone was mingling and not wearing masks etc so they saw that the CCP was lying about what the rest of the world was doing.
The Chinese Sinovac vaccine is basically useless against these new strains like omicron and the Chinese authorities are too proud to admit that and use the western vaccines like Pfizer and moderna


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## Purple

joe sod said:


> I see the Chinese now having big problems with their zero covid policy.  Apparently people looking at the world Cup on TV could see that everyone was mingling and not wearing masks etc so they saw that the CCP was lying about what the rest of the world was doing.
> The Chinese Sinovac vaccine is basically useless against these new strains like omicron and the Chinese authorities are too proud to admit that and use the western vaccines like Pfizer and moderna


It was a stupid policy 2 years ago and the more we learned the more stupid it got.


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