Will Ireland become a failed state because of our response to COVID?

Mouldy

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In the beginning, there was a confidence and supply Government, caught unawares by a global pandemic for which there was no data. They did the best they could. I had thought that the introduction of a new and stable government would be a catalyst in starting a new discourse in how to correctly manage a situation like coronavirus, for which we now have ample data.

Instead, we have Covid-evangelists all over the regular and social media demanding that we all wear masks, stay at home indefinitely, never go out for a meal, never take a flight again, never congregate.

Even more bizarrely, we now cannot send our children to school 5 days a week under the latest guidelines.

The new Government seems intent on covering itself in the face of this. I haven’t heard anything from them that is not a continuation of the “we’ll do whatever the CMO says” routine.

Meanwhile the rest of the EU trundles on, knowing deep down that cases will spike as they do so but willing to try to manage it as they go.

There is a real danger that the evangelists will win here by driving the public mood to the point where the Government will see more political capital in keeping the country closed than having the courage to keep the re-opening process moving.

I see the new school year as a litmus test of this. The consequences of not allowing children back full time will be catastrophic for the workforce, for the nation's mental health and most importantly for the educational prospects of the next generation.

A state that cannot be accessed, that cannot provide the conditions for employment, that cannot educate it’s children, is a failed state.

Capital, be it financial or intellectual, will flow to where it is treated best. We are setting ourselves up for decades of failure by not keeping up with the rest of the EU and telling ourselves that we’re great for doing so. Nobody owes us a living. Ireland needs to start getting real very quickly.
 
Ireland will not become a failed state.

There are a lot of policy mis-steps at the moment, and there is a risk it'll get worse.
 
What Ireland is doing is no different from what many other EU countries are doing. Spain for example has a 1.5m social distancing requirement for students when it's schools reopen and no more then 20 in a class. Germany has moved to localised lockdowns where required and similar requirements to here remain in place across most of the country. To suggest that we are an outlier in our actions is a gross over exageration

Let's just follow the American model, reopen everything and see what happens shall we?
 
Will Ireland become a failed state because of our response to COVID?
No, the EU and ECB are behaving totally differently to how they behaved during the last crash.
 
Will Ireland become a failed state because of our response to COVID?
No, the EU and ECB are behaving totally differently to how they behaved during the last crash.

Indeed, the whole ship is trying stay afloat now. :p
 
I don't think this is remotely reflective of the actual restrictions.

You're correct, what I was getting at there was that if you look at pretty much and Covid trend on Twitter, you'll find a large cohort willing us back into a lock-down, with those sentiments.
 
I agree that the return to school will be crucial, but if hairdressers and pubs can do it and be supported, so can teachers,
 
I agree that the return to school will be crucial, but if hairdressers and pubs can do it and be supported, so can teachers,
Hairdressers and pub employees aren't on full pay when their places or work are closed and they don't have very powerful lobby groups to represent them. The teachers unions have behaved in a very shoddy way over the last few months. None of the teachers I know had a problem with schools reopening over the summer but their unions have blocked that. Until the schools reopen many parents, mainly mothers, won't be able to go back to work fulltime.
 
Not just schools that is annoying me. The way we are treating children as a whole is annoying me. My 6 year old was giving out about a blocked ear and a bit of deafness but wasn't in pain. During Covid, we were told to stay away from GP's which was fair enough. When GP's re-opened and started seeing other patients, we rang up to make an appointment. We were told to leave it a few weeks. It carried on another two weeks and I rang back telling the nurse what it was. She said the GP would ring back and do a phone consult before deciding if they would see my 6 year old. They were charging €40 for the phone consult. I would have to pay again if they decided to see her in person. I said she is 6. She is not going to tell you anything different to what I am telling you and it is her ear. It's not like a rash where I can look at it and describe it. I asked if we could just skip the phone consult and make an appointment. No was the answer.

Did what I should have done in the first place. Rang VHI clinic. Brief phone call with me (no charge) and appointment made. She was now being referred to a specialist for consultation. I understand COVID and the risks. I understand things are different but we are sitting on a physical and mental health time bomb here with undiagnosed conditions being left untreated until we either have permanent damage, fatal consequences or require expensive medical intervention. I was lucky in that I had insurance.

I also rang a couple of dentists looking for an appointment for a child. We are not seeing Children was the response. When did we discover the children were higher risk than adults???
 
I went to my GP a few weeks ago. I had to bring my daughter anyway. It was my first visit in about 15 years and he was wearing a mask but no big issues about Covid.
 
Dentists are supposed to have another adult in the surgery when treating a child for child protection reasons, that can be a dental nurse or a parent etc. That is far more difficult now in a Covid 19 environment, but not impossible.
 
Hairdressers and pub employees aren't on full pay when their places or work are closed and they don't have very powerful lobby groups to represent them. The teachers unions have behaved in a very shoddy way over the last few months. None of the teachers I know had a problem with schools reopening over the summer but their unions have blocked that. Until the schools reopen many parents, mainly mothers, won't be able to go back to work fulltime.

A lot of what we think we know about teachers is false. Only approx. 2/3 of teachers are on full pay over the summer.

I agree that the teacher unions portray a very bad image of teachers that is also totally at odds with the ideas of most teachers.
 
A lot of what we think we know about teachers is false. Only approx. 2/3 of teachers are on full pay over the summer.

I agree that the teacher unions portray a very bad image of teachers that is also totally at odds with the ideas of most teachers.
All full time teachers are on full pay over the summer. The rest are treated very badly by the teaching unions and by their employer.
 
One interesting thing about Covid is that it really exposed to parents the teachers who have a genuine love and interest in teaching and those who are just clocking in. Eldest is in 1st year in secondry school, some teachers organised virtual classes every week or had a zoom call just to give students a chance to have a chat if nothing else. Lots of project work which was sent in and reported back on and they engaged with pupils online. Others just emailed out a few worksheets and feedback was sporadic (if any) to say the least in some cases.
 
One interesting thing about Covid is that it really exposed to parents the teachers who have a genuine love and interest in teaching and those who are just clocking in. Eldest is in 1st year in secondry school, some teachers organised virtual classes every week or had a zoom call just to give students a chance to have a chat if nothing else. Lots of project work which was sent in and reported back on and they engaged with pupils online. Others just emailed out a few worksheets and feedback was sporadic (if any) to say the least in some cases.
In fairness some teachers will be more tech savvy than others. Some teachers have their own kids at home and other commitments.
 
We had a very similar experience to Peanuts. It wasn't really a case of teachers not being tech savvy or having kids either as it was generally the younger teachers who put in the least effort and the only expectation we had was that they would be present for the classes. A few of them did not attend one single class during the lockdown - simply sent a bit of work once in a while, not even weekly. However that said a lot of other teachers were very good and were present and available during each class as well as trying to keep classes as interactive and normal as possible. It was a bit of an eye opener all the same.
 
One interesting thing about Covid is that it really exposed to parents the teachers who have a genuine love and interest in teaching and those who are just clocking in.

Talking to a couple of teachers I know working in less privileged areas, it has also exposed the gulf between parents that want their kids to progress and those that have no interest. Sadly these kids are being left further behind now and less likely to escape the poverty trap.
 
We had a very similar experience to Peanuts. It wasn't really a case of teachers not being tech savvy or having kids either as it was generally the younger teachers who put in the least effort and the only expectation we had was that they would be present for the classes. A few of them did not attend one single class during the lockdown - simply sent a bit of work once in a while, not even weekly. However that said a lot of other teachers were very good and were present and available during each class as well as trying to keep classes as interactive and normal as possible. It was a bit of an eye opener all the same.

other way around for us, it was the younger teachers who were making the greatest effort and the older teachers who we saw less of. Certainly some of them were not tech savy and there probably is a need for digital training for all and some probably had issues in working from home where they lived in terms of broadband access. But a few were just taking the mickey to be honest
 
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