Zero Covid

Purple

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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.
 
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.

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.
 
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 .
 
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.

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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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.
 
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.
 
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.
 
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.
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.
@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.
 
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
 
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.
 
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'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.
 
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.
 
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.
 
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.
 
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
 
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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