Joerg's Ramblings – Page 3 – A Foreigner in Ireland

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

27 March 2021Written 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 argentina, austria, brazil, Coronavirus, Covid-19, hotel quarantine, Mauritius, Peru

Don’t trust anybody! Covid-19: Astra Zeneca Blood clots

14 March 2021Written by Joerg Steegmueller

The newest information that reached Irish media is that all vaccinations with the Astra Zeneca vaccine have been put on hold over a risk of blood clots, that affected 4 patients in Norway and a few more in other countries. www.rte.ie/news/2021/0314/1203889-niac-recommends-suspension-of-use-of-astrazeneca-vaccin/

Sounds like a sound and responsible decision, right? Duty of care and all that. Well done, boys!

But then you look at the BIG picture and think back to February and also think about what else is going on and suddenly you realise that there is probably a lot more going on. AGAIN!

Here are the facts and conclusions:

Norway had 4 (FOUR!!) cases of blood clots. They are all in hospital and are being treated. In Austria one person died from a blood clot and one if in hospital, in Denmark one died (a second one is in hospital) and in Italy possibly also one death has been reported.

So that is a total of maybe three deaths and five people in hospital. 8 people out of 17 million administered vaccines. Maybe it is even 30 patients as the article mentions when referring to the European Medicines Agency (EMA).

That’s still not a lot and a link to the vaccine is far from clear, but yes, it probably makes sense to pause a clinical trial if you have some deaths. (Oh, you think this is NOT a clinical trial? Hmm, think again!! It is a mass trial and nothing else but an experiment!)

But let’s move on and remember January. We found out at the end of January that 33 elderly people in Norway died shortly after receiving their Covid-19 vaccination from Pfizer/BioNTech. But we were told quickly that this has NO relevance (www.wired.co.uk/article/norway-deaths-coronavirus-vaccine) because the patients were elderly and would have died anyway. :-O

We don’t even know if there were other deaths elsewhere in the world. Or maybe we do but we aren’t told? We don’t know in what state of health they or the others that possibly died elsewhere were in. We now their age and a conclusion was made. We just discarded the 33 old people in Norway and moved on. Not for a second the vaccination programme was halted.

This time a number of countries halted the Astra Zeneca vaccination and MANY countries followed quickly, because if ONE country stops it and someone dies in ANOTHER country the politicians and “experts” and the country where people died will be blamed. Publicity-caused ripple effect!

A blood clot is something serious, but there seem to be a number of different blood clot-caused issues that could have killed the patients and pulmonary embolism or deep vein thrombosis are the main ones.

As a side note: Between 1981 and 1999 a total of 5408 patients were admitted to hospital with venous thromboembolism (deep vein thrombosis) after they were on international flights according to a study www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC261739/. That is 5408 in 18 years or 300 per year. Have you heard of halting all international flights until the matter is investigated further?

But back to the vaccines:
The significant difference between the end of January and now is that at that time there was not much other choice available. So, we better keep going.

This time, however, we are in a situation where Astra Zeneca just can’t supply ENOUGH vaccine and governments around the world try to “fix” that problem or explain it SOMEHOW. The Irish Taoiseach (Prime Minister) Micheal Martin even thought it was prudent to seek a meeting with the CEO of Astra Zeneca to discuss the problem. As if the CEO was giggling while sitting on a stash that he doesn’t want to release to the governments of the world UNTIL Micheal Martin told him off..

So Astra Zeneca can’t deliver and there won’t be many vaccinations. People in Ireland and other countries are getting annoyed and governments try to make the process faster, but can’t and they get a lot of pressure from their people. And just in that moment a reason pops up that gives PERFECT justification to all countries to stop the use of that one vaccine for a week or so. Breathing space for politicians!!

Is anyone surprised that they JUMP On the opportunity to halt the vaccination? In one week there will be more doses, so this breathing space nicely shuts up all the complainers in media and public for a little bit.

Don’t trust ANYBODY in this Covid game!!! Everybody has an agenda!

Covid-19, Overexaggerations, Taoiseach Agenda, Astra Zeneca, Blood clot, deep vein thrombosis, Michael Martin

Trust in authorities during Covid times

27 February 2021Written 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 authorities, Fail, Mauritius, Travel restrictions, trust, WHO, World HEalth Organisation

Covid-19 Fines – Have they lost it?

13 February 2021Written by Joerg Steegmueller

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 5km, burglaries, government, hearts and minds, Lockdown, Nonsense, Travel restrictions

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

30 October 2020Written 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 Aldi, Covid, Dunnes, Leo Varadkar, Lidl, Lockdown, non-essential items, Tesco