One of the problems with writing about Irish Government Covid Policy is that often, ideas are so obviously dumb that there is very little to say about them, and writing about them carries the risk of being the equivalent of a striker who knocks it six feet over the bar in front of an open goal. Take, for example, the infamous “mandatory €9 meal with your pint” rule: That one required four or five steps of logical thought to even get anywhere close to understanding the reason for it. In theory, having a meal meant people would eat. This, perhaps, meant that they would get less drunk. This in turn meant that they would be less eager to hug each other randomly and spread the virus. It was the policy of somebody who had watched pubs on television, but never actually been in one.
The most recent rule might actually be worse:
NEW: Government officials have told the late night and live events sector that tickets must be booked an hour in advance for entry into nightclubs/light bars with no seating.
Meeting ongoing between Government and the sector aimed at finalising plans.
— Andrew Lowth (@AndrewLowth1) October 26, 2021
At first glance, you can see a few possible reasons for it: It might help with contact tracing in the event of a covid outbreak in nightclubs. It might help prevent overcrowding by ensuring that only a fixed number of tickets are available. It might stop long queues outside the door. At first glance, this is the kind of policy where somebody reasonably intelligent could manufacture a justification – much like the €9 meals.
The problem, though, is that none of those justifications actually work. First, in terms of contact tracing, who are they going to contact, exactly? Everybody in the nightclub? The idea that somebody can be certain that they were infectious in coppers to begin with is a stretch. The idea that they will now precisely which other patrons they came into contact with is absurd. The notion that the state is going to contact trace 500 or 1000 people for one case of Covid simply does not stand up to scrutiny, especially if you have any knowledge of the state’s contact tracing capabilities. If the state feels that it might be necessary to contact trace up to a thousand people in every night club, then the saner policy would simply not be to open them at all.
The overcrowding argument is just errant nonsense. Nightclubs already have limits on the number of people they can admit. The ticketing measure adds nothing to that. As for the queues outside the door? Well, they just become packed dancefloors inside the door, tickets or no tickets. None of it makes any sense.
What it does do, of course, is place another huge administrative burden on the nightclubs themselves. They will have to print, sell, and track every ticket. They will have to record the personal details of every attendee while, at the same time, complying with the EU’s onerous data protection rules. They will also have to check vaccine passports on the doors, even though the purpose of those vaccine passports was supposed to be to eliminate the need for all these other precautions. Once again, that discriminatory policy has failed to such an extent that even Government does not believe it works.
What we are seeing here is the conflict between a Government that wants to open everything up, and a public health establishment that wants to keep everything closed. The Government is well aware that its own medical advisors leak and brief the press extensively. If cases happen to spike out of control this winter, you can be absolutely sure that there are some in NPHET who will work overtime to make sure the newspapers blame the Government, and not the Princes of the Pandemic. What we have here, then, is the classic “we are doing something” policy.
The whole point of it is busywork and activity: The reminder to business and the public that big brother is watching them, and that they are allowed to have fun, but not too much fun. And that their freedoms can be taken away at any time. There is no sane person in Ireland who can possibly believe that ticketing nightclubs will have any impact whatsoever on the levels of Covid 19 in Ireland. It therefore follows, since Government, for all their faults, are sane, that this policy is being introduced for some other reason. And when Government does something that it is hard to explain logically, it is usually a safe bet that they think it will win them votes or, at best, stop them from losing votes.
So as usual, the people really to blame for this nonsense are Ireland’s population of Covid hyper-cautious people: Those who would have us locked down almost forever. This rubbish is a sop to them, to make them feel safe, even though it does absolutely nothing whatever to improve or disimprove their safety levels.
The country has gone stark raving mad, is the bottom line.