I saw a prominent politician discuss the 134,000 passenger numbers for July, feeding into baseless fears and deflecting from our pressing Covid19 issues.

3.5 million passengers went through Dublin Airport in July 2019.

Travel is only down a mere 3.4 million people.

Whether it's intentional or not, that 134,000 passenger number is being misrepresented.

Anywhere up to 40,000 of that number never set foot outside the airport - some never get off their plane - as Dublin is a connecting gateway from mainland Europe and Asia to North America.

The pressing Covid19 issues are young people in the 16-30 age range throwing house parties and indoor gatherings.

That's driving the case load.

Travel is not - despite the best efforts of people to blame Brazilians and Americans for distinctly-Irish, problematic behaviours.

Last 48 hours:

Tests: 11,267
Positives: 32
Negativity: 99.72%

If there were truly endemic issues relating to travel in past 6 weeks, we would have had big problems by now.

We don't - because it's not travel causing us issues.

For a start, feck all people are traveling relative to normal - as demonstrated by the 3.4 million reduction in passenger numbers.

Secondly, most airlines enforce mask wearing and hand sanitizing on flights to reduce transmission

Thirdly, Mike Ryan of WHO said he's satisfied airports are being diligent in infection control practices and transiting through airports doesn't worry him.

What does worry him, is house parties, and other indoor mass gathering activities involving alcohol.

Any suggestion Dublin Airport are failing the Irish people is complete nonsense.

They're doing a great job.

If they were failing us, we'd know all about it in the real-time numbers.

Any suggestion travel is driving infection is complete ignorance, because it isn't.

Excess deaths in the pandemic are over double in Northern Ireland than they are down south.

You were far safer in County Dublin than County Antrim.

I must have missed the passenger numbers for Belfast Airport in that particular tweet.

What ROI did is get test/trace up to world-leading levels.

Whereas throughout March, April and May - Northern Ireland were testing at less than half our rate, sometimes a third, missing opportunities to cut off chains of transmission.

That's largely why we did better.

By May 13th, NI had trained 60 people to do contact tracing.

By the same day, ROI had trained ~30 times more - 1,700 people. At the height of the epidemic, 300 of those 1,700 were working at any one moment tracking down cases.

Northern Ireland had too few, doing too much work.

60 people is ok for a 1.9 million population during the suppression phase of a virus but during a surge, that's 60 stressed people trying to track down hundreds of contacts, as fast as they can.

It takes too long, not good enough.

There were easy solutions to NI problems, too.

They could have asked Dublin for help on test/trace. They didn't.

They could have asked London or Berlin for help if they didn't want to ask us.

They could have just sorted it out themselves but they dithered and more people died because of it.

What politicians should be doing - universally - is hammering home pleas to people to be sound and not throw enormous, indoor house parties & birthday parties.

The travel issue is obfuscating that our-already low level of infection would be lower, if people stopped with parties.

We're doing phenomenally well in Ireland on infection control.

We've been consistently between 4 to 5 times below the EU average of daily cases for a month - and still are.

Dublin Airport played a big role in that, thank you to them.

Travel is not our problem. Alcohol is.

Laser focus will save lives throughout the autumn and winter.

Keep indoor gatherings involving alcohol small. A few pals. Whatever, just don't go on a mad one and end up in some randommers back garden at 4am dancing to Maniac.

Politicians need to focus and stop fear-mongering.