“Border counties would be treated similarly to any other zone, with the addition of so-called ‘travel bubbles’ which could stretch across the border.”

You might think that’s familiar. You’d be right. That’s because it was a Brexiter idea for the Border. https://www.thejournal.ie/readme/zero-covid-strategy-5331482-Jan2021/

We shot it down then as farcical and unworkable because there is no way of closing the Border so all you are doing is creating an area where goods and people freely intermingle and then hope that by some unexplained magic you can seal them off.

Yet here it is again.

This is precisely - and I do mean, *precisely* - the same hand-waving, stop-being-awkward-just-sort-it approach we got from the Brexiters on movement of goods and people, transposed to a DMZ for disease.

How it wasn’t a runner for frontier workers then but is now is never explained.

How having this DMZ for disease along the Border in this State, unilaterally, is to work without prior agreement from NI about one in NI when we don’t have an all-island policy is also not explained.

The reason it isn’t explained is that without such agreement, all a unilateral bubble would do would create a free area of increased social contacts on this side of the Border, with predictable effects in already badly-affected counties.

It’s not a zero-COVID strategy. It’s chalking an X on the door of the Border counties, trying to seal them off and hoping not too many escape, masquerading as kindness because of a stark unwillingness to face squarely the nature of borders and limits of state coercive power.

The basic lessons of Brexit - borders have two sides, they are permeable unless closed, and if you can’t close it you need agreement to prevents what happens on the other side affecting you - apply here, too.

A plan that does not address those lessons is no better than Brexiters

An all-island zero-COVID strategy would be a good idea. It will not be the same as NZ, because this island has two states on it. A zero-COVID strategy fundamentally depends on both stated restricting entry to this island in the same manner.

It is only achievable even in part by agreement and cooperation between those two states. Without that, you cannot prevent people entering this island.

You can tinker around the edges with hotel quarantine, which is fine, but you do not have a policy without that agreement.