The professor is right: Bus tourists to a hotel, lock ‘em up for fortnight

OVER the past couple of weeks, we have heard many reports – a lot of them anecdotal, it must be said – of American tourists roaming the countryside with abandon. It is always important to establish facts, though, and there are many myths at play here.

An American accent alone does not mean the person is a tourist. My own American cousin is, even as we speak, on a road trip around the entire coast and I’m worried he will face needless hostility when in fact he has been living here since last August and was just as locked down as the rest of us.

On RTÉ News, all the Americans interviewed as they arrived at Dublin Airport were aware they had to quarantine for two weeks and said they planned to do so. I have no reason to doubt those individuals, but that may be because it is far more likely someone planning on obeying the rules would talk to a journalist than someone heading straight for a rental car to drive to the Cliffs of Moher.

In truth, we don’t know exactly why Americans are here, and that’s why, should the need arise, the simplest thing to do is ask before judging. We have heard of tour operators and leisure service providers along the west coast doing just that and finding out that at least some Americans are here as tourists and they have not quarantined – it would be difficult for most, since a pathetic two weeks’ paid holiday is the norm for millions of them.

Mistakes

Why would they so wilfully disobey the advice? Well, the simple answer is leadership. I am far from in thrall to the actions of the National Public Health Emergency Team and the last government, which made many mistakes along the way, not least the catastrophic decision to move the elderly from hospitals to care homes without first testing them for infection, and the lack of adequate PPE that left thousands of frontline healthcare workers catching Covid.

At least, though, we had a national plan – for better or worse, we all truly were in this together. In the US, by contrast, the federal response was almost non-existent. Individual governors made their own decisions on the imposition and subsequent easing of restrictions, and the huge spike we are now seeing is largely in southern states such as Florida and Texas.

As we all know, Donald Trump pinned his hopes of re-election on a booming economy, and that economy went into freefall. Desperate to salvage it, he pressured Republican state governors to reopen too early. Instead of offering clear advice on face coverings that could save lives, he happily allowed masks to become the focus of a spurious culture war, with his most fervent supporters claiming that being compelled to wear them in shops is somehow an infringement of their constitutional rights.

What all this has led to is an army of amateur epidemiologists who think they know what is best for themselves, and that in not wearing masks or obeying other protocols, they are making a stand for personal freedom and liberty. You don’t have to look too far on social media to see that many have died from their own stupidity. If they’re not prepared to protect their own lives, or those of their fellow Americans, or even pretend they care, why would they think twice about flying here and disobeying our quarantine regulations?

As things stand, only 2% of coronavirus infections in this jurisdiction are linked to travel outside the State, but then it is not yet two weeks since we started hearing of arriving tourists, and given the incubation period necessary to develop Covid-19, we can’t be sure exactly where we are at the moment.

What we do know is that the significant majority of new cases have been due to close contact (65%) and community transmission (32%). None has been noted in anyone over 45, and threequarters have been among those under 25, a trend that has, equally anecdotally but probably correctly, been attributed largely to house parties. In short, we are giving it to each other.

So it’s probably a little overthe-top to blame Americans, or visitors from the UK, for any spike – well, not yet anyway. Why do I say that? Well, I have a trip planned next month to Dubrovnik in Croatia with a group of family and friends to celebrate my sister’s birthday, and because of that I have been following the numbers there with great interest.

To give this some context, Croatia has a population of 4.02million, compared with our almost five million. In the first week of June, it reported one new case in seven days. With the numbers low, Croatia slowly reopened to tourism, and while this was not the only factor (there were a few clusters in hospitals and convents), there is little doubt a renewed rising curve has been driven to a large extent by visitors from other countries.

From that one case in the first week of June, there were 460 in the last week of the month, including a new single-day record of 140. This week alone, Monday saw 53 new cases, Tuesday 52, Wednesday 126 and yesterday 86. Among them were two families from Sweden, a country which was alone in Europe in not introducing a stringent lockdown. Until these new numbers became apparent, I had been optimistic I would get to travel, and had planned to quarantine on return if that still was necessary – but now I’m not going.

It’s just not worth the risk to my own health or to that of anyone dear to me.

Threat

I have many friends in the travel and tourism industries and it saddens me greatly to see them in this situation, but we really have one chance to get this right. A deadlier second wave might delay any chance of travel until the population has been vaccinated to herd immunity level, and a second lockdown as the days get shorter and colder would, I believe, pose the greatest threat ever to the nation’s mental wellbeing and civil order. The first time was, for millions, something of an adventure and a chance for families to get to know each other better than ever, but you can have too much of a good thing too.

So, yes, I’m with Professor Sam McConkey. We cannot rely on visitors to submit to the quarantine they promise. For all but essential travellers, it should mean a bus trip to a hotel, and a stay there of a fortnight before they venture into the general population. We have come too far to risk it all again, especially at the hands of those who buy into Trumpian disregard of the severity of the threat the entire world faces.