Covid 19 / Coronavirus – Page 6 – Slugger O'Toole

Queen’s Quarter superblock – Freeing a city quarter from vehicle traffic and pedestrianising Botanic Avenue…

Jonathan Hobbs on May 12, 2020, 10:33 am

| Readers 1440

Following Infrastructure Minister Nichola Mallon’s announcement of a new Walking and Cycling Champion, to lead the emergency measures needed to immediately increase active travel space and priority, we take a closer look at one aspect of plans: superblocks. The term has been used to describe work to reduce traffic levels within areas of Barcelona, and Bikefast has proposed a superblock-style approach to re-configuring Belfast’s Linen Quarter. Coronavirus has claimed many lives and devastated families, and will continue to do so – in greater …

In praise of our parks & green spaces during the pandemic

Soapbox on May 11, 2020, 2:28 pm

| Readers 1051

Cllr Brian Smyth is the Green Party Councillor on Belfast City Council I’ve developed a whole new level of appreciation of our public parks during this pandemic. I’ve been up to Cregagh Glen a few times during the last number of weeks and it brought me the head space I hadn’t realised I needed. I grew up in a block of flats with my mum and space, never mind head space, was in short supply. No garden, not much green …

Baking in lock down, a welcome distraction…

Gillian Wilson on May 11, 2020, 9:23 am

| Readers 828

I am not a domestic goddess. I have spent a large part of my life taking the handy way out of providing food for my family. I can cook and do a delicious Sunday roast, but I would never attempt to compete on Masterchef. Anyway, I like to do my bit to keep unemployment down and eat out when I can. My neighbour, on the other hand, is very much into home cooking, and baking in particular. I nicknamed her …

Not waving but drowning – The need to reduce inequality…

Terry Maguire on May 11, 2020, 9:11 am

| Readers 702

How was your lockdown? Bored by now? I feel life coming back: restaurants getting cleaned, outdoor tables appearing at cafes, more traffic on roads and a general spirit of giddy optimism rising again. We said we would get through it and we have and even before Buoyant Boris announced it, we were making small, tentative baby-steps into a new future as we test our ability to survive in a World with Covid. But we are not returning to from where …

The beekeeper in lockdown gets a new outfit…

Natasha Geary on May 10, 2020, 7:00 am

| Readers 3189

27th April 2020 My new bee suit arrived at the weekend. Ordered in a pre-Covid world, it still got caught up in the pandemic and has taken nearly eight weeks to get here. Until now, I’ve been squeezing into an inherited child-size suit. My new one is ‘lilac’ though I’d say it’s closer to pink than its purple cousin. It’s the same shade as the Cherry Blossoms that are blooming everywhere. I’m delighted – no more straining into a too …

Covid-19 just part of Darwin’s dangerous idea…

Terry Maguire on May 9, 2020, 1:30 pm

| Readers 3668

Some years back, the vagaries of cheap air travel and the capriciousness of meetings schedules conspired to place me in central London with a few hours to spare. So I took that rare opportunity to visit the Gothic cathedral that is the Natural History Museum (NHM) to see a Charles Darwin exhibition. In my youth, pathetic in the eyes of my peers, Darwin was my hero; his simple, powerful idea excited me sufficiently to make studying science a joy rather …

Another case of perverse British exceptionalism rumbled late?

Brian Walker on May 8, 2020, 2:22 pm

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Peter Donaghy vindicated! An FT exclusive picked up by the Guardian.. The government has left open the prospect of ditching its own contact-tracing app in favour of the “decentralised” model favoured by Apple and Google after it was revealed that a feasibility study into such a change is under way. After repeated warnings that the UK will be an outlier if it insists on using its own centralised app rather than relying on Google and Apple’s technology, rights groups and MPs said …

The stand off over the Ireland/NI protocol is a model of cooperation compared to Covid planning

Brian Walker on May 7, 2020, 11:35 am

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A few days ago, naively perhaps, I wondered why north and south weren’t cooperating actively over Covid 19, especially when a memo of understanding had been signed between the two public health authorities at the end of March . After all ” North –South” is one of those pillars of the GFA that are almost a religion albeit a neglected one. Surely Covid created ideal circumstances for holding a big revival. Across the water, one of the pieties of the …

Would you prefer faster roads or faster broadband?

Brian O'Neill on May 7, 2020, 11:29 am

| Readers 861

How are you getting on with the great work from home experiment? I have worked from home for most of my career so it is nothing new for me but I realise it will be a novelty for most of you. Your experience will vary greatly depending on if you have young kids or not. With our 4-year-old, I find it is next to impossible to get any work done while homeschooling and childminding. Whatever teachers get paid they should …

Singing Happy Birthday to the Experts

Gerry Lynch on May 6, 2020, 8:25 pm

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Of course, the Daily Telegraph’s front page scoop that crack epidemic modeller Neil Ferguson broke lockdown rules to visit his paramour is a dead cat story designed to deflect attention from the UK having the worst COVID19 death toll in Europe. The Telegraph has form in trying to destroy Ferguson’s credibility, but that doesn’t mean this wasn’t a real front page news story, and it doesn’t mean that Ferguson shouldn’t have resigned; in fact, it’s greatly to his credit that …

Is obesity a key factor in Covid-19 deaths?

Terry Maguire on May 6, 2020, 7:05 am

| Readers 2011

What we know about Covid-19 increases daily. But what we don’t remains largely out of sight in the submerged part of this very menacing iceberg that keeps policy-makers awake at night. What we do know we must use wisely applying it where we can to save lives. In January as they were getting to grips with the infection China identified many of the risk factors for poorer outcomes and these have since been confirmed in other countries. Being older is …

The problem with opening churches too early…

Alex Scates on May 6, 2020, 7:00 am

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The Minister for Agriculture, Edwin Poots has recently called for churches across NI to reopen following a graduated easing of restrictions, citing novel methods of worship outside of the traditional mass congregation. Surely this is a fine position to take considering around 93% of the NI population identify as Christian? No, no it’s not. It is exactly this siloed approach that underwrites the nature of Stormont’s power sharing Executive and gives out of touch ministers, like Poots, a platform to …

If the UK doesn’t change its disastrous contact tracing app strategy, Northern Ireland should align with the Irish government approach

Peter Donaghy (Salmon of Data) on May 5, 2020, 7:16 pm

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As trials of the British government’s coronavirus contact tracing app begin this week on the Isle of Wight, serious questions have been raised about the design of the application and its potential effectiveness. There are two broad categories of contact tracing app: the centralised approach, where data from phones is sent to a central database where contact data can be analysed, or the decentralised approach, where in order to protect user privacy contact data is analysed on phones without the …

Why the wall of silence over north-south Covid cooperation?

Brian Walker on May 5, 2020, 11:15 am

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Whatever the reliability of the figures, it seems possible that the Republic has been managing Covid 19 better – or has been luckier- than Northern Ireland. Whether this can be accounted for by the incubus of UK delay and the complexity of a bigger country with an older average population will emerge from the inevitable spate of inquiries. But north -south coordination and cooperation over phasing out lockdown would seem to be essential. And yet so little has emerged about …

COVID-19 Spread In Both Irelands, the UK and Selected Countries: Dublin’s success will pose dilemmas for both SF and Unionists:

Philip McGuinness on May 5, 2020, 7:09 am

| Readers 2214

Number-crunching the past few days’ COVID-19 statistics is bringing clearer evidence by the day that RoI seems to have definitively turned a corner in its struggle against this frightening adversary. If we define ‘peak covid’ as the date when a jurisdiction had its largest 7-day rolling average of new cases, we find that peak covid occurred on April 15th for the UK, April 18th for the RoI, and April 20th for NI. The graph shows the 7-day rolling averages since …

View from New York – light at the end of the tunnel or a train coming the other way?

Niall NYC on May 5, 2020, 7:05 am

| Readers 736

Anybody I know who has lived in New York for any length of time has remarked in recent years that we don’t have shoulder seasons anymore. One day it’s winter and the next day it’s not. Nobody wears a spring or autumn jacket like we used to; your winter coat gets stored away at the end of April and re-emerges sometime around Thanksgiving in November. Well, it certainly felt like last Saturday was the day the Weather Service pulled a …

Changing Behaviour in a time of plague. Be careful what you wish for…

Terry Maguire on May 4, 2020, 9:37 pm

| Readers 688

When I discovered last week that my favourite Chinese restaurant was open for take-aways and delivering locally, I telephoned but found I was out of range so I ordered to collect. Bad boy, my wife admonished, I was making an unnecessary and selfish journey and this was not allowed. Suitably censured I agreed to stay home and to satisfy my desire for spicy food I located at the back of a cupboard an out-of-date Vesta curry bought years ago possibly …

What’s in an app?

Brian Walker on May 4, 2020, 4:48 pm

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In relation to the cross-border use of the app, Mr Harris said inter-operability between EU member states and use of the app across the Border “presents specific challenges which have yet to be addressed”. “The specific challenge of North-South travel in Ireland and across the Irish Sea has been highlighted in EU meetings convened to discuss eHealth and the app.” There in a nutshell is a problem of the moment. How big a problem for the island is the choice …

Mobility data suggests that Northern Ireland is traveling more than any other region in the UK or Ireland

Peter Donaghy (Salmon of Data) on May 3, 2020, 11:39 pm

| Readers 15280

Data provided by Apple on levels of mobility by Apple Maps users suggests that Northern Ireland has seen less of a drop in motor traffic levels than any other area in the United Kingdom or Ireland. The chart above shows average motor traffic levels by week, compared with the week commencing Sunday the 19th of January, for the regions of the UK, the Republic of Ireland, Italy and Spain. The data suggests that this week motor traffic levels in Northern …

Boris Johnson’s perversity on the Brexit cliff edge reminds me of the Free State’s rejection of all things British

Brian Walker on April 30, 2020, 9:05 pm

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Warrenpoint Harbour The UK’s stubbornly negative approach to future relations within the EU reminds me of the newborn Free State’s attitude to Britain after the trauma of independence. They can’t wait to be rid of even the symbols as well as the substance of the former power even to the extent of trying to deny the facts of mutual interdependence particularly over the economy. Granted there are vital differences. No blood has been spilled over Brexit and… I was going …