Thank Fionnuala it’s Friday.

And technically it’s Springtime too (just stay away from the weather forecasts).

Which brings us to the theme of this week’s music competition: What’s your favourite song whose title or lyrics contain a reference to Spring?

Here’s mine.

Reply below to be in with a chance of winning a splendid €20 gift voucher redeemable at  Currys PC World.

The winner will be chosen by my window cleaner.

Lines MUST close at 10pm.

Nick says: Good luck!

Currys PC World

In case you missed it.

Last night.

Broadsheet on the Telly.

Dr Jack Lambert (top in green), doctor of infectious diseases and medicine from UCD School of Medicine, joined our panel from top: host Neil Curran (left), Vanessa Foran and Jimmy Smyth.

Neil writes:

Dr Lambert shared his insights on the seriousness of the virus but also why lockdowns can only be a temporary action and not a longer solution. He also discusses vaccines and future mutation and offers a bit of positivity on how Ireland will get through the crisis.

He also offers some alternate approaches as well as some startling insight into the role infectious disease specialists have played, or not played, in managing the crisis.

Vanessa and Jimmy also debate the artistic merit of the Garda dance video…

Fight!

Last night: Staying In Tonight?

Sam Wickens – Murky Waters

Grey is the colour.

Sam Wickens delivers another soulful and atmospheric performance on his new single Murky Waters from his new 5-song Watson EP released today.

Filmed under a particularly ominous Irish sky, the textured monochrome video was made by DanDanDann productions.

Sam writes:

“Murky Waters is the realisation that I was raised and put through terrible circumstances. Constantly feeling alone through every obstacle that was placed in front of me.

Traumatic events seemed to follow me no matter where I ran, I started to believe that I was some sort of gatekeeper, that my purpose was to absorb the terrible things so others didn’t need too.”

The Bangor songwriter is due to play The Workman’s Club, Dublin on April 1. Fingers crossed.

Nick says: Play it, Sam.

Sam Wickens

Dr Marcus De Brun

Amid calls for a Zero Covid Strategy…

…Dr Marcus De Brun, writing in CassandraVoices (full article at link below)

The frankly bizarre ‘option’ of Zero Covid-19 that has been grasped by some on the left, and the right, in Ireland is a form of Utopianism. It ignores the virtual impossibility of eradicating an aerosol, sub-microscopic pathogen such as Covid-19 from Ireland.

Moreover, we remain one of the most globalized societies in the world with over half-a-million foreign born resident in the country and an Irish-born diaspora of three million; rely on international trade for most commodities; besides having a porous border to the North.

Moreover, New Zealand and Australia are currently enjoying Summer, when respiratory viruses retreat. This seasonal effect is enhanced by a depleted ozone layer over the Southern Hemisphere – causing the world’s highest rate of skin cancers – which elevates the level of UV light that destroys viruses.

Both countries are also insulated from the rest of the world by vast oceans and an uninhabited landmass. Even still, outbreaks occurred in New Zealand and Melbourne last Winter, prompting draconian responses.

Notably, however, the maximum number of cases that Melbourne – with a population almost the size of Ireland’s – experienced in a single day was just seven hundred, and it required an extreme 112-day lockdown – and/or the arrival of Spring before an apparent elimination. In contrast, case numbers in Ireland have exceeded eight thousand in a single day.

A Zero-Covid approach assumes the island of Ireland is sealed hermetically. Good luck with telling the DUP that they have to follow the rules of the South! And ‘success’ would presumably give way to a permanent state of siege against the viral dangers posed by the outside world.

At this point even New Zealand’s Prime Minister Jacinda Arden has had enough, acknowledging the long-term impossibility of pursuing Zero Covid she recently said:

“Our goal has to be though, to get the management of Covid-19 to a similar place as we do seasonally, with the flu. It won’t be a disease that we will see simply disappear after one round of vaccine.”

Comparing Ireland to East Asian countries may also be inappropriate as, Wuhan apart, no single country in that region has experienced a significant outbreak. Notably, Japan, which has avoided locking down throughout the crisis experienced forty times as many flu and pneumonia deaths during that period. This suggests other factors – East Asia has been the geographic origin of several modern coronavirus epidemics – may be inhibiting the spread of Covid-19 there.

Yet this message has not trickled either left or downwards into popular opinion as the Irish Times continues to print articles in support of ‘the plan’.

‘Zero Covid’ is as much a vote-winner, as a zero tolerance for crime or any other virtuous objective, but it’s political claptrap from an taxidermized left and a neoconservative right, furnished by scientists that seemingly have no conception of biological realities….

Fight!

Covid-19 in Ireland: Landfall (Dr Marcus De Brun, CassandraVoices)

Previously: Just For One Day

Previously: Marcus De Brun on Broadsheet

Meanwhile…

This afternoon.

Dishy globalist egghead and former Broadsheet columnist Julian Mercille shares his Zero Strategy diagnosis with the Tec Dr (not a real doctor).

Lovely cigs.

The Corner Shop.

Red Cow Lane at the corner of North King Street, Smithfield, Dublin 7

Mid-1970s BC (Before Centra).

Via Photos Of Dublin

Meanwhile…

In fairness.

*drags on a Sweet Afton*

Broadsheet.ie