Eurozone Sovereign Debt Crisis part 2 - Ireland

Industrialsize

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Boris Johnson announces four-week delay to full exit from lockdown in England
Restrictions had been due to lift on June 21 but scientists are concerned about the spread of the Delta variant of coronavirus.
LONDON — Boris Johnson announced a four-week delay to the end of lockdown in England as the Delta variant of coronavirus continues to spread rapidly through parts of the country.

The prime minister said “it is sensible to wait just a little longer” in a Downing Street press conference after returning from the NATO summit in Brussels.

“We cannot simply eliminate coronavirus, we must learn to live with it,” he added. “Even if the link between infection and hospitalization has been weakened, it has not been severed.”
“Now is the time to ease off the accelerator,” he said, to give time for the NHS to vaccinate more of the adult population.

Remaining public health restrictions were due to be lifted on June 21, but the government’s scientific advisers have raised concerns that further reopening would trigger a dangerous rise in hospitalizations.

Johnson insisted he was "confident" there would be no further delays despite the first break with the government's planned road map for full easing of the rules.

The government will also reduce the interval between vaccine doses for over 40s, amid concerns that a single jab does not provide sufficient protection.

The Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine is 96 percent effective against hospitalization after two doses, while the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine offers 92 percent protection, according to new analysis by Public Health England.

Data suggests the Delta variant — which was first detected in India — is between 40 percent and 80 percent more transmissible than earlier forms of the virus, and in a third of the country infections are doubling every week......
Boris Johnson announces four-week delay to full exit from lockdown in England
 

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The government will also reduce the interval between vaccine doses for over 40s, amid concerns that a single jab does not provide sufficient protection.
Which does not change the fact that the rate at which new or second doses are given is limited by the supply of vaccine and not shortage of people to give it to.

Delaying by four weeks doesnt make much difference to the percebtage vaccinated by the end. Right no its clear most cases are amongst unvaccinated people and that will still be true. Any extra people vaccinated will all be in low risk groups. It really makes no material difference to the situation in terms of vaccination status whether lockdown ends now or later.

Havnt had a chance to look let, but I gather government cases numbers are suggesting the new strain is already peaking...at much lower total numbers than the previous one. So its ending anyway. Thats presumably because unvaccinated people are largely immune to covid anyway. The UK ONS found this spring that 1/3 of unvaccinated people have protective covid antibody. That must be cases from the recent outbreak, because it fades over maybe 6 months and a similar number must have become immune last spring. Thats 2/3 right there. These numbers are guaranteed to be under estimates, because thats what reasearch found, your antibody level varies depending on severity of case, and also t cell immunity response is usually stronger than antibody. And then there is the remaining percentage who were immune before it arrived because of vaccination by exposure to related corona viruses (yes, thats been proven too). All in all explains why Kings college/Zoe phone app have reported covid now has the symptoms of merely a bad cold.
 

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Which does not change the fact that the rate at which new or second doses are given is limited by the supply of vaccine and not shortage of people to give it to.

Delaying by four weeks doesnt make much difference to the percebtage vaccinated by the end. Right no its clear most cases are amongst unvaccinated people and that will still be true. Any extra people vaccinated will all be in low risk groups. It really makes no material difference to the situation in terms of vaccination status whether lockdown ends now or later.

Havnt had a chance to look let, but I gather government cases numbers are suggesting the new strain is already peaking...at much lower total numbers than the previous one. So its ending anyway. Thats presumably because unvaccinated people are largely immune to covid anyway. The UK ONS found this spring that 1/3 of unvaccinated people have protective covid antibody. That must be cases from the recent outbreak, because it fades over maybe 6 months and a similar number must have become immune last spring. Thats 2/3 right there. These numbers are guaranteed to be under estimates, because thats what reasearch found, your antibody level varies depending on severity of case, and also t cell immunity response is usually stronger than antibody. And then there is the remaining percentage who were immune before it arrived because of vaccination by exposure to related corona viruses (yes, thats been proven too). All in all explains why Kings college/Zoe phone app have reported covid now has the symptoms of merely a bad cold.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
 
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dandelion

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There are some interesting results from King's college/Zoe phone app which monitors covid prevalence. For the last week R value across britain, which is essentially the new Indian covid variant, have been falling. The one exception is the SW region, which happens to be where the G7 conference has been happening.

If this continues, then this outbreak will be the smallest so far. So far it is essentially negligible in size, and only matters if it is about to get much bigger. So..current trend is it is already slowing. This is supported by government case data too. https://covid-assets.joinzoe.com/latest/covid_symptom_study_report.pdf

Government announces delay in ending lockdown because of rising cases....just as evidence arises this new mini surge is petering out. Thats pretty typical of every outbreak in the Uk so far.
 

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There are some interesting results from King's college/Zoe phone app which monitors covid prevalence. For the last week R value across britain, which is essentially the new Indian covid variant, have been falling. The one exception is the SW region, which happens to be where the G7 conference has been happening.

If this continues, then this outbreak will be the smallest so far. So far it is essentially negligible in size, and only matters if it is about to get much bigger. So..current trend is it is already slowing. This is supported by government case data too. https://covid-assets.joinzoe.com/latest/covid_symptom_study_report.pdf

Government announces delay in ending lockdown because of rising cases....just as evidence arises this new mini surge is petering out. Thats pretty typical of every outbreak in the Uk so far.

Funnily enough, Sky News say the opposite - the R value is increasing with cases rises exponentially and hospital admissions correlating with cases in younger age groups...

COVID-19 cases 'rising exponentially' in England, study finds

'COVID-19 cases are "rising exponentially" across England, with the latest estimates putting the R number at 1.44.'
 

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Cummings has exposed Johnson for what many of us have been saying all along. At the moment though the English nationalists would probably applaud him if he raped Greta Thunberg. I'm not sure what will shake the immorality of the english mob.

Hancock has also been confirmed in his responsibility for 25000+ avoidable deaths by undermining proper testing programs back in March 2020. He was wholly responsible for this and I was ranting about it at the time if you care to read back. This lack of testing program continues to make a nonsense of our ability to track the spread of the disease as we see with the India strain.
 
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dandelion

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Funnily enough, Sky News say the opposite - the R value is increasing with cases rises exponentially and hospital admissions correlating with cases in younger age groups...

COVID-19 cases 'rising exponentially' in England, study finds
The statistics radio program 'more or less' commented on exponential growth yet again this week. It was yet again being misused by the media. It means something which doubles in a fixed time scale, so for example number of cases might double every week, that would be exponential growth. But if cases were doubling one time every 100 years, that would also be exponential growth - but hardly a serious risk.

There have been lots of reports of 'exponential growth' of the covid epidemic. This is probably because you would expect an epidemic to experience exponential growth, because of the way it works. If each person infects a fixed number of new people, then it will cause exponential growth. However the R value, the number each person infects, keeps changing. We measure it, and frankly it is never staying the same for very long.

In the long run R must change, because people get infected, become immune, and then the supply of new people to infect runs out. Exponential growth can only happen so long as that supply has not yet changed much because of new immunity. Exponential growth always ends. But with covid it usually ends just before someone has prepared an announcement that it has begun. Thats because it at least appears never to involve most people in any outbreak. The simplest explanation why not, is they were immune from the outset.

But thank you for pointing out react 12 has just been published. The actual paper is at https://spiral.imperial.ac.uk/bitstream/10044/1/89629/2/react1_r12_preprint.pdf

Towards the end they do a summary graph of the results of all their studies so far, which if I can post it is:
react study 11 prevalence.jpg


if you look at the latest section, their curve fit to their data is approximately a straight line on a log plot, which does indeed suggest exponential growth as they say. But if you look at all the old data, tyou can see this never stays steady for long and it isnt likely to this time either. What is unfortunate of course is they didnt start surveying prevalence until after the first outbreak had largley ended. This would have been very interesting to compare to now.

The government daily case data seems to have flattened off as has the king's college/zoe data. Both these will be more recent than the react study and its only in the last weeks data this is showing.
 
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dandelion

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Heres another graph from their report, showing prevalence with hospitalisations and deaths overlaid. The timing of hospitaliation and deaths has been shifted along the x axis so that the deaths/hospitalisations are aligned with the testing data which gave rise to them. react study 11  hospitalisations and deaths.jpg


On this it looks like hospitalisations has aligned with prevlence as it has done in the past. Which is a bit odd, since supposedly the vaccinated people are not now getting ill. Most cases have always been in younger people, and most severe illness in older, so if you take out the older group, you would expect the pattern to change and hospitalisations to be lower. That doesnt really look like whats here blue line. Red line deaths, its really too early to tell from this. Its picked up a bit, but its still well below the trend for last year.

If there is a confounding factor it might explain the blue line converging but red line not. For example, if most cases in hospital catch it there, then it wouldnt really matter what the community rate is doing, they just catch it after admission for something else and push up the total of people in hospital with covid. But if vaccines are working then they wont die even though they caught it, so deaths wont catch up. And really this will not overload any hospital, because its only the people admitted for something else who then get covid, so it isnt stopping you treating them for whatever is really wrong.

The other posibility is that many older people are still catching covid but without symptoms. Vaccinations isnt stopping infections, just symptomatic ones. So they only find out after being admitted to hospital, which still bumps up covid case totals in hospital, but really makes no difference at all to their work load.
 

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The UK now faces a situation where a significant number of adults are refusing to join the public health program of vaccination.

For the moment, the government is being very nice and attempting to persuade these people. However, so long as they refuse to be vaccinated, the UK will remain on several country's red list as Covid and its variants will remain live in the UK population. This will have severe consequences for those wishing to travel for business, pleasure and family reasons. Please note that many people have not been able to see their families for a long time and many businesses are failing as a result of this, not least the travel industry itself.

Far from delaying opening up again, I think that we should now let the virus go through the remaining population. If you won't accept the vaccine immunity, then please try the herd immunity option. Sufficient adults have now been vaccinated to achieve this.

If you are an anti vaxer and you get ill or die, well, you are like someone smoking a pack a day or drinking several bottles. You are aware of the possible consequences.
Oh dear. Another example where the US is showing it is the child of England!

It seems that here in the US there is now plenty of vaccine and also plenty of those who have not had their jabs.

There shouldn't be a problem, but there is. The blue states those who voted for Biden have reached the 70 % adults getting their jabs.

The red states? A slight problem. Trumpville! They don't need those jabs. Either they are super people who won't get COVID, or super people that will get COVID but recover super people inspired!

The begging is on. Perhaps tax credits could be offered.

I don't know about the ones who don't want to be vaccinated in the UK. The ones here in the US are hiding their face in the sand!

Perhaps in July when the red states are swamped with COVID once again after Trump inspired people find super spreader events to attend, they will finally believe the truth.

Then again, I suspect they won't. Even if they are the last living member of their immediate family because the rest of the family died from COVID. Until they get that personal phone call from Dear Leader Donald J telling them to go get vaccinated, they are not going to do it!

There is a saying that, "Once a fool, always a fool." Sometimes it is really true!
 

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Vaccination hesitancy is very low in UK. I saw somewhere that we are the least hesitant nation. No I can’t now find it.

there are pockets of hesitancy amongst migrant communities. These are the places where the delta variant is really being felt.
 

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So its taken till the G7 conference for the EU to finally com e out and revel their colours.
Rather that try to help the situation they are combined to bring the UK to its knees and are using the Northern Ireland Protocol as the excuse.
Yes Boris has been cavalier, yes he has pushed his options and yes he could certainly do with some revision and help from the EU
But they, Merkel - on her way out - and Macron -clinging on in the face of national adversity - are determined to "punish" the UK for being upstart and not accepting the Franco/ German European decisions were the way forward and so left "the club".
The final agreement was rushed, not fully thought through by either side and there does need to be time to realign not only the wording but the true sense.
The problem here is pride, national pride and the chief negotiator for the EU would never admit to not having fully understood everything. But she didn't, her hair might have been perfect but her total understanding wasn't.

So while things turn into a Sausage War on one hand in France its about to turn into a fishing war - even the French admit they didn't read the small print and so French Fishermen will have to accept they cannot fish in UK waters as agreed by the negotiators on behalf of the French (try telling that to the revolting French face to face) and it can only be days before the fishermen blockade ports and do illegal fishing without any sanctions from the French Government - much more like tacit assistance.

As France promises a trade war if things are not cleared up to its satisfaction, will Germany follow suit?
Its taken till now for the true feelings to come out and the EU will now do everything it can to bring, as it hopes, the UK to its knees, to ruin its economy and to make the UK suffer for thinking it can exist outside the EU.
This is what I feared from Brexit. Western Europe has been blessed now for 70 years of being in harmony.

I have been reading several pages plus remembering some previous pages. It doesn't look good.

1. Scotland does not want to be a part of the UK
2. Some in Northern Ireland want to be unified with Ireland
3. Some in Northern Ireland want to stay unified with G. B.
4. Where is the border between N I and Ireland?
5. Where is the border between the UK and Ireland?
6. Is there a border between N I and the rest of the UK?
7. Is the EU going to war against the UK over sausage?
8. Is France going to war with the UK over fish?
9. Germany connects to Russia for most of its natural gas.

Looks like a recipe that could totally fracture the peace in Western Europe? There may not be a real hot war. Even so, peace can become totally unraveled quickly.

An assignation in 1914 through Europe into a war that became WWI. Keep in mind that many of the nations on both sides had monarchs that were first cousins! In the summer of 1914, everyone thought there would be peace now and forever more in Europe!

And so gun boats from the UK were sent out to see that nothing untoward happened. Nobody knows what happened.

One minute all was well. Then one of the boats fired at the other. Both sides say it was not them.

Nevertheless, French and British ships are out there fighting each other. Both France and the UK have a ship that has sunk. There are casualties including both French and British deaths.

Never mind that the first shot was totally unplanned and completely an accident by those in charge out in the sea.

This is how wars have started for thousands of years. If there is a "Trump" personality calling the shots on both sides of something simple as how to trade sausage between two allies, suddenly they become mortal enemies.

Forget NATO.

Germany and Russia decide to back France. The US decides to back the UK. Germany needs Russian natural gas.

WWIII is off and running. Both sides have agreed not to use nuclear power.

Fifty million deaths later peace is restored. 50 million deaths all over chilled sausage. Humans are quite capable of being complete fools!

The new ruler in Europe and North America is now China.

Don't think for one moment it can't happen. It takes cool heads to keep the peace.

Off course I don't expect this to happen. Neither did the people in 1914 think that a major war would consume most of Europe.
 
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chrisrobin

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This is what I feared from Brexit. Western Europe has been blessed now for 70 years of being in harmony.

I have been reading several pages plus remembering some previous pages. It doesn't look good.

1. Scotland does not want to be a part of the UK
2. Some in Northern Ireland want to be unified with Ireland
3. Some in Northern Ireland want to stay unified with G. B.
4. Where is the border between N I and Ireland?
5. Where is the border between the UK and Ireland?
6. Is there a border between N I and the rest of the UK?
7. Is the EU going to war against the UK over sausage?
8. Is France going to war with the UK over fish?
9. Germany connects to Russia for most of its natural gas.

Looks like a recipe that could totally fracture the peace in Western Europe? There may not be a real hot war. Even so, peace can become totally unraveled quickly.

An assignation in 1914 through Europe into a war that became WWI. Keep in mind that many of the nations on both sides had monarchs that were first cousins! In the summer of 1914, everyone thought there would be peace now and forever more in Europe!

And so gun boats from the UK were sent out to see that nothing untoward happened. Nobody knows what happened.

One minute all was well. Then one of the boats fired at the other. Both sides say it was not them.

Nevertheless, French and British ships are out there fighting each other. Both France and the UK have a ship that has sunk. There are casualties including both French and British deaths.

Never mind that the first shot was totally unplanned and completely an accident by those in charge out in the sea.

This is how wars have started for thousands of years. If there is a "Trump" personality calling the shots on both sides of something simple as how to trade sausage between two allies, suddenly they become mortal enemies.

Forget NATO.

Germany and Russia decide to back France. The US decides to back the UK. Germany needs Russian natural gas.

WWIII is off and running. Both sides have agreed not to use nuclear power.

Fifty million deaths later peace is restored. 50 million deaths all over chilled sausage. Humans are quite capable of being complete fools!

The new ruler in Europe and North America is now China.

Don't think for one moment it can't happen. It takes cool heads to keep the peace.

Off course I don't expect this to happen. Neither did the people in 1914 think that a major war would consume most of Europe.
Dude you read to much without having the right backgrounds.
 

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I think it’s more nuanced @Freddie53

A majority in Scotland want to remain part of UK. Polls are showing a small majority, but the referendum had don’t knows breaking 90% for being part of UK. Additionally a campaign would shift the polls. A Scotland outside UK and EU and any other trading group would be very lonely. There is no nation in a comparable position. The only motivation for independence is to create a socialist hell hole. The issue is around socialism presented as nationalism. SNP is a nationalist and socialist party which is rabidly anti-English.

NI has existed for 100 years. For all in NI, Ireland is a foreign country with its own laws and customs. While many In NI might feel anti-UK they don’t necessarily feel pro Ireland. And the elephant in the corner is that Ireland really doesn’t want the problems of NI. A united Ireland would be fundamentally different to the present Ireland. It would also be expensive for Ireland as NI is relatively poor.

The location of the NI-Ireland border is clearly established, but is an open border. It is possible to cross it without knowing. In order to promote peace in NI, the UK has come up with the idea of an internal border within UK. I’m not aware of another nation that has done this, What is required is a soft touch on implementation. Right now the EU is preventing onions being moved from GB to NI because there might be soil on them. It’s fine however to move the onions GB to France and France to NI because actually the EU is not concerned about traces of soil. The EU is playing Shylock. It wants its pound of flesh. The narrative in UK is that the EU is deliberately setting out to punish UK.

If in a few years time it is clear that UK has flourished outside of the EU then there is no reason for other nations to stay in it. This is the Eurocrats worst nightmare. They want UK to fail to save their jobs, and their policy is directed towards bringing about a failure.
 

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The blue states those who voted for Biden have reached the 70 % adults getting their jabs.
We dont know 70% is a useful figure. That sort of number assumes an R value around 2.6, as originally suggested for covid. But I think its much higher. On the other hand, I also think there is a lot of community immunity, so many or even most unvaccinated people will be safe from serious infection at least. But if the rationale for insisting on vaccinating all these younger people who are safe anyway is to eliminate covid completly, you also have to eradicated all the mild and asymptomatic cases. Most of those have never been counted. It is possible that even if you vaccinate 100% of the population it wont be enough to eradicate covid. We await events.

. For all in NI, Ireland is a foreign country with its own laws and customs.
You seem to have missed the point of EU membership and the GFA. Together these allowed irish people born whichever side of the border to move, travel, trade, love, retire, anything pretty much regardless of which side. The laws in each are a bit different but people had the same rights.

Leaving the EU broke the main legal framework underpinning these equal rights. Johnson refuses to insert a new one, because its impossible to do without treating N ireland different to the rest of the UK, because the Irish need to keep rights Johnson wants to remove (has removed) from all the rest of the UK.

. In order to promote peace in NI, the UK has come up with the idea of an internal border within UK. I’m not aware of another nation that has done this,
Really? The US has internal borders between states and different rules apply on all sorts if things which impact trade between states. In the UK Scotland and Wales also have unmanned borders with England where the rules differ either side. If you want micro examples, many states have internal borders where tax rules change, so for example one part of England might get a pupil premium, and another a few miles away might not. The concept of different rules either side of an unmarked line is very widespread.


If in a few years time it is clear that UK has flourished outside of the EU then there is no reason for other nations to stay in it.
So far it seems to be doing economically worse than states still members. We joined because we were nationally going bust, and as members recovered economically. It seems like hubris to imagine that if we switch back the basic rules then the outcome wont change too.
 

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If in a few years time it is clear that UK has flourished outside of the EU then there is no reason for other nations to stay in it. This is the Eurocrats worst nightmare. They want UK to fail to save their jobs, and their policy is directed towards bringing about a failure.
 
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eurotop40

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If in a few years time it is clear that UK has flourished outside of the EU then there is no reason for other nations to stay in it. This is the Eurocrats worst nightmare. They want UK to fail to save their jobs, and their policy is directed towards bringing about a failure.

This shows that you understood zero Kelvin.
 

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The 1923 Common Travel Area is the key document for movement between Uk and Republic of Ireland, The CTA was reaffirmed in 2019.

The CTA is older than EEC/EU membership and not superceded by it. In effect UK and Republic of Ireland have an open border with free travel, as well as extensive rights for work, education, healthcare, benefits and much more. There is also reciprocal recognition of visas granted by each country.

All this is in place and unchanged by the UK withdrawal from the EU. The UK plans no changes, and Ireland doesn’t want them either. The solution to withdrawal was some light-touch checks on goods moving GB to NI.

What the EU has done is bizarre. More than 20% by value of checks on goods are done on the less than 1/10th of 1% moving GB to NI, so a wholly disproportionate level of checking. You can move an onion from GB to France without checks, but EU has decided it wants checks on onions moving GB to NI. There are now two options:
1) the EU agrees to scale down checks to those that are reasonable, recognising that the present level of checks are likely to lead to violence in NI.
2) the protocol is suspended by UK using article 16. There are ample grounds to do this. if this happens the problem is then pushed to Ireland and the EU. I don’t see that Ireland will accept a hard border in Ireland (and UK would not help to enforce such) so the logical follow through is that the CTA trumps the single market and the border is between Ireland and the rest of the EU. This is the idea that has been officially denied. Unless EU goes for (1) I don’t really see an alternative.

If Ireland does opt out of the single market it automatically becomes a part of all the UK’s new trade deals. This might be a better package for Ireland than what it now has.