Last day of self-quarantine

Today is the last day of my self-quarantine. In observance of the occasion, the Irish government sent me a very understated text message this morning:

Gov.ie Thank you for your support. Please see www.hse.ie for COVID-19 public health advice, including mandatory face coverings in shops and on public transport.

I am still in bed when a buzz from the intercom launches me to my feet. It’s a delivery person with a registered parcel. I throw on some clothes, grab keys and a facemask, and hurriedly go downstairs. As I suspected, it’s my official ballot from San Francisco that I had forwarded to me from my mailbox service (at quite a cost):

Well, that will give me something to later today, then tomorrow during my first quarantine-free day I’ll see about mailing it back. In addition to the parcel, the mail person handed me a COVID-19 brochure put out by the government of Ireland that expanded to a full-size posture, in both English and Irish of course, explaining the different restriction levels in much more detail:

This also reminds me of another piece of mail I received from the government for landlords and tenants during COVID-19:

Apparently, there is “Self-Declaration Form” that must be sent to the Residential Tenancy Board and your landlord if you wish to claim protection due to illness or loss of employment from COVID-19.

These outreach efforts are impressive. I don’t recall receiving anything nearly as detailed in the mail when still living in SF, but I did receive texts and emails from the opt-in alert system. This prompts me to look into whether or not the government of Ireland has something similar. 

I come across new stories about the EU approving a text alert system in November 2018 called “Reverse112” for terrorist attacks or natural disasters, with the aim of reducing “the risk of fake news causing chaos.” It’s unclear if this has been fully implemented or not. However, I don’t find anything about a national text alert system for Ireland. The notion of a “Reverse112” systems comes the standard emergency number 1-1-2 used throughout the EU (and other countries), the equivalent of dialing 9-1-1 in the U.S. Apparently, some U.S. carriers will even forward domestic calls made to 1-1-2 to 9-1-1. Who knew! Well, at least I didn’t, so this is yet another good thing to know.

Ireland’s budget for 2021 has been in the headlines this week. I haven’t found any particularly concise summaries, but in general what I’ve been able to absorb is that Ireland is planning on borrowing significantly to fund various COVID-19 initiatives plus to deal with the impact of no-deal Brexit. It’s an unprecedented deficit spending plan amounting to €21.5 billion that would take Ireland’s total national debt to €219 billion. Increases have been made to some social assistance programs for those at the lowest rung of the ladder, and there’s also something in the budget about addressing climate change (I didn’t wade into the details). The corporate tax rate in Ireland will remain unchanged at 12.5%, which is among the lowest in the EU, although Ireland is well known for corporate structure shenanigans that have earned it the reputation of being a tax haven/shelter (as discussed in previous posts). 

Not much planned for today. I have my super late / super early DBT group session at 1:30 AM. No word back on whether I could switch to an earlier group yet. I’ll probably take a nap later this evening, perhaps after an early dinner, so that I can stay awake.