Review of: "Bordering on crisis: A qualitative analysis of focus group, social media, and news media perspectives on the Republic of Ireland-Northern Ireland border during the ‘first wave’ of the COVID-19 pandemic" Ahmad Kalateh Sadati Potential competing interests: The author(s) declared that no potential competing interests exist. Cross-border policies and public health; the need for political convergence and solidarity in the face of human risks Ahmad Kalateh Sadati; Department of Sociology, Yazd University, Yazd, Iran asadati@yazd.ac.ir asadati1392@gmail.com Commentary In the recent published article titled "Bordering on crisis: A qualitative analysis of focus group, social media, and news media perspectives on the Republic of Ireland-Northern Ireland border during the 'first wave' of the COVID-19 pandemic" O’Connor et al. showed the challenges posed by the land borders between Republic of Ireland (ROI) from Northern Ireland (NI) in the COVID 19 pandemic. The most important challenge in this area has been Interpretations of Cross-Border Policy Disparities. Researchers have proposed two solutions in this regard: strengthen border controls, or pursue a unified all-island approach. The authors conclude by proposing greater synchronization of cross-border pandemic responses (O’Connor et al., 2021). Undoubtedly, the article is a valuable work as a qualitative study. Researchers have tried to use and analyze different data (news media, social media and 8 focus groups discussions) to answer their question with a kind of triangulation. In addition, this article presents treasured findings about the health policy challenges in the border between (ROI) and (NI) during first wave of COVID 19. However, regarding the findings, it seems that authors ignored a deeper layer of the link between politics and public health. It means that public health policies in the pandemic are made up of general human laws, while authors limited it to border between (ROI) and (NI). Although they just refer to this issue in the last sentence of article when they refer to the context of political conflict, which exacerbates political tensions and ethnocentrism in the emergence of a transnational public health crisis risks (O’Connor et al., 2021). We believed that in such kinds of global risks, we need unified policies at global level, as O’Connor Qeios, CC-BY 4.0 · Review, November 4, 2021 Qeios ID: 5ERJCG · https://doi.org/10.32388/5ERJCG 1/3