Cassandra Voices

Tag: Dr Billy Ralph

  • Covid-19 Absurdities

    Foremost among Utopian absurdities, we had the false promise of ZeroCovid. This continues to inflict untold damage on millions of lives and livelihoods that have been lost along the mystical path to salvation.

    Although the ZeroCovid leaders identified themselves with logic and rationality, the fanciful idea of every country excluding an influenza-like virus appears to have been a hangover from Judeo-Christian eschatology, which purports to save human beings from themselves.

    Other Utopian modern ideologies including Communism, Nazism and even neoconservatism, adopt a similar schema, wherein a vanguard elite guides the flock to safety.

    The nonsense started before the ZeroCovid concept grew legs, as China, the source of our slave-produced consumer goods, provided carefully choreographed footage demonstrating how instantaneous death ensued after infection with the deadly pox. All dutifully conveyed by compromised media.

    That China also runs concentration camps for the Uyghur Muslim minority, and harvests organs for transplantation from healthy executed prisoners was ignored. The West adopted a lockdown policy that represented the onset of another, dystopian Cultural Revolution.

    The WHO advised the West that lockdowns were essential. This advice arrived despite the 2019 WHO pandemic preparedness document containing no such recommendation. China then supplied genetic sequences they happened to have lying around to dodgy German academics to create the PCR test, which is a research tool not a diagnostic test.

    Weren’t we so lucky that the Wuhan Institute of virology is located near the alleged ground zero? It just so happened to be doing gain of function research on bat corona viruses in conjunction with the Americans.

    Herd Immunity

    Initially there were sensible discussions – including from the U.K.’s chief scientific officer Patrick Vallance – around herd immunity, the limited lethality of corona viruses in general, and the potentially disastrous effects of shutting down entire societies.

    Sweden, then a bastion of social democracy, held on to its rational faculties. Sadly, the government of no other major Western democracy seriously weighed up the effects on society of its public health policy. In an atmosphere of acute hysteria some governments acted against the advice of their health authorities.

    Resistance to drastic measures broke down once the Italians began singing to the world from their balconies, and army trucks were filmed removing dozens of bodies from hospital morgues. Strange how film crews always seem to know when to turn up to capture such footage.

    In what was the final twist of the thumb screw, our old friend Professor Reliable Data from Imperial College pulled scary figures from a dark orifice and waved it in the face of sceptics. Bear in mind, the same guy had predicted in 2005 that up to one hundred and fifty million people could die from bird flu. In the end, only 282 people died worldwide from the disease between 2003 and 2009.

    Despite the reasoned arguments of Nobel laureate Professor Michael Levitt, which few were able to read or hear, the British and others opted for the doom-laden scenario.

    T-Shock

    Meanwhile, on our own benighted little island of Ireland, beloved of Big Pharma and Big Tech, T-Shock Varadkar took to the podium to address the nation in our solemn hour, as the spectre of a common cold virus loomed on the horizon. Paraphrasing Winston Churchill’s World War II speech, he told the nation ‘this is the calm before the storm…’ before opining that there could be up to 85,000 deaths.

    Severe limits were placed on our freedom to roam freely and meet one another, as if we faced the impending Blitzkreig. He asked us to perform the unlikely feat of ‘coming together as a nation by staying apart.’

    Ironically, the wellbeing of the nation had become the central focus for a right-wing government, as individual needs and desires were cast aside, apparently for the common good. A country that had racked up vast personal and household debt worshipping at the altar of Mammon was expected to do a U-turn and become altruistic. But beneath the surface snouts were in the trough.

    For the first time in the history of infectious diseases the entire global population, healthy and infirm, would now be forced to quarantine, as apparently we could be asymptomatically-ill, or healthy-sick.

    Staying apart from each other meant no visits to elderly relatives, because grandchildren might kill their grannies. Children might even infect one another with a disease less likely to kill than being struck by a fork of lightning.

    Naturally outdoor sports and music events would have to be prohibited too. After all, they wouldn’t want people to be discussing the bullshit over a few pints. And finally, most small and medium sized businesses were to be closed down, regardless of the long-term effects.

    Well not all small businesses. Off licences, fast food outlets and supermarkets would still be open. These however are usually staffed by low skilled, low-wage earners. Young and expendable in other words.

    The propertied middle class would stay at home, protected from the menace of infection behind computer screens, home deliveries and A-rated houses. These were the civil servants, tech workers, teachers, and professional classes.

    This ‘Zoomocracy’ would ‘stay safe’, while boosting the profits of Messrs Bezos, Gates, Dorsey, Zuckerberg et al. Somehow the top ten wealthiest men in the world managed to double their wealth in the midst of the biggest international crisis since World War II. It would make you wonder who was really in control.

    Garda Checks

    We were treated to the daily sight of embarrassed members of the Gardai stopping ordinary citizens on their way to shops enquiring as to the purpose of their journeys.

    Other brave fellows formed road blocks at entry points to beaches or mountain trails. A particularly bizarre incident took place one Sunday near the tiny Cavan village of Mullahoran, when the only four roads leading to the Catholic church were blocked by garda cars preventing parishioners accessing their place of worship.

    The terror was augmented by the obscene nightly roll call of death and pestilence, which had the desired effect on the majority. Those who didn’t succumb to the fear were subjected to ridicule, or simply starved of the oxygen of publicity. Dissenters were forced to resign from their jobs.

    Throughout, we were repeatedly assured as to its deadliness, yet the median age of death was eighty-two years of age. The true figures for the numbers who died of (not with!) this virus will never be known.

    Paradoxically, despite the elevated risk of those over eighty years of age dying from COVID-19, their family doctors were advised that they didn’t need to see their patients.

    There were simply no treatments available. This despite Professor Didier Raoult from Marseille, Professor Paul Marek from Virginia and Professor Peter McCullough from Texas successfully repurposing drugs. The advice for the Irish patient was to take two paracetamol and at the first tinge of blue call an ambulance. Primum non nocere, my arse.

    https://twitter.com/BillyRalph/status/1458052402372923392

    Psychological Torture

    Fear, like any stimulus exhausts itself, so using the support and advice from various purveyors of psychological tortures, such as Susan Michie, governments introduced curveballs to confuse the population even further. We couldn’t have people waking up and smelling the bullshit when they reflected on how many in their social circles had actually died of this deadly virus, relative to an average influenza season.

    ‘The New Normal’ was a term coined by very shady unelected people and repeated ad nauseum by some equally shady elected individuals.

    Once measures designed to ‘open up’ society were introduced we were treated to the infamous €9-45 minute meal and a pint. No meal, no pint. Then we had the restricted purchasing within supermarkets – crisps and condoms, but no socks or Nerf guns.

    Then came the masks, for almost every setting, including eventually, primary schools. Lone occupants of cars and swimmers at the Forty Foot and even people out picking blackberries in the remotest parts of Ireland weren’t excused.

    All of this imported from totalitarian China! And woe betide anyone not wearing their badge of allegiance. These untermensch were jostled by shopping centre security guards, refused access to medical care and even arrested, regardless of their age. And in the final entry in this sorry list, jailed.

    Having endured the relentless propaganda, lockdowns, masks, social isolation, endless hours of Netflix, nourished on the finest delicacies from Dominoes and McDonalds, the vast majority of the country’s wage slaves were simply dying to become commuters and patrons of the country’s pubs, cafes and restaurants once again.

    Safety First…

    So, when the experimental mRNA gene therapy, also known as the Covid vaccine, became available the population had been primed. Primed by the most successful advertising campaign in history, a global conformity Edward Bernays and his admirer Joseph Goebbels could have only dreamed of achieving.

    That ‘vaccine’ is the gift that keeps on giving – to its manufacturers. If Bill Gates’s wish comes true all seven billion humans on the planet will receive it.

    It is so safe that one manufacturer persuaded a court that its supporting data should be hidden away from prying eyes for seventy-five years. Nonetheless, the post-mortem in the peer reviewed literature is revealing serious adverse reactions.

    We heard from many sources including our own resident expert Professor Luke O’Neill that the vaccine was a game changer, while potential conflicts of interest were never disclosed or discussed during the extended time he spent on air.

    Other worthies such as dear old Joe Biden advised that you would not catch the virus, it would stop the transmission of the virus, and even stop hospitalisations and deaths.

    Fast forward a few months and you can catch the virus, you can transmit it, you can end up in hospital and die despite two, three or even four shots of this miracle medicine.

    Worst of all, we now can’t have an open scientific debate because the truth might get in the way of the vast profit potential for the manufacturers how inept our so-called experts really are, and how venal politicians in so-called democracies became as they made light of civil liberties.

    Medical Profession

    Today in Ireland, most of the medical profession are reluctant to acknowledge the damage inflicted on societies by their gullible and myopic approach of shutting down society, and they most certainly do not want to kill the golden goose, especially in general practice.

    No heed is taken of the CDC-VAERS data, Eudravigilance, WHO’s own reporting, the Yellow Card system in the UK, the up to 40% rise in life insurance pay outs in some European countries; resistance to exposing drug trial data to public scrutiny.

    A company that previously paid out the largest health care fraud settlement and the largest criminal fine is now making billions in profits.

    No heed is taken of the meteoric rise in the careers of so-called celebrity scientists and doctors whose integrity and ethics were dispensed with at the first whiff of the profits on show.

    Contrast this with some real academics and scientists whose careers have been badly damaged by retaining their integrity; for example Professor Sunetra Gupta of Oxford University, Professor Martin Kuldorff of Harvard, Professor Jay Bhattacharya and Professor John Ioannidis of Stanford, and Professor Peter McCullough of Texas A&M.

    This latter group called for the availability of early treatments, focused protection of the vulnerable, but for society to function as normal to limit unintended damage. They also advocated for judicious not widespread use of an experimental product, avoiding children and pregnant women in particular, and most importantly preserving scientific debate.

    Instead, we got lockdowns and restrictions on civil liberties, no early treatments, and a coercive vaccination campaign straight form the CCP playbook.

    Feature Image is a still from RTE’s Claire Byrne Live of Professor Luke O’Neil trying ‘Zorbing’.

  • Unforgettable Year: November 2020

    November brought the demise of Trump but major global challenges remained.

    Andrew Linnane issued a stark warning:

    The idea that our response to the Covid-19 pandemic might be moving us in the direction of the authoritarian horrors of the last century is one that a great many are resistant to. They may feel, for example, that we are living with an extraordinary circumstance, and that the response, however undesirable and unprecedented, remains unavoidable in the face of the threat.

    Even to those who feel this way, however, the danger of authoritarianism is something which we should all meditate very deeply on. The comparatively free societies which we have grown up in are a rare and precarious achievement; we are simply not aware how precarious because they are the only world we have ever known.

    Dr Billy Ralph, meanwhile, questioned a cosy scientific consensus in Ireland:

    Throughout this pandemic we have witnessed very little meaningful scientific debate in Ireland. Irish experts are drawn from a small circle of academics, some with vested interests, supporting the government’s highly successful publicity campaign. In other countries, in contrast, there are heated public debates between scientists as to whether to adopt a dominant approach of blanket policies, or one of shielding elderly populations.

    But in Ireland Nobel laureates and professors from prestigious universities around the world are routinely dismissed with smart quips by gullible journalists. But let us examine the three mantras in a dispassionate way that acknowledges each of their adverse impacts.

    Featured Image: Dickens’s Dream by Robert William Buss.

    With a Dickensian Christmas forming on the horizon David Langwallner drew on the wisdom and compassion of the great author Charles Dickens in an impassioned appeal for meaningful reforms:

    To revert to Dickens as the supreme chronicler of Christmas. If someone has the temerity to present themselves like Oliver Twist with an empty bowl and ask for more will our modern day workhouses permit another spoon of porridge?

    Or will they ask: ‘are you not happy with your existing pile of gruel – the charitable food banks that ease the conscious of the rich?’ Now with Covid-19 restrictions in full force diminishing most incomes – but especially those least well off – many now need a bit more, just to survive. This should involve chasing down the artful dodgers in the large corporation, who have picked a pocket or two avoiding paying their fair share of tax.

    Also that month, notwithstanding a deep antipathy to all forms of religious fundamentalism, David Langwallner drew on the theme of Religion in his Public Intellectual Series.

    With the loss of religious forms, however, many living in modern technocratic societies experience a loss of meaning, and even a moral void. The social structure of religions fostered close relationships and inculcated a sense of community, as well as charity, the protection of human dignity and a commitment to public service. The Bible injuncts kindness towards strangers, and to do unto others as you would wish them to do to you, which also derives from Aristotelian philosophy.

    ‘The Dead House’

    There was also debate around what to do with Dublin’s historic buildings, as Neil Burns decried the elitism of the Irish literary community:

    Protestations against James Joyce’s ‘The Dead’ House on Usher’s Island being ear-marked for a hostel are rooted in cultural-bias and emotional-led egocentrism, and exhibit blatant hypocrisy among the denouncers. Artsy sentimentality can be the lesser evil, but it is still based on emotional, and, cultural biases.

    In contrast, Andrea Reynell argued for increased preservation:

    Under normal circumstances tourists flock to Ireland for its rich cultural inheritance and traditions. Indeed we live atop generations of history. When the soil offers its secrets in the form of ruins and artefacts, we either attempt to preserve or reduce them to rubble. More often than not, we choose to tear down or bury the past. This often occurs without the general public being aware of what is happening.

    Image: Daniel Mc Auley

    Next, in November’s underwater instalment Daniel Mc Auley introduced us to the Jewel Anemones Crowning the Irish Coastline:

    Their method of reproduction means you normally find patches of colour fighting for real estate. Neon Green battles with neon pink for prime locations on the surface of underwater cliff faces. Rarely seen on the east coast, they are to be found in all of the most dramatic sites I have dived along the Atlantic coast.

    In arts coverage, Imogen Stead traced a creative link between the modern Greek poet Constantine Cavafy, and the singer-poets Leonard Cohen and Laura Marling.

    Around the beginning of the second century AD, the Greek writer Plutarch unknowingly created the spark for a flame of artistic inspiration which, not unlike the notion of the ancient Olympic torch, has transcended millennia until today. He might, perhaps, have nourished the expectation that his work’s renown would outlive him, but he could not have imagined that his words would be traced through the 20th century poetry of Cavafy to the 21st century songs of Leonard Cohen and Laura Marling. And yet, in a single stunning example of ancient influence and contemporary Classics, one particular story of his has been read, performed, spoken, sung, enjoyed, downloaded, streamed and reflected on in a chain of inspiration which spans over a century of creativity. The remarkable longevity of one small digression in the mass of Plutarch’s extant work demonstrates beautifully the basic humanity which has connected us from antiquity to now, reflected and refracted through the lens of varying personal and societal perspectives. As a result, the historic loss of Alexandria has become, paradoxically, our cultural gain.

    Sonic Gate Studios were the Musicians of the Month for November. Caterina Schembri described the group’s genesis:

    We met in Dublin, as students. It was in the MA room, in the recording booth, in a fully-packed Ryan Air flight with destination to Sofia that a small but important concept emerged in my mind. By  experience, or by force of habit, I had a fixed idea of the isolated composer working for countless hours on end;  a dim light, a dark room, a head full of ideas. A familiar concept really,  that’s how I had been making music for years. But the familiar changes, and it was in that MA room, on that crowded plane, sitting by the cliffs of the Irish west coast or on a summer night in the living room of a beautiful countryside house in Spain, that I realised that being a composer doesn’t necessarily have to be a one-woman show; that composition feeds on other creative forms, it feeds on other people, and that’s when many seemingly impossible things start to happen. 

    November’s featured artist Aga Szot discussed her Temple Bar-based Icon Factory:

    Ten years ago I walked those streets of Temple Bar and no one could have imagined it would be possible to walk those lanes. It was a NO GO area and even Dubliners did not walk there. They were identified as dark spaces, and with anti-social behaviour, public toilets and worse. There was no reason why people would choose to walk there.

    Now our art projects attract hundreds every day into the area, and are included in national tour guides, indicated as one of the most popular attractions in the area: an art centre which invites artists to participate in the project with its educational and civilised mission. We made this space safer and a better place for all.

    There was fiction from Dara Waldron inspired by The Grateful Dead’s Jerry Garcia:

    ‘Jerry who?’ I asked.

    ‘Jerry Garcia, one of The Grateful Dead. They’re a band, apparently.’

    ‘Never heard of him or them,’ I said, realising that there was more to it than a rockstar dying and that Don was somewhat perturbed.

    ‘You wouldn’t believe it man. Jamie and Shaun rang in to say they were out for a week. That depressed this dude is dead. It’s JFK levels of impact. I’m not shitting you.’

    ‘A week? What the fuck?’

    ‘Yea. It’s like their fucking mother died. Left in the dock. I’m practically on my own here.’

    ‘This Garcia dude. Some kind of Jesus figure or what? A whole week because he died?’

    ‘Yeah. Weird. Apparently, they’ve been deadheads for years…Some fan cult thing. Can you make sure to meet Sarah tonight? And I’ll see you tomorrow? Don’t forget?’

    ‘No problem, man. It’s all on the itinerary.’

    Image Graeme Coughlan: www.graemecphotography.com

    While a seedy pool hall was the location for another of Daniel Wade’s Dublin chronicles ‘Niall’: ‘They shoot pool like they’re born for it. Some for cash,others for pride or thrills; there’s no sole reigning champion. Anyone might wear the crown’

    In further fiction from Stephen Mc Randal, the character of Manus stands in opposition to an anti-mask crowd but is more bothered by the sectarian and racist rhetoric, before heading to another Free Julian Assange rally.

    There was also two poems from Kevin Higgins in which he encountered a Presidential Black Forest Gateaux and responded to political witch hunts:

    Each witch hunt is a tribute act to the last.
    There is always a committee of three.
    The gravity in the room is such
    they struggle to manoeuvre
    the enormity of their serious
    faces in the door.

    Finally, Luke Stromberg recalled:

    The First Obscenity

    Before we turned our eyes from nudity,
    Or banished certain words, death was the first
    Obscenity—the one from which the rest,
    In time, would find their way. The first
    To make a joke of life. The first
    To show us what may come of children’s games:
    A skull left caked in mud, the slicing rain.
    What is a rude word if not a reminder
    Of the grave in which one’s coffin will be lowered?
    An old man’s kiss upon a young girl’s navel
    Would not be possible if not for death.

    Dressed up in our Sunday best, our deaths
    Seem almost hypothetical. They’re not.
    Plastic surgeons, age-defying creams,
    Air-brushed waistlines on the cover of Cosmo—
    These prove our distaste. Death’s in the ghetto.
    But only look out past your green kept lawn,
    And there it is, unfazed, a grinning fact.

    Unforgettable Year: January 2020

    Unforgettable Year: February 2020

    Unforgettable Year: March 2020

    Unforgettable Year: April 2020

    Unforgettable Year: May 2020

    Unforgettable Year: June 2020

    Unforgettable Year: July 2020

    Unforgettable Year: August 2020

    Unforgettable Year: September 2020

    Unforgettable Year: October 2020

  • Unforgettable Year: October 2020

    The Irish winter came early in October with another lockdown, to the disappointment of Billy O Hanluain:

    Lockdown measures remind me of the prescription of anti-depressants and other psychiatric medicines. They are both harsh, and both are administered in response to a moment of crisis; both often have severe side effects, which in time often obscure the initial malady that required their prescription.

    Frank Armstrong, meanwhile, recalling Fintan O’Toole’s earlier criticism of NPHET’s ‘top-down, command-and-control approach’, called for a new approach:

    It is high time we re-examined how the government is being advised to bring the population to the promised land of ‘living with the virus.’ At this stage other forms of advice should be sought. Presumably the government is already receiving significant inputs from the business sector, but other important viewpoints are not part of the conversation.

    Dr Billy Ralph was even more critical of the damage that had been done to the fabric of Irish society over the course of the pandemic:

    Policies were adopted by an unelected government on the erroneous advice of experts listening to other experts, who predicted an enormous death toll from Covid-19 that has not come about anywhere on the globe. These same experts are now doubling down on initial errors and inflicting incalculable harm on the delicate fabric of society.

    Image (c) Barry Delaney.

    Meanwhile, prompted by warnings from Taoiseach Leo Varadkar that 85,000 could die over the course of the pandemic photographer Barry Delaney revealed the grim foreboding he felt back in March:

    The thing to watch for was the breathlessness I had heard. This was what caused the dangerous pneumonia. On the Saturday night I went to bed early alone, and suddenly had problems breathing. It being Saturday I could not disturb my Doctor, nor did I want an ambulance arriving to take me to quarantine in hospital, where I’d be met by Hazmat-clad Doctors and become Patient No. 3. Laid low by fear and shortness of breath I could not sleep. By 5am I made a decision to complete my final book, Americans Anonymous and get my things in order in case this was it.

    This proved a false alarm, but it gave way to a period of creative impotence in his photographic practice:

    As lockdown eased more and more people descended to summer in Dun Laoghaire around the Forty Foot. To swim, to escape, to even have fun in our new Covid world.

    Gradually I began to photograph this migration, at first people were cautious, masked, socially distancing on the newly opened beach, but as May turned to July people began to summer properly. The beaches became crowded, like normal, not the new normal; no one wore masks. The virus didn’t spread outdoors, or so we believed.

    Image (c) Barry Delaney

    Classicist Ronan Sheehan, meanwhile, drew attention to the etymology of the terms in common use during the pandemic:

    Epidemic: from Greek ἐπί epi ‘upon or above’ and δῆμος demos ‘people.’

    Pandemic: from Greek πᾶν, pan, ‘all’ and δῆμος, demos, ‘people.’

    Virus: from Latin ‘poison, slime, venom.’

    Vaccine: from the Lain ‘vacca,’ meaning cow, a named conferred by Louis Pasteur in honour of Edward Jenner who pioneered the concept by using cowpox to inoculate (mid-15c., ‘implant a bud into a plant,’ from Latin inoculatus, past participle of inoculare ‘graft in, implant a bud or eye of one plant into another,’) against smallpox.

    Exponential: from Latin exponere ‘put forth.’

    David Langwallner continued his Public Intellectual Series with an account of the English radical historian E. P. Thompson:

    His lasting contribution is the seminal The Making Of The English Working Class (1980), possibly the greatest work of history of the twentieth century that emphasised a new form of bottom-up history, related to the subaltern history that was emerging at the same time in former colonial societies.

    In another article Langwallner also discussed Amy Coney Barrett and ‘Originalism’

    We have entered a dark era dominated by the religious right, involving literal and historical interpretation of the U.S. Constitution. A return to eighteenth century values is upon us, including the fire and brimstone of the Old Testament, neglecting to remember that Thomas Jefferson was a deist, if that. Let’s not forget that the United States required a Civil War to end the ‘peculiar institution’ of slavery that was not even mentioned in that document, apart from in the three-fifths clause that represented a African-American slaves as three-fifths of a white person for electoral purposes, in order to maintain a balance between slave and non-slave owning states.

    We received two submissions from underwater photographer Daniel McAuley that month, the first featured shipwrecks, which become reefs:

    With the combination of a long history of maritime traffic and often quite ferocious seas, it comes as no surprise that the Irish coastline is strewn with shipwrecks, many of which date back hundreds of years. Each one provides a fascinating porthole on a bygone age, telling stories that are often of historical significance, as well as allowing divers a chance to encounter what are often quite intriguing new environments for marine life.

    The next introduced us to the seals living along the Irish coastline, now threatened by fishermen disturbed by a competitor as over-fishing reduced catches.

    The playful nature of seals reminds any snorkeler of a dog looking for affection from its owner. So listening to news stories where people are saying the best solution to the problems afflicting the fishing community is to take a high powered rifle to these playful creatures filled me with rage and frustration around the management of our coast, and what the future holds for it.

    Musician of the Month for October Fergus Kelly drew inspiration from a Fine Art background:

    I’ve been passionate about music from an early age, and my love of the post-punk spirit of DIY and experimentation found a crossover with the further reaches of sonic exploration coming from the Fine Art approaches to sound as a sculptural medium. I then discovered improvised music and was smitten. The possibilities just seemed wide open. There was a directness and a simplicity that was really appealing. It was also a much quicker route to producing music by sidestepping years of training. Of course, it’s not just musical ability you bring to the table, it’s imagination and intelligence too.

    By DonkeyHotey – Donald Trump – Caricature, CC BY-SA 2.0.

    In poetry Kevin Higgins appears to have been inspired by the forthcoming elections:

    A barrel of industrial waste poured into a suit
    donated by a casino owner who knows people
    with a tangerine tea towel tossed strategically on top
    because it was the only available metaphor for hair
    was running for re-election as CEO of South Canadia
    against an old coat with holes in it.

    Image (c) Daniele Idini

    While Ernest Hilbert mused on ‘Models, slender and famished as cheetahs,’:

    The bathroom’s OUT OF ORDER. Sewage seeps
    Into the restaurant. The manager’s
    Frantic, alone today. The line’s

    Become a mob. A voice from an SUV
    Barks at the drive-through speaker. In the back,
    Children cheer a whirl of color on a screen.

    I feel the boredom underneath the beauty.
    It’s weird, and getting desperate these days.
    In auction rooms, the arms go up. And . . . sold.

    The next exquisite investment’s on the block.
    The views—the hills, the seas—are still pristine for those
    Who can afford the heights. Who’s this beauty for?

    Beauty’s boring. I do go on and on,
    Don’t I? Oh, you have a nosebleed.
    Here, drip some in my drink. See this?

    Flick this switch. Now listen. Someone will scream.

    Unforgettable Year: January 2020

    Unforgettable Year: February 2020

    Unforgettable Year: March 2020

    Unforgettable Year: April 2020

    Unforgettable Year: May 2020

    Unforgettable Year: June 2020

    Unforgettable Year: July 2020

    Unforgettable Year: August 2020

    Unforgettable Year: September 2020

  • Covid-19: Questioning the Three Mantras

    The three mantra for this pandemic in Ireland are: wash your hands; socially distance; and wear a mask. Stated repetitively with suitable gravitas the guidelines have been internalised by most of the population. Fears around the spread of the ‘deadly’ virus are even driving people to police one another. The valley of the squinting windows is alive and well.

    But what are the inherent costs to these three injunctions? And why shouldn’t we keep measures in place when this pandemic abates, as has recently been argued?

    Throughout this pandemic we have witnessed very little meaningful scientific debate in Ireland. Irish experts are drawn from a small circle of academics, some with vested interests, supporting the government’s highly successful publicity campaign. In other countries, in contrast, there are heated public debates between scientists as to whether to adopt a dominant approach of blanket policies, or one of shielding elderly populations.

    But in Ireland Nobel laureates and professors from prestigious universities around the world are routinely dismissed with smart quips by gullible journalists. But let us examine the three mantras in a dispassionate way that acknowledges each of their adverse impacts.

    Wash Your Hands

    The first injunction to ‘wash your hands’ is sound advice, which unless you are living on another planet you will be aware of by now. Do we always follow this injunction? Probably not. Are we all dying of ghastly flesh eating infections or coughing up great globules of blood stained mucus? No we are not. Why? Because very few of the billions of micro-organisms with which we share our bodies are actually pathogenic.

    We have existed as a species for approximately a quarter of a million years, and as part of the great evolutionary flow of life for over four and half billion years. In that time adaptation to adversity has been the rule; hence homo sapiens is now thriving, sadly often to the detriment of the rest of the natural world.

    In the advanced economies at least, most of us are now almost invincible until old age. Thus, over the past two hundred years improved nutrition, housing and sanitation have brought life expectancy up to almost eighty years in many countries.

    Medical science, including antibiotics and vaccines, has contributed to this longevity, but not to the extent some of us doctors would have you believe. The authors of The Changing Body: Health, Nutrition and Human Development in the Western World since 1700 (Floud et al., Cambridge, 2011) state:

    it would be easy to exaggerate the importance of scientific medicine when one considers that much of the decline in the mortality associated with infectious diseases predated the introduction of effective medical measures to deal with it

    So yes washing your hands regularly is a good idea. Soap and water should be the principle means, not the bactericidal or viricidal gels we now find on entering every shop or building, some of which are to be avoided – especially the 52 sanitation products the Department of Education has told schools to refrain from using.

    Our skin harbours myriad micro-organisms – that form a part of the human microbiome – all vying for space to live, raise a family and grow old peacefully in a quiet stable neighbourhood. They generally live harmoniously with us in what is referred to as a state of homeostatic balance.

    What happens when we kill off all the good micro-organisms, repeatedly, just in case there is a bad micro-organism on our skin? First, these agents damage our skin’s protective oil barrier, and kill micro-organisms with which we live symbiotically, contributing to our health and wellbeing.

    These ‘good’ bacteria and other microorganisms are easily replaced by ones that are resistant to the effects of the gels, and who can then run amok when given the chance.

    Prior to this pandemic, excessive hygiene measures against infections has given rise to the hygiene hypothesis, according to which ‘the decreasing incidence of infections in western countries and more recently in developing countries is at the origin of the increasing incidence of both autoimmune and allergic diseases.’ So let us be on our guard against excessive hygiene.

    “Social” Distancing

    Hannah Arendt in 1933.

    The second part of the mantra and perhaps the most dystopian is the injunction to distance ourselves socially. It recalls Hannah Arendt’s warning in The Origins of Totalitarianism (1951) that ‘The evidence of Hitler’s as well as Stalin’s dictatorship points clearly to the fact that isolation of atomized individuals provides not only the mass basis for totalitarian rule, but is carried through to the top of the whole structure.’

    This “safe” distance is anywhere from the depth of the average grave – two metres – to imprisoning ourselves in our homes and limiting the number of fellow humans we allow to enter that space, which is no one from another household under current ‘Level 5’ Irish regulations; or previously an arbitrary number such as six, a figure no doubt chosen after repeatedly employing the reading of the runes technique.

    Not seeing anyone at all would be ideal, but the illuminati could not depend on the imbecilic general public abiding by their lofty standards, or reverting to having sex online to limit the spread of the virus, and so some meagre concessions have been made to human frailty, with the advent of support bubbles.

    Yet social isolation is a potential pathway to madness and a lonely death. We are social creatures and in solitary confinement few can flourish. A Screen New Deal is a recipe for Surveillance Capitalism, and enrichment of the billionaire class. Human touch brings emotional balance and better health.

    A person may be technically alive but is he or she really living without conversing directly with others, dancing, or otherwise demonstrating his love and empathy? We are not avatars in a complex, visually stunning computer game. We are connected physical beings. Those connections extend back into the past, embrace the present, and reach forward into an unknown future.

    It is impossible to tell whether the shocking spate of domestic homicides and suicides that occurred in the last week of October in Ireland, just as stricter measures were introduced, are the product of isolation, but the UN has described the worldwide increase in domestic abuse as a ‘shadow pandemic’ alongside Covid-19.

    Irish incidents include a murder-suicide in Cork involving a father and two sons; the apparent murder of a mother and her two children in Dublin; and the death by suicide of a Dublin nurse along with the death of her young baby through asphyxiation.

    Moving forward, we just have no idea what effect the injunction to “socially” distance – and the attendant loss of touch will have on us – a very tactile people.

    Recall that in shaking hands we make character judgements based on grip and duration; we embrace and kiss those we love with warmth and energy, and those we like with fleeting touching cheeks; we cup the faces of babies and ruffle the hair of cute children – especially if they possess more than us.

    We are now ordered to stop doing all of that, but for how long? Is there any evidence to suggest ‘the virus’ passes from one healthy person to another when we hug? Hasn’t common sense always dictated that we avoid hugging when we are under the weather?

    In this precarious age, however, it is necessary to assume we are guilty of being ‘asymptomatic’ into what seems like an interminable future, and either hug with extreme caution, or not at all. I fear these tactile behaviours will disappear altogether given Covid-19 is very unlikely to vanish.

    Mandatory Masks

    The third and final of the government’s mantras is perhaps the most pernicious: the mandating of masks. It has infantilised the population and turned people into part-time police officers.

    We’ve heard Irish and other experts overturn forty years of science, allowing celebrity doctors to demonstrate to the Irish public, with a cheeky Charlie smile, that masks will prevent contagions. In fact, the only masks that offer real protection are N95 masks or similar respirators. The popular cloth masks are of little more than symbolic value in preventing contagion.

    Instructively, in Norway, which has had among the lowest incidence of Covid-19 in Europe, but where case numbers have increased in recent weeks, the latest national measures do not include a requirement to wear masks in public, although this option is left open to municipal authorities in the event of high infection levels.

    Yet in Ireland journalists and ‘social influencers’ have accepted as self-evident that masks are a form of panacea; failing to recongise that approach is not backed by experimental data, and is in fact the lowest form of evidence.

    Now armed with the received wisdom – mumbling ‘I follow the science’ – righteous members of the public are on the lookout for slackers, and woe betide anyone not wearing a mask when shopping or travelling on public transport; it has reached a point of such absurdity that some even wear them while alone in their cars.

    But you might ask: what is the cost apart from mild to medium, or even extreme, discomfort, depending on how long it has to be worn? And as most of us don’t have to wear them other than when we enter shops then what of it?

    Masks hide our faces so that we have difficulty recognising and communicating with each other. Indeed, our brains have evolved to recognise faces. We see faces in clouds, bushes and cracked tiling, a phenomena called pareidolia. I have yet to hear of such an occurrence where the face is obscured by a mask.

    Pareidolia

    Our face has a remarkable forty-two muscles and is the site from which we deliver most of our body language. Ask a mother of a new born to stare at her child without changing her facial expression for more than a few moments and the baby will become distressed and cry. This is how hardwired our need is to read faces.

    Facial coverings – called surgical masks for good reason – are useful in clinical settings to prevent bacteria, hair, skin cells and mucus from falling into open wounds, but hardly when worn by unruly schoolchildren in class. The best reason to wear one now is simply to make people comfortable who believe they confer protection.

    Asians, have worn masks for various cultural and environmental reasons, including non-medical ones, for decades. In Japan people who feel ‘under the weather’ wear them to be polite.

    But there is no reliable scientific evidence to support widespread use, as Professor Carl Heneghan of Oxford University pointed out to the Dáil Committee on Covid-19 Response. There have only been three registered trials on the use of masks in the community: one in Denmark, one in Guinea Bissau and one in India – but none have reported outcomes so far.

    Now let us for a moment indulge in that age old technique of the thought experiment. Viruses are measured in nanometres. If we looked at the material from which most of these facial coverings are made under an electron microscope we would see more holes than material.

    A virus leaving your mouth, journeying out into the big bad world, is like a football passing through your front door. The football could hit the door frame and bounce back, but this is unlikely. The pseudo-scientific argument is that the virus travels first class in a large globule of spit and this globule gets jammed in the doorway, “proving” the efficacy of masks.

    Ahh, but wait a minute, mask are often worn for hours by kids and cashiers in shops, so what about all the other graduating viruses and their globular carriages? I doubt they are all just clinging for dear life on to the mask for fear of upsetting the Irish expert.

    Instead the globule eventually evaporates, after all it is mostly water vapour, the front of the mask dries and the viruses, being virtually weightless, just waft off on their merciless way.

    Other Approaches

    Now when I hear the mantra ‘wash your hands, social distance and wear a mask,’ I consider: are we running the risk of undermining our society to preserve some cherished scientific authority? We are supposed to be entering the second wave of a pandemic, yet while hospitals in countries such as Italy are under severe pressure – as was the case last February – few Europeans countries are now showing excess deaths. Yet the doomsday models that were wildly inaccurate last time around are being revisited.

    Excess mortality in Europe source since 2017: https://www.euromomo.eu/graphs-and-maps/#excess-mortality

    Shouldn’t our health authorities, especially in Ireland – which has had among the most stringent measures in the world throughout the pandemic – also be conscious of maintaining our humanity, and recognising the huge value – in terms of our health and wellbeing – of being able to gather, kiss, hug, talk, sing and laugh with abandon, without fear of breaking the law? We especially need to explain to our children that the world they currently live through is not going in a normal phase.

    In preventing infections with a respiratory disease such as Covid-19, we might look back on what the great American polymath and Founding Father Benjamin Franklin once observed:

    From many years’ observations on myself and others, I am persuaded we are on a wrong scent in supposing moist or cold air, the cause of that disorder we call a cold. Some unknown quality in the air may perhaps produce colds, as in the influenza, but generally, I apprehend they are the effect of too full living in proportion to our exercise.

    Franklin observed  a connection between succumbing to an infectious disease and poor dietary choices (“too full living”) and a lack of physical exercise that contributes to obesity, which we know significantly increases the likelihood of death from Covid-19.

    He also had the following to say on the benefits of being outside into the fresh air:

    I hope that after, having discovered the benefit of fresh and cool air applied to the sick, people will begin to suspect that possibly it may do no harm to the well. I have long been satisfied from observation, that besides the general colds now termed influenza (which may possibly spread by contagion, as well as by a particular quality of the air), people often catch cold from one another when shut up together in close rooms, coaches, et cetera, and when sitting near and conversing so as to breathe in each other’s transpiration, the disorder being in a certain state.

    During this pandemic, and moving forward, we should thus be addressing a pre-existing obesity pandemic that is being exacerbated by some of the current restrictions on sports especially. Franklin also seemed to have recognised the importance of adequate ventilation in buildings.

    Image (c) Daniele Idini

    Thus addressing the underlying conditions exacerbating the Covid-19 pandemic may prove to be the optimum response, as the editor of The Lancet Richard Horton has argued:

    we must confront the fact that we are taking a far too narrow approach to managing this outbreak of a new coronavirus. We have viewed the cause of this crisis as an infectious disease. All of our interventions have focused on cutting lines of viral transmission, thereby controlling the spread of the pathogen. The “science” that has guided governments has been driven mostly by epidemic modellers and infectious disease specialists, who understandably frame the present health emergency in centuries-old terms of plague. But what we have learned so far tells us that the story of COVID-19 is not so simple. Two categories of disease are interacting within specific populations—infection with severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) and an array of non-communicable diseases (NCDs). These conditions are clustering within social groups according to patterns of inequality deeply embedded in our societies. The aggregation of these diseases on a background of social and economic disparity exacerbates the adverse effects of each separate disease. COVID-19 is not a pandemic. It is a syndemic. The syndemic nature of the threat we face means that a more nuanced approach is needed if we are to protect the health of our communities.