Cassandra Voices

Tag: ZeroCovid Ireland

  • COVID-19 in Ireland: Lives Lost

    Irish Times health correspondent Paul Cullens reported on February 13, 2023 that a disturbing 1,300 patients had ‘died over the winter as a result of delays in hospital admission from emergency departments, according to an analysis of Health Service Executive data.’

    This followed a longer article by Cullen the previous Saturday exploring what is driving the deeply concerning excess death figures recorded over the previous year in Ireland and elsewhere – ‘among worst in 50 years’ according to the BBC.

    Importantly, Cullen acknowledges that COVID-19 itself ‘can only explain a fraction of the additional number of people dying.’

    Given this is a global issue, attributing additional mortality primarily to the parlous state of emergency medicine in Ireland is a difficult argument to sustain. It could be a contributory factor, but conditions in 2022 were no different to the preceding years. For example, prior to the onset of the pandemic, in January, 2020 Cullen reported that ‘[t]he first week of the new year has been the worst ever for hospital overcrowding, according to figures from the Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation.’

    The first of Cullen’s recent articles, in particular, appears to have been written in response to high mortality being ‘attributed by some online to Covid vaccines.’ He summarises his arguments to the effect that ‘[t]his limited data does not appear to support claims of a vaccine-related rise in deaths in this age cohort.’

    He then reveals,

    While the vast majority of medical specialists we asked in recent months about claims of vaccine-induced harm say they have no cause of concern, it is fair to say a small number of doctors do, though for now they are reluctant to speak publicly.

    This reluctance among members of the Irish medical profession “to speak publicly” about adverse reactions to the vaccines should be setting off alarm bells, but what is really striking about the current coverage of elevated mortality is the detached, clinical tone.

    This contrasts starkly with the emotive way in which death, and illness, attributed to COVID-19 was reported during the period of the emergency powers (March 2020 – January 2022).

    Stalin (in)famously said the death of one man is a tragedy but the death of a million is a statistic. In Ireland during that period a single death from COVID-19 was treated as a tragedy, whereas today thousands of additional deaths only seem to be eliciting comment when vaccines are implicated.

    A Calamity?

    Over the course of the pandemic the mean age of death from COVID-19 (as of 09/08/2021) in Ireland was eighty years or older, just two years younger than the average age of death. Four in five deaths from COVID-19 had at least three medical conditions. Revealingly, CSO mortality figures through the years 2018-2020 (2018: 31,116; 2019: 31,134; 2020: 31,765) show little difference between the first year of the pandemic and preceding years.

    There remain also serious question marks over how deaths are attributed to COVID-19. The Central Statistics Office (CSO) adopted WHO guidance listing COVID-19 as the underlying cause of death when:

    confirmed by laboratory testing irrespective of severity of clinical signs or symptoms.

    diagnosed clinically or epidemiologically but laboratory testing is inconclusive or not available.

    Chief Medical Officer Tony Holohan acknowledged a remarkably low threshold in April, 2020: ‘Clinically, the “index of suspicion” for the disease would be “a good deal higher” than would normally be the case for flu.’

    Even allowing for a high mortality from COVID-19 in the early part of 2021, the death toll of 33,055 for that year – after vaccines had arrived – is striking. The full set of figures for 2022 are not yet available, but the CSO say that in Quarter 2 (Q2) of 2022 there were 2,626 more deaths (39.2%) when compared with the same period in 2021. Assuming that pattern is evident throughout 2022 and beyond then perhaps we should be describing this is as a calamity.

    There is now compelling evidence of under-reporting of serious adverse harms from vaccines. However, by January, 2021 the FDA had allowed Pfizer ‘to undermine the scientific integrity of the double-blinded clinical trial’. This means we cannot easily attribute additional deaths to the vaccines. But nor can we rule out the possibility that a significant proportion of excess deaths are an unintended consequence of a treatment that is still being promoted in Ireland for infants as young as six-months-old.

    This article, however, proposes another determining cause, which is that heightened stress levels generated by lockdowns and other non-pharmaceutical interventions designed to instil fear of contracting COVID-19, and actively promoted by emanations of the state and mainstream media, are the primary cause of excess deaths in Ireland and beyond.

    Summer, 2020

    Even after case numbers and deaths had plummeted by early summer 2020, legacy Irish media remained fixated on COVID-19. Writing for the Irish Times on May 23 clinical psychologist and author Maureen Gaffney reckoned that ‘Covid-19 has scored a direct hit on our most basic psychological drives.’ She seemed oblivious to how statements such as her own that ‘the consequences of the coronavirus pandemic may have changed life more permanently’ might be further stressing out her readers.

    Yet the first wave of COVID-19 afflicted few Irish people directly. An “omni-shambolic” testing infrastructure meant it was impossible for most people to determine whether symptoms synonymous with the common cold were COVID-19 or not. Despite early evidence of the unreliability of PCR testing, almost seven hundred million euro would be spent in Ireland on testing over the course of the pandemic.

    However, so-called ‘confirmed’ cases (via PCR) appear to have served a purpose beyond diagnostics. Speaking on RTÉ in November, 2021, Dr Deirdre Robertson of the ESRI’s Behavioural Research Unit said one ‘of the biggest predictors’ of social activity has been the level of worry over the virus: ‘As cases have gone up, worry has gone up and that has changed behaviour.’

    The authorities seem to have identified a correlation between case numbers and “worry over the virus” which influenced “behaviours”. By maintaining case numbers at a sufficient level through mass testing, worries could thus be maintained.

    This perhaps explains NPHET’s almost comical resistance to antigen testing. The availability of these cheap, over-the-counter kits would eventually allow people to self-diagnose, but the results could not be used to induce fear.

    It might also be noted that after leaving his post of Chief Medical Officer, Tony Holohan took up a role with Enfer, one of the primary testing provider to the state, which earned €122.4 million in 2020.

    Irish people were subjected to unprecedented social atomisation during a first lockdown that extended into the summer of 2020 – beyond most other European countries. Public figures such as then Minister for Health Simon Harris sent out subtly misleading messages, cultivating the idea that the virus was far more deadly than it was in reality.

    Later in 2020, Fianna Fail TD Cathal Crowe referred to ‘a fatality rate at the moment in this country of 6.2% of those who contract Covid.’

    However, research by Professor John Ioannidas reveals a far lower pre-vaccination infection fatality rate, especially among non-elderly populations, than previously assumed. This is as low as 0.03% for under sixties. Notwithstanding this easily accessible information, the Irish public were reminded ad nauseum of the ‘deadly’ coronavirus by mainstream media.

    Thus, in the summer of 2020 a public address called on bathers to ‘socially’ distance at Seapoint beach in Dublin. Reinforcing the dystopian atmosphere, in July a national mask mandate was introduced, despite a longstanding consensus, confirmed in a recent meta-analysis, that these do not block the transmission of respiratory pathogens.

    This generated a distinctively modern Irish form of hysteria – often vented on social media platforms – which found fullest expression in the enraged response to Golfgate at the end of August, 2020.

    In hindsight the breaches by politicians were relatively mild. It was the hypocrisy that stung, as people recalled being denied a last visit to a loved one on their death bed. Suppressing a natural human inclination to socialise was putting people in a semi-permanent state of repressed anger.

    A nation of obsessive smart phone users was confronted by an unprecedented onslaught of information tailored to stress them out. The only ‘sensible’ opposition to the lockdown policy presented by the mainstream media came in the form of a delusional ZeroCovid movement that promised an end to lockowns by locking down more strictly.

    Best in Class

    From the outset, Irish journalists and other public figures adopted a best-in-class superiority, contrasting the chaos in Britain under Boris with the virtuous restraint of Irish people. After early prevarication, clean-cut (caretaker) Taoiseach Leo Varadkar struck the right note of gravity as he heroically re-registered as a doctor, having warned of a death toll of 85,000 in a worst-case scenario. Headline writers were uninterested in the best-case scenario.

    Mainstream Irish media hardly raised a murmur at an unconstitutional power grab by NPHET. The millions of euros poured by the government into advertising seems to have had a chilling effect, while a pliant national broadcaster was quietly bailed out by the government.

    Anyone calling for moderation was subjected to ridicule or attack; guilt by association with Qanon followers calling it a hoax, and who immediately mounted a challenge in the courts to the unprecedented restraints on liberty. Thereafter, anyone calling for moderation was branded far-right.

    Independent TD Michael McNamara bravely articulated a sceptical middle ground after chairing the Oireachtas Special Committee on the Covid Response, but to little avail. Despite their unreliability, opinion polls were often taken to represent the will of the people.

    Care Home Deaths

    While the virus had little direct effect on Europe’s youngest population, Ireland did witness the second highest proportion of care home deaths in the world during the first wave. To some extent this was a product of an understandable failure to recognise that the virus seems to have been circulating for over a year. Thus, CMO Tony Holohan ordered private care homes to re-open to visitors in early March, 2020.

    Less forgivably, testing was withdrawn at the height of the surge, and many older people were removed from hospitals, to create space for an expected onslaught of younger people that never arrived.

    The scale of care home deaths revealed longstanding neglect of older people in those setting. A Pandemic Doctor wrote despairingly:

    The airwaves and print media are bursting with opinion, analysis and occasional outrage as the crisis unfolds and consumes the institutionalised elderly. The great and the good understand and discuss, sounding wise and all-knowing. But week after week we are alone. Where is the calvary? Where are the boots on the ground? Who is going to help?

    Difficulties were exacerbated by staff shortages caused by outbreaks among workers living in crowded accommodation. One resident of a county Meath nursing home – fittingly called Kilbrew – died two weeks after being admitted to hospital with an infestation of maggots in a facial wound.

    Lost Lives

    Never before in the history of Irish media and politics had there been such unrelenting emphasis on a particular disease, generating what Maureen Gaffney described as ‘our version of the spirit of the Blitz.’ But it was fear rather than resilience that were to the fore.

    In June, 2020 RTÉ Investigates ran a two-part documentary called Inside Ireland’s Covid Battle. This stretched the war time metaphor to its limit, bringing the spectre of patients gasping for breath into living rooms around the country, to devastating effect.

    You could cut through the paranoia on streets festooned with two-metre markers and yellow-coloured public health notices. Pedestrians would take refuge on to the road to avoid a close shave with another living human being. Joggers became hate figures.

    Later in the summer of 2020, the Irish Times launched an emotive Lives Lost Series. It reads: ‘Those who have died in Ireland and among the diaspora led full and cherished lives’; the series was ‘designed to tell the stories behind the numbers.’

    These included Richard Brady, an ‘Avid Dubs fan who loved his family dearly’; Ann Hyland, who ‘wrote a children’s book, climbed the Great Wall of China, rode a camel in Morocco, jet-skied in Barbados’; and Vincent Fahy who ‘began his career with ESB ‘putting the light’ into rural areas.

    These are touching tributes to ordinary people among a generation that built Ireland as we know it, but these lives were only cherished after their deaths. It begs the question: why are additional people now dying being treated as numbers? Where are the TV cameras to witness them gasping for breath?

    The name chosen for the series ‘Lives Lost’ is also instructive. Lost Lives: The Stories of the Men, Women and Children who Died as a Result of the Northern Ireland Troubles is a well-know book containing short biographies of the victims of the Northern Ireland Troubles. It was adapted into a film by the same name in 2019.

    The linkage between Lives Lost and Lost Lives is surely deliberate. It conveys the impression that any death from COVID-19 was not really by natural causes, but caused by the terrifying virus.

    Over the course of the summer of 2020, the Irish public also became acquainted – via social media – with the phenomenon of Long Covid, or ‘long haulers’, through social media. This too seems to have been used to sustain worry, once many had discovered the low infection fatality rate for COVID-19. Thereafter, mainstream media, including the Irish Times and RTÉ, ran a series of articles emphasising the struggles of previously healthy individuals suffering from Long Covid.

    It is notable that no hue and cry was raised by the mainstream media when the Mater Hospital lost its fight to maintain a Long Covid clinic in late 2022.

    https://vimeo.com/426871719

    ‘We Need a Reckoning’

    Considering the calamitous excess deaths we are now witnessing, Irish society ought to be reflecting on the efficacy, and morality, of adopting the lockdown-to-vaccination policy promoted by the WHO. What Maureen Gaffney referred to as ‘Our version of the spirit of the Blitz’ may come to be regarded as the most damaging public health intervention in history – the military equivalent of turning guns on ourselves.

    In a powerful video message called ‘We Need a Reckoning’, the Indian writer Arundhati Roy describes the infliction of a two month lockdown on her country as a Crime Against Humanity causing untold suffering to millions of impoverished workers in particular. Ireland needs a reckoning too.

    In his article on excess deaths, Paul Cullen at least acknowledges that ‘many non-Covid deaths arose from the pandemic and its impact on our wider physical and mental health.’

    We are not alone. According to Eurostat in September, 2022:

    Excess mortality in the EU climbed to +16% in July 2022 from +7% in both June and May. This was the highest value on record so far in 2022, amounting to around 53 000 additional deaths in July this year compared with the monthly averages for 2016-2019.

    Throughout 2022, EuroMOMO pooled estimates of all-cause mortality for the participating European countries showed elevated excess mortality. Most shockingly there has been a clear uptick in deaths among young people, especially children under the age of fourteen.

    Source: https://www.euromomo.eu/

    Since April 2022, according to the economist Dan O’Brien, Ireland’s excess deaths have been well above the average – 15% higher than the average pre-pandemic level (circa 2,500 people over 7 months).

    That this unusual pattern of mortality should be occurring in the wake of a respiratory pandemic is particularly alarming, given these generate excess deaths. A wave of illness afflicting almost everybody at least once ought to have accelerated the deaths of a substantial proportion of those with underlying illnesses between 2020 (or earlier) and 2021, leaving behind a healthier population overall.

    Last October, ex-Taoiseach Micheal Martin told a Fianna Fáil meeting that medical experts had warned him of ‘dramatically increasing cancers because of delayed diagnoses’ linked to the impact of COVID-19 on the health service. But we know from the UK that people missed appointments out of fear of contracting the virus, not because of insufficient capacity. Moreover, there is no evidence of an increase in mortality from cancer between 2019, 2020 and 2021.

    Stress

    One indicator that the stress of lockdowns and other non-pharmaceutical interventions bear primary responsibility comes from the case of Sweden, where health authorities famously took a softer approach, declining to lockdown in March, 2020. Notably, vaccination rates are above average compared to the rest of Europe.

    Among a list of countries studied by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, the Scandinavian nation ranked lowest for overall cumulative excess deaths from 2020-22 at 6.8 per cent, compared to Australia (18 per cent), the UK (24.5 per cent) and the US (54.1 per cent). In Ireland and elsewhere, we may be witnessing the delayed impact of stress generated by repressive policies and fear messaging.

    In his recent book, the Myth of Normal: Trauma, Illness, & Healing in a Toxic Culture (2022), Gabor Maté cites illuminating research into the biopsychosocial determinants of many illnesses, including cancer, auto-immune conditions and heart disease. ‘Stress’, he says, ‘plays its incendiary role: for example through the release of inflammatory proteins into the circulation’. This inflammation is ‘a fertilizer for the development of disease.(p.94)’

    He also alerts readers to what Dr Lydia Ternoshock has described as a type C[ancer] personality. She interviewed 150 patients with melanoma and found them to be ‘excessively nice, pleasant to a fault, uncomplaining and unassertive.(p.99)’

    Maté argues that ‘repression disarms one’s ability to protect oneself from stress’, explaining:

    If you go through life being stressed while not knowing you are stressed, there is little you can do to protect yourself from the long-term physiological consequences.(p.100)

    It is also possible that near-constant stress generated by a prevailing belief that COVID-19 was going to kill or do serious harm to you played a part in the prevalence of ‘Long Covid’.

    Adam Gaffney, an assistant professor in medicine at Harvard Medical School argued for a more critical appraisal of Long Covid in 2021. Having expressed scepticism around a condition characterised by symptoms such as ‘brain fog’, he recalls being contacted by a journalist who said: ‘I’m asking as much as a person as a journalist because I’m more terrified of this syndrome than I am of death.’

    Gaffney acknowledges ‘myriad long-term effects, including physical and cognitive impairments, reduced lung function, mental health problems, and poorer quality of life’ from severe bouts of COVID-19, but cites a survey showing two-thirds of ‘long haulers’ had negative coronavirus antibody tests, and another, organised by self-identifying Long Covid patients indicating around two-thirds of those surveyed who had undergone blood testing reported negative results.

    He asserted: ‘it’s highly probable that some or many long-haulers who were never diagnosed using PCR testing in the acute phase and who also have negative antibody tests are “true negatives.”

    In other words, Gaffney argues that for many Long Covid is a disease with a strong psychological component, which Gaffney attributes to ‘skyrocketing levels of social anguish and mental emotional distress,’ referencing a paper showing that about half of people with depression also had unexplained physical symptoms.

    During COVID-19, a trusting Irish public were habituated to low intensity stress driven by constant reminders of the presence of “the virus” across media and in their day-to-day lives. Any form of rebellion against this state of affairs made one a social pariah, leading most to repress this impulse. This could have provided an ideal “fertilizer for the development of disease.”

    It now appears that both lockdowns and much vaunted vaccines had only marginal effects on preventing mortality from COVID-19. It is unsurprising, therefore, that mainstream media in Ireland is giving scant attention to the collateral damage of policies that were, with few exceptions, uncritically accepted over the course of the pandemic.

    Feature Image: Daniele Idini

  • Covid-19: A New Irish Social Contract?

    Surveying the demise of the Celtic Tiger, Fintan O’Toole devoted an opening essay ‘‘Do you know what a republic is?’ The Adventure and Misadventure of an Idea’ in Up the Republic! Towards a New Ireland (2012) to assessing the health of the Irish Republic. He considered its vitality based on the presence, or otherwise, of three indicators: Non-Domination; Mixed Government and tolerance of Obstreperous Citizens.

    These features of a healthy republic, he wrote, diverge from a narrow form of republicanism associated with Rousseau ‘which argues for the notion of a single, sovereign popular will: ‘the People’ effectively taking the place of the king in a monarchy.’ Up to that point in Ireland, O’Toole argued, this latter, narrow version had predominated, which he associated ‘in vulgar terms’ with appeals being made to ‘pull on the green jersey’’; and where ‘an idea of accountability implicit in mixed government is ditched.’

    ‘For most of the history of the state’, O’Toole concluded that the state ‘failed miserably in the basic task of ensuring citizens were free from subjection to the arbitrary will of others.’[i]

    Now, as Ireland slowly unwinds from an interminable lockdown that tendency of Irish governments to pull on the green jersey, avoid accountability, reject obstreperousness and a conspicuous failure to ensure that citizens are free from the subjection to the arbitrary will of others, is evident once again. This regression has arrived especially through what O’Toole himself described on April 28th, 2020 as the ‘top-down, command-and-control approach’ of the National Public Health Emergency Team (NPHET), which the elected government has deferred to throughout most of the pandemic.

    Times of War

    The COVID-19 pandemic is likely to reshape the Irish political landscape, eroding foundational certainties of left and right. When the dust settles new formations may crawl from the debris, with democracy itself in peril, as the coalition government chooses to extend emergency powers until November, while other countries such as Denmark aim for a swift return to normality.

    In terms of the pandemic’s wide-ranging impact, there are parallels with the outbreak of a global war. As Hannah Arendt put it: ‘The days before and the days after the first World War are separated not like the end of the an old and the beginning of a new period, but like the day before and the day after an explosion.’[ii]

    Placing billions under lockdown around the world had a shuddering effect on daily routines, altering intimate exchanges and gestures, besides radically reducing the ambit of daily peregrinations. It’s a very modern form of trench warfare that confined most of us to within 5km of barracks – spilling out invective on (anti-)social media.

    In Ireland, with the advent of bigger government, there is a confidence among some on the left that their time has arrived, and that a relatively youthful population will vanquish age-old privileges of wealth and caste through a permanently enlarged state.

    However, as Eric Hobsbawm records, one reason Engels (and even the late Marx) ‘began to turn away from calculations that the international war might be an instrument of revolution was the discovery that it would lead to ‘the recrudescence of chauvinism in all countries’ which would serve the ruling classes.’[iii]

    Similarly, nationalism chauvinism – ‘excessive or prejudiced support for one’s own cause, group, or sex’ – has been witnessed throughout the pandemic in Ireland. This is perhaps unsurprising as, historically, infectious diseases have given rise to, and fed, plagues of prejudice and outright racism; the diseased ‘other’ at the gates of the city is a recurring theme. Ruling classes have often put forward strongman rulers to harness this xenophobic sentiment.

    Since March 2020 we have poured over spreadsheets of daily deaths, infections, testing rates and vaccine roll outs to determine how ‘we’ are doing relative to ‘them.’ In Ireland we tend to measure achievements and failures against the noisy neighbour next door, whose boorish leader has somehow managed to transform one of the world’s highest death tolls per capita from Covid-19 into a great British victory pageant, through a rapid vaccine rollout. Boris now looks unassailable, notwithstanding Brexit storm clouds, Dominic’s revenge, Indian variants; and just the suspicion that the vaccine may not prove quite the panacea it seems now in winter 2022. Time will tell.

    Indeed, the narrative arc of Boris Johnson’s response to the pandemic should serve as a warning to the Irish left that ruling classes can easily steal their best clothes. In this respect, Johnson operated with far greater flexibility than Donald Trump, shifting from a ‘take on the chin’ herd immunity approach in March, 2020 to championing what he would have previously decried as a ‘nanny state’ lockdown. He and his chumocracy used the pandemic as a pretext for introducing draconian legislation against protest and civil disobedience, apparently aimed at movements such as Extinction Rebellion.

    Recovery Position

    Similarly, though less dramatically, Leo Varadkar resuscitated his political career after Fine Gael’s disastrous performance in General Election 2020, donning proverbial scrubs for the initial phase of the pandemic. Having identified himself with “early-rising” middle class voters Varadkar was smart enough to realise that his preferred Thatcherite policy of reliance on an Invisible Hand of market forces could lead to a public health disaster during a pandemic.

    Since entering the coalition, Fine Gael Ministers have emphasised a law and order approach – Simon ‘TikTok’ Harris was quick off the blocks denouncing as ‘disgusting, grotesque and obscene’ a comparatively unobstreperous anti-lockdown protest in Dublin by European standards. Fine Gael have also allowed Fianna Fail to act as a mudguard for a failing system of public health: Ireland’s health expenditure is the third highest in the EU, yet we have only 5 ICU beds per 100,000, compared to 35 in Germany and 28 in Austria.

    Fine Gael represents itself as a centrist party, placing emphasis on its belated support for marriage equality and abortion referendums, which obscures from a failure in government to address structural inequalities and ongoing environmental damage. Replacing James Reilly as Minister for Health in 2015 Leo Varadkar promptly abandoned universal health insurance (UHI).

    After becoming leader of Fine Gael and Taoiseach, Leo Varadkar claimed he would represent thrusting early risers – tantamount to saying he would not alter structural inequalities that are most apparent in access to housing. In combination with Fianna Fail, Fine Gael has represented the dominant interest of large property owners, indifferent to whether their wealth is maintained via independent corporate entities, the state, or as in Ireland’s case increasingly, a corporate-state nexus.

    Simple distinctions of left and right are often misleading. Thus, when considering the virtues, or otherwise, of big government it should be clear that administrative levers and patronage may drive inequality; most obviously through mind-boggling salaries, such as the €420k paid to the Director General of a dysfunctional HSE, Paul Reid – ironically a former Workers’ Party activist. Reid has no medical or scientific qualifications, and previously acted as chief executive of Fingal County Council.

    Moreover, left-wing politicians and their supporters are often drawn from higher income groups; a tendency that within Fine Gael circles used to be referred to as noblesse oblige – accompanied by the obligatory glass of fine Cognac – of which the Just Society was the apotheosis. But a left-wing identity may be superficial, as the distribution of state largesse, or patronage, apart from being expressed in high public sector salaries, often benefits established professional elites of lawyers, academics and indeed doctors.

    Leprechaun Economics

    Big government patronage motors along fine in Ireland for all concerned as long as the tech and pharma sectors do the heavy economic lifting. This is the ‘Leprechaun Economics’ that Paul Krugman referred to dismissively. But now the Biden administration’s taxation proposed changes to the global tax system may make the current Irish model unworkable. The ECB is also likely to desist eventually from quantitative easing, with inflation looming.

    Renewed fiscal rectitude and the prospect of multinationals leaving a perpetually unaffordable capital city for workers, will place increasing reliance on those indigenous SMEs that have endured the Crash of 2008, and the unprecedented challenges of the pandemic. Yet whole sectors have been furloughed for over a year, with some such as events and tourism wondering whether they have a future at all. The Central Bank has warned that one in four firms could fail when pandemic payments cease.

    It should be unsurprising, therefore, for a small businessperson living from transaction to transaction to be wary of parties promising higher taxation on the left, and instead be attracted to politicians on the right, or even far-right, that are acquainted with the language of commerce, however superficial this may be, in the case of Leo Varadkar at least, whose concern for SMEs has disappeared after his supportive comments proved unpopular last October.

    An objective for a progressive left should be to attract support from an increasingly marginalised mercantile class, emphasising that a favourable environment for entrepreneurship, as in Scandinavia, is enabled by efficient public service, including a one-tier, functioning health system. The left can argue that leaving healthcare to market forces – as in the U.S. – is not only deeply unfair, but also, crucially, leads to greater costs than a functioning one tier public system which also – as in most European countries – delivers better outcomes overall.

    The inherent danger of Ireland’s two-tier model, where health care provision is subject to market forces is epitomised by a question recently posed by a Goldman Sachs executive: “Is curing patients a sustainable business model?” In an age of profound health insecurities – which are amplified through subtle advertising cues – market forces will continue to distort public health priorities.

    It was the father of economics Adam Smith who warned: ‘People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices.’ However, while resisting a buccaneering tendency in the delivery of a vital government service such as healthcare, the left cannot afford to dismiss the dynamism of entrepreneurship in society at large. Just imagine the food you would be served if the government was running all the restaurants.

    Following Public Health Guidance

    While there are a range of financial supports available to SMEs, the world-beating length of Ireland’s lockdown has made trade impossible for many businesses, some of which may never recover. The failure of the two centre-right parties in government to represent their concerns arguably, lies at the heart of Ireland’s deeply flawed response to the pandemic.

    From March to June, 2020, 96% of additional deaths related to COVID-19 in Europe occurred in patients aged older than 70 years. Yet, despite having the youngest population in the Union, according to a Reuters by February Ireland had endured 163 days of workday closures. This was the highest, by some measure, of all the European countries surveyed at that point. By contrast, Denmark had lost just fifteen days, having experienced a death toll almost half that of Ireland’s per capita.

    The uncritical attitude of mainstream Irish left wing parties towards public health officials should also be reconsidered. Recall the major mistakes in particular by Chief Medical Officer Tony Holohan, who saw nothing wrong with fans going to Cheltenham in early March, 2020, ordered care homes to re-open to visitors that same month, and then transferred 4,500 untested patients back into care homes – surely contributing to the second highest level of care home mortality in the world during the first wave. Yet Irish left wing politicians have consistently complained about the government failing ‘to follow public health advice,’ despite Holohan’s long history of cock-ups and cover-ups.

    Even before Christmas NPHET – a body composed primarily of career civil servants and notably short on scientific expertise – seemed to have been all on board for the ’meaningful Christmas’ of Micheal Martin’s imagination. The only significant deviation between the government’s approach and NPHET’s advice was that the latter preferred to permit household gatherings rather than opening the hospitality sector. Cue raucous Christmas house parties, as opposed to what were mainly orderly affairs in pubs and restaurants.

    In fact, Ireland’s ‘third’ wave, which coincided with the more transmissible B.119 variant (although apparently not more lethal as was widely reported) actually commenced in week 48 of 2020 (22/11/2020), while the country was still under Level 5 Lockdown restrictions, according to a report by the HSPC.

    Sadly, public health obscurantism has also brought denial of their own data, which said outdoor transmission of Covid-19 is about as frequent as curlew sightings.

    The latest embarrassment over NPHET refusing to acknowledge the benefits of antigen testing, underlines that if left-wing politicians are slavishly going ‘to follow the public health advice,’ and whatever Yes Minister civil servant advises then we won’t see radical reforms in Ireland any time soon.

    Frank O’Connor

    Guests of the Nation

    Over the course of the pandemic Irish attitudes have hardened against the free movement of people in and out of the country, culminating in the introduction of mandatory hotel quarantines for some foreign, including EU, arrivals at the end of February.

    Contemporary Irish attitudes to hardworking foreigners resident in Ireland recall Frank O’Connor’s classic 1931 short story ‘Guests of the Nation.’ Set during the War of Independence 1919-21 it portrays a bond of friendship that grows up between two IRA men, Bonaparte (the narrator), and Noble, who are detailed to guard two captured English soldiers Belcher and ‘Awkins who have a natural affinity with the country:

    I couldn’t at the time see the point of me and Noble being with Belcher and ‘Awkins at all, for it was  and is my fixed belief you could have planted that pair in any untended spot from this to Claregalway and they’d have stayed put and flourished like a native weed.

    Ultimately ‘Awkins and Belcher are sacrificed at the altar of of a narrow nationalism, just as a today the Populist appeal to ‘protect our own people’ has ordained that the rights of immigrants in Ireland, and abroad, to see their families was disregarded.

    This appears to stem from a widespread notion that ‘we,’ like faraway New Zealand and Australia, can eliminate the disease from ‘our’ shores altogether – devolving into the juvenile #wecanbezeros hashtag adopted by some politicians on the left. The problem is that ‘we’ are a society with lots of ‘them’ immigrants living here, and an enormous diaspora of ‘us’ beyond the shores of an island divided into two jurisdictions, highly dependent on international trade in goods arriving on trucks (with drivers).

    Moreover, apart from the extreme geographic isolation and sparse populations of Australia and New Zealand, ‘we’ in Ireland have legal obligations to preserve freedom of movement under European treaties and the Good Friday Agreement, enshrining a porous open land border. Apart from committing economic hari-kari, pursuit of ZeroCovid appears legally impossible, unless of course we want to pursue an Irexit and build a wall along the Northern border.

    Nonetheless, egged on by febrile – ‘if it bleeds it leads’ – coverage in a national media increasingly reliant on government advertising, a prevailing view is that all deaths from Covid are essentially preventable; emanating from the failing of the state, or the reviled Covidiot, rather than being the tragic consequence of a pandemic, the death toll from which has been systematically exaggerated.

    Moreover, intercepted correspondence within the ZeroCovid ISAG group of independent scientists – who have taken on the Opus Dei role to the Catholic hierarchy of NPHET – reveals, among other disturbing insights, that they were looking ‘for ways to increase insecurity, anxiety and uncertainty.’ As these revelations first appeared in right-wing Gript, however, the left-wing echo chamber refuses to acknowledge it is being played.

    Are you right there Michael?

    Nonetheless, a number of politicians have come forward representing an anti-authoritarian left, concerned by the harms of lockdown and favouring a targeted approach – protecting the elderly – and building up ICU capacity. In a recent blistering Twitter attack the independent (and former Labour) TD for Clare, barrister Michael McNamara – who as chair of the Oireachtas Committee on Covid-19 Response became as well acquainted as any Irish politician with diverging epidemiological assessments of the pandemic – identified a recurring Irish deference to vested authority.

    In response to a Fintan O’Toole article critiquing the DUP McNamara wrote: ‘Instead of criticising unionism, let’s look at the complete mess we’ve made of Irish nationalism and nationhood. We’re ruled by a junta of medics, just as we were Rome Ruled for 7 decades. The Orthodoxy changes but the crawthumping remains the same.’

    He continued: ‘If it wasn’t for Unionism, we’d be like Hoxha’s Albania now. There’d be no way off this island. But there is a beacon. Belfast Airport and Larne are beyond the reach of NPHET, just as surely as the rule of the Archbishop’s palace in Drumcondra didn’t pass the bridge in Portadown.’

    He added more controversially:

    ‘We can’t blame the medics for their experimental therapy, any more than we could blame the clergy for their zeal.  Successive governments have abdicated their democratic responsibility throughout this State’s short history. So why would Unionists want to be “governed” by Dublin?’

    It was a fair question, when one considers the North is reopening far sooner than the Republic. Although this has arrived after a rapid vaccine rollout, the experimental nature of which McNamara raises problems with.

    Facing Up to Errors

    Here we come to the crux of an unhelpful cultural division between left and right that the ruling parties will use to divide and conquer. This is the new identity politics arising out of the pandemic, epitomised by attitudes towards face masks.

    For too many on the left the science on this issue is proven as opposed to followed. Wearing a face mask now appears to have become an article of faith. Yet a recent report by the European Centre for Disease Control and Prevention entitled ‘Using face masks in the community: first update – Effectiveness in reducing transmission of COVID-19’ stated:

    The evidence regarding the effectiveness of medical face masks for the prevention of COVID-19 in the community is compatible with a small to moderate protective effect, but there are still significant uncertainties about the size of this effect. Evidence for the effectiveness of non-medical face masks, face shields/visors and respirators in the community is scarce and of very low certainty.

    Additional high-quality studies are needed to assess the relevance of the use of medical face masks in the COVID-19 pandemic.

    Moreover, the Irish left should consider our dependence on pharmaceutical behemoths that jealously guard intellectual properties, notwithstanding huge state aid grants, and indemnification against adverse reactions. It is akin to the dependence of small farmers in developing countries on genetically modified seed, under a model of Philanthrocapitalism overseen by Bill Gates, who according to a recent article by Alexander Zaitchik has shown “a lifelong ideological commitment to knowledge monopolies,” and devotes hundreds of millions of dollars each year to whitewashing his reputation through “charitable” media grants.

    Moreover, all too often, media debates around Covid-19 fail to acknowledge the link between pre-existing morbidities – ‘underlying conditions’ – and morbidity and mortality from Covid-19. Thus, US Studies have shown that having a BMI over 30—the threshold that defines obesity—increases the risk of being admitted to hospital with covid-19 by 113%, of being admitted to intensive care by 74%, and of dying by 48%, making it almost as relevant a consideration as having been vaccinated.

    In Ireland, moreover, Mayo coroner Patrick O’Connor recently questioned the attribution of deaths to Covid-19, saying: ‘In reality, a lot of people have terminal cancer or multiple other serious co-morbidities. People can die from Covid and or with Covid. I think numbers that are recorded as Covid deaths may be inaccurate and do not have a scientific basis.’

    https://twitter.com/SunTimesIreland/status/1383791062846562307

    Furthermore, by embracing ZeroCovid Utopianism many on the Irish left failed to focus on the failings of a decrepit Irish health system. This epitomises a tendency among politicians to dance to the tune of a corporate media that has placed relentless focus on the disease itself, regularly interviewing mendacious ISAG figures, while generally ignoring underlying social and environmental factors that drive morbidity and mortality.

    The canard that Ireland could simply shut its borders and reach ZeroCovid perhaps points to the need for reform of an Irish secondary educational system, which according to the a rather unkind assessment from the OECD’s Andreas Schleicher is designed to produce ‘second-class robots.’ Perhaps too many of us are lacking the requisite critical faculties to look beyond news headlines.

    In fact a radically different, defiantly left-wing approach to the pandemic been put forward by, among others, Harvard epidemiologists Katherine Yih and Martin Kuldorff in The Jacobin. They pointed out:

    Elites have seen their stock portfolios balloon in value, and many professionals have been able to keep their jobs by working from home. It is the country’s poor and working-class households, particularly those with children, who have borne a disproportionate share of the burden. Lower-income Americans were much more likely to be forced to work in unsafe conditions, to have lost their livelihoods due to business and school shutdowns, or to be unable to learn remotely.

    Beyond ZeroCovid, the Irish left should emphasis the harms of Ireland’s reliance on lockdowns, and harness the malcontents of the poorest, including small business owners. Otherwise they court irrelevance as the traditional ruling parties have already taken on the role of ‘caring’ for the people, while retaining the power to ease restrictions in the face of opposition from the left.

    Science and Technology are not Neutral

    Also, as opposed to running in fear from being labelled anti-vaxxers by a cheerleading corporate media, the left might at least consider the wisdom of foisting vaccines that have been granted under emergency use conditions on all age groups. Indeed, many on the left in Ireland seem unwilling to question dominant institutional narratives, a tendency recently criticized by the Greek socialist Panagiotis Sotiris in The Jacobin, who said: ‘What is missing here is something that used to be one of the main traits of the radical left, namely, an insistence that science and technology are not neutral.’

    It remains unclear whether universal immunization will bring about long-term ‘herd’ immunity; while in the absence of long-term safety data the benefits to young, healthy subjects of vaccination may not outweigh the cost in terms of adverse events from treatments granted under emergency use licences. Sober assessment seems to have given way to an ideological and, at times, a coercive approach.

    In terms of the efficacy of the Pfizer vaccine, writing in the British Medical Journal, Peter Doshi, pointed to how in the media ‘a relative risk reduction is being reported, not absolute risk reduction, which appears to be less than 1%’ for severe disease.’ Ollario et al in The Lancet referred to absolute risk reductions of ‘1·3% for the AstraZeneca–Oxford, 1·2% for the Moderna–NIH, 1·2% for the J&J, 0·93% for the Gamaleya, and 0·84% for the Pfizer–BioNTech vaccines.’ The authors also pointed to how ‘considerations on efficacy and effectiveness are based on studies measuring prevention of mild to moderate COVID-19 infection; they were not designed to conclude on prevention of hospitalisation, severe disease, or death, or on prevention of infection and transmission potential.’

    Doshi has also objected to the undermining of ‘the scientific integrity of the double-blinded clinical trial the company—and other companies—have been conducting, before statistically valid information can be gathered on how effectively the vaccines prevent hospitalizations, intensive care admissions or deaths.’  This came after Pfizer pleaded an ‘ethical responsibility’ to unblind its trial and offer those who received a placebo the opportunity to receive its vaccine.

    Doshi argued that ‘there was another way to make an unapproved vaccine available to those who need it without undermining a trial. It’s called “expanded access.” Expanded access enables any clinician to apply on behalf of their patient to the FDA for a drug or vaccine not yet approved. The FDA almost always approves it quickly.’

    An alternative policy would be to reserve vaccines for those most susceptible to severe symptoms – the old and the obese – along with healthcare workers and others unavoidably working around the world in congested environments. Devoting scarce resources to increasing ICU provision to bring us into line with European averages might be a better approach than relying exclusively on the quick fix of the vaccine.

    The Irish left should now desist from identity politics around vaccine uptake that the centre-right is relishing. ‘Tiktok’ Harris previously stoked tensions with talk of mandatory vaccines and promoting vaccine passports. The left should resist vaccine apartheid, nationally and globally, while demanding the release of patents earned through state supports.

    On the Horizon

    Ireland can expect significant social problems to emerge out of our world-beating lockdown strategy that recalls a prior devotion to austerity; a mental health pandemic and mass youth unemployment are upon us already. Moreover, the young are currently denied the safety valve of an easy hop to another English-speaking country for work. This may be a recipe for radicalism, but unfortunately genuinely dark forces on the far-right are ready to pounce on malcontents.

    It is surely vital that we maintain our European connections, thereby scrapping Mandatory Health Quarantine that is an insult to immigrant groups in Ireland, as well as the diaspora. 90% of scientists believe that Covid-19 will be with us forever, so it seems there will always be ‘variants of concern’ to contend with, just as there are with influenza.

    As a country Ireland has serious work to get on with in terms of addressing a housing crisis and improving our environment. A narrow focus on the pandemic should not be allowed to derail these efforts. This may be like a war but it is not a war. Even prior to vaccines, this is a virus with an infection fatality rate of less than 0.2% in most locations. Moreover, up to 86% of those infected may not have symptoms, such as cough, fever, or loss of taste or smell, according to a UK study from October. We require better provision of public health and an adequate plan to address the ongoing obesity pandemic.

    We also need to start thinking more critically — and speaking more cautiously — about Long Covid, considering ‘at least some people who identify themselves as having Long Covid appear never to have been infected with the SARS-CoV-2 virus.’

    We need to start thinking more critically — and speaking more cautiously — about long Covid

    A New Social Contract?

    The pandemic calls for a new social contract to be negotiated in Ireland that acknowledges republican values of Non-Domination; Mixed Government and tolerance of Obstreperous Citizens. The French COVID-19 Scientific Council led the way in a paper for The Lancet:

    it is time to abandon fear-based approaches based on seemingly haphazard stop-start generalised confinement as the main response to the pandemic; approaches which expect citizens to wait patiently until intensive care units are re-enforced, full vaccination is achieved, and herd immunity is reached.

    They continue:

    Crucially, the new approach should be based on a social contract that is clear and transparent, rooted in available data, and applied with precision to its range of generational targets. Under this social contract, younger generations could accept the constraint of prevention measures (eg, masks, physical distancing) on the condition that the older and more vulnerable groups adopt not only these measures, but also more specific steps (eg, voluntary self-isolation according to vulnerability criteria) to reduce their risk of infection. Measures to encourage adherence of vulnerable groups to specific measures must be promoted consistently and enforced fairly. Implementation of such an approach must be done sensitively and in conjunction with the deployment of vaccination across the various population targets, including all generations of society.

    They argue against reliance on lockdowns:

    Using stop-start general confinement as the main response to the COVID-19 pandemic is no longer feasible. Though attractive to many scientists, and a default measure for political leaders fearing legal liability for slow or indecisive national responses, its use must be revisited, only to be used as a last resort.

    To date, many on the Irish left appear to have had their heads in the sand promoting a Utopian ZeroCovid solution. This should give way to a more balanced appraisal that considers the interests of all of Irish society. With the youngest population in Europe, and as one of the richest countries, the Irish government could have preserved a far higher standard of living for the population during the pandemic. We now need to draw up a social contract that takes a more balanced approach.

    Featured Image: Daniele Idini

    [i] O’Toole, Fintan (editor), Up The Republic: Towards a New Ireland. Faber and Faber, London, 2012, p.1-52.

    [ii] Arendt, Hannah, The Origins of Totalitarianism, Penguin, London, 1966, p.22

    [iii] Eric Hobsbawm, How to Change the World, Tales of Marx and Marxism, Little, Brown, London, 2011, p.79

  • ZeroCovid’s Neoconservative Traits

    So-called ‘ZeroCovid’ is a ‘zero-tolerance’ approach to the virus, promising to eliminate community transmission in Ireland. The concept has gained traction among young people, especially, desperate for an end to a seemingly endless cycle of lockdowns, and others worried by the danger posed by the disease itself.

    The original ‘zero-tolerance’ policy is identified with Donald Trump’s associate Rudy Giuliani’s tenure as mayor of New York (1994-2001), and involved punishment for even minor infractions.

    Rudy Giuliani

    Most criminologists agree, however, that zero-tolerance, based on the ‘broken window’ theory of policing, made little difference to overall crime rates, which seem to have been falling in New York prior to Giuliani’s period in office. New powers of arrest simply handed police carte blanche to remove homeless people from affluent neighbourhoods. Thus Time Square became a safe haven for tourism, but ghettos remained no go.

    Zero-tolerance policies emerged in a neoconservative era alongside ‘humanitarian interventions,’ culminating in the illegal invasion of Iraq in 2003, led by U.S. President George W. Bush, and supported by U.K. Prime Minister Tony Blair. Blair also backed a zero tolerance approach to crime in the U.K., and has recently inveigled his way back to prominence as part of the ‘war’ effort against Covid-19.

    Neoconservatives engineered a War on Terror which, apart from direct military actions, included ‘shock and awe’ tactics to cow opponents, galvanising support through appeals to nationalist sentiment and by demonising – often phantom – enemies.

    Finally, neoconservatism is aligned with neoliberal austerity adopted in the wake of the Financial Crisis, beginning in 2007-2008. Austerity proponents assume purgative measures – described as ‘The Shock Doctrine’ by Naomi Klein – are required to heal the body politic of its economic woes.

    Family Resemblances

    The ZeroCovid elimination approach in Ireland bears significant family resemblances to an illusory zero-tolerance policy to crime. There are also shades of the War on Terror’s ‘shock and awe’ tactic of elevating fear and appealing to narrow national self-interest. The imprint of austerity is apparent in a promise of deliverance after painful expurgation, as a population already frayed by successive lockdowns is exhorted to double down and accept greater stringency. Naomi Klein has also identified a Pandemic Shock Doctrine.

    It may seem surprising that Irish leftists should be attracted to a policy which seems to have a neoconservative mentality, but notably ‘recovering socialists developed neoconservatism in the sixties and seventies,’ and the Marxist dialectic permits great suffering before the achievement of a socialist paradise.

    Leading spokespeople do not, however, give the impression they welcome the embrace of leftists. Tomás Ryan recently called for ‘more of a grand coalition attitude’; while another, Anthony Staines is, or was, a member of Fine Gael. Among the few practising doctors associated with ZeroCovid is Maitiú Ó Tuathail, whose friendship with then Fine Gael Taoiseach Leo Varadkar gave him access to a confidential agreement between the State and the IMO, which is now the subject of a Garda enquiry.

    ZeroCovid is certainly not a blueprint for a socialist republic – the narrowness of its focus its quite striking – and advocates assert pro-business credentials, Ryan emphasising that ‘ZeroCovid countries are ranking highest in business confidence.’ Far from being treated as revolutionaries in the mainstream media, its spokespeople have become household names during the pandemic, blurring a distinction between expert witness and political actor.

    Some on the left may be attracted to ZeroCovid in the hope that ‘Napoleonic’ state mobilisation witnessed during the pandemic will be carried into ‘peacetime,’ to address poverty and environmental destruction. The shady dealings we have witnessed in this period, however, set a dangerous precedent, as the executive director of the British Medical Journal Kamran Abbasi put it:

    Covid-19 has unleashed state corruption on a grand scale, and it is harmful to public health. Politicians and industry are responsible for this opportunistic embezzlement. So too are scientists and health experts. The pandemic has revealed how the medical-political complex can be manipulated in an emergency—a time when it is even more important to safeguard science.

    Given the paucity of investigative journalism in Ireland it is difficult to assess corruption levels, but the one euro billion spent on PPE in 2020 raises a red flag, while allegations of contracts being awarded inappropriately are ventilated on social media.

    End of the Truce

    It is also notable that despite the obvious distinction between the government’s suppression approach, and ZeroCovid’s elimination policy, there has been no direct confrontation between the two groups. At the end of January, however, the truce ended with the chair of the Irish Epidemiological Modelling Advisory Group Philip Nolan decisively branding ZeroCovid ‘an utterly false promise.’

    This intervention may have been linked to recent politicisation, as the Social Democrats, and to a lesser extent Labour (which announced ‘a national aggressive suppression strategy, zero Covid-19 by another name’), followed People Before Profit’s earlier embrace of the project.

    Throughout the pandemic ZeroCovid spokespeople have been welcomed within the dominant media consensus – assessing the virus a once-in-a-generation challenge – with nationalist appeals – adopting the hashtag #wecanbezero – perhaps seen as a way way of channeling latent radicalism away from opposition to reliance on strict lockdowns.

    Origins of ZeroCovid

    The genesis of the movement in Ireland is unclear. Last summer the Wellcome Trust, whose offshore dealings were exposed in the Paradise Papers, launched a global ‘Zero Covid’ fundraising initiative for vaccine research, with the support of Goldman Sachs Gives and others.

    The Irish initiative traces its origins to a disparate group of academic scientists led by Staines that brought forward a Crush the Curve petition in July, preceding the emergence of a Zero Covid Island group. It has since morphed into another organisation called ISAG: ‘a multidisciplinary group of scientists, academics, and researchers who have come together to advocate for a SARS-CoV-2 elimination strategy for the island’.

    Yaneer Bar-Yam preparing to speak at an event in 2014.

    Among those involved is a MIT Professor Yaneer Bar-Yam, who does not appear to have had any previous connection to Ireland. Bar Yam previously advised the Pentagon ‘about global social unrest and the crises in Egypt and Syria’, and the National Security Council and the National Counter Terrorism Council on global strategy, elsewhere described as ‘preventing ethnic violence.’ He also advised policymakers on the elimination of Ebola, a disease which presents a very different challenge to Covid-19.

    Tomás Ryan is himself a former Post-Doctoral Fellow (2010-2016) at MIT, having previously been a Junior Research Fellow at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute and Wolfson College, Cambridge (2009 – 2010). Ryan’s background is in neuroscience and has no publications in virology or epidemiology.

    Bar-Yam set up an organisation called ENDCRONAVIRUS.ORG (https://www.endcoronavirus.org/) in February 2020, and may see Ireland as a potential testing ground for counter-viral methods.

    ZeroCovid appeals to national self-interest, requiring exclusion of a diseased ‘other,’ through mandatory quarantines for foreign arrivals, and promotes the creation of zero-transmission zones within the country. In August Bar-Yam co-authored a paper entitled, ‘A green zone strategy for Ireland,’ which recalls Baghdad’s ‘Green Zone’ under U.S. occupation, and districts ‘purified’ by the application of a zero-tolerance approach to crime.

    Indefinite elimination of what appears to be an endemic seasonal virus from a globally integrated country such as Ireland appears Utopian however, with most scientists assuming Covid-19 will be with us forever.

    Last month, Nature asked more than one hundred immunologists, infectious-disease researchers and virologists working on Covid-19 whether they believe it can be eradicated. Almost 90% responded to say it will become endemic

    According to one of those surveyed Michael Osterholm, an epidemiologist at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis. ‘Eradicating this virus right now from the world is a lot like trying to plan the construction of a stepping-stone pathway to the Moon.’

    Jacinda Arden

    New Zealand

    For obvious cultural reasons, Irish ZeroCovid strategists often cite New Zealand’s as a model to follow – factors other than suppression policies appear to be inhibiting Covid-19 in east Asian countries –  but this ignores the extreme isolation of a sparsely populated island nation situated on the other side of the world, under a depleted ozone layer that brings elevated levels of virus-killing ultraviolet light. Moreover, New Zealand does not have a disputed border with another jurisdiction to contend with. Also, importantly, New Zealand’s imports arrive in containers, as opposed to Ireland’s reliance on ‘roll-on roll-off’ trucks.

    https://twitter.com/John_McGahon/status/1360552471345717249

    Moreover, it seems significant that there have been less than two thousand cases of Covid-19 detected in New Zealand so far during the pandemic. Common cold viruses display infuriatingly unpredictable behaviour, waxing and waning seasonally, like influenza, which derives its name from the influenza degli astri, or ‘influence of the planets.’

    A paper from 1973 entitled ‘An outbreak of common colds at an Antarctic base after seventeen weeks of complete isolation’, discusses the case of six of twelve men wintering at an isolated Antarctic base that sequentially developed common cold symptoms after seventeen weeks of complete isolation.

    According to the authors: ‘Examination of specimens taken from the men in relation to the outbreak has not revealed a causative agent,’ which the authors say could ‘well have been the effects of a coronavirus.’ Bewildered, they conclude: ‘in some way virus persisted, either in the environment or in the men.’

    Furthermore, in an article for Cassandra Voices Justin Frewen observed how decisive political leadership encouraged personal responsibility:

    In addition to providing Covid-19 related information through standard media channels, the NZ Prime Minister, Jacinda Ardern, has communicated directly with the public, making herself available to the media and holding daily public press conferences, led by New Zealand’s director-general of health, Dr Ashley Bloomfield. Together they have displayed “a reliable, measured and authoritative face for New Zealand’s Covid-19 response”.Of particular value has been the clarity of Jacinda Ardern’s communication on the virus. Her leadership style has been assessed by one commentator as ‘one of empathy in a crisis that tempts people to fend for themselves. Her messages are clear, consistent, and somehow simultaneously sobering and soothing. And her approach isn’t just resonating with her people on an emotional level. It is also working remarkably well.’

    The virus returned mysteriously to Auckland in August, however, leading to a second lockdown. Civil liberties advocates may take issue with the mandatory confinement of anyone testing positive – and mandatory quarantining of all visitors – but the response to the virus has been to the benefit and satisfaction of the vast majority of New Zealanders, and the satisfies a principle of proportionality.

    But another outbreak at the beginning of February has brought yet another lockdown to Auckland, and Prime Minister Jacinda Arden has since signalled that the country’s elimination strategy is to be abandoned in the wake of the arrival of vaccines, stating: ‘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.’

    Yet surprisingly vaccines are not seen as a game changer by ZeroCovid advocates. An ISAG webinar on January 21st found Staines arguing in favour of mandatory quarantine facilities, on the basis that new variants could ‘dodge some of the effects of vaccines.’

    It begs the question: if new variants are swirling around the world indefinitely – just as strains of influenza vary from year-to-year occasionally evading the effect of vaccines – will Ireland maintain quarantine requirements indefinitely, as a true believer associated with Bar-Yam’s organisation has proposed? This seems unthinkable for a country with a diaspora of three million and a high proportion of immigrants, some of whom may leave Ireland if this approach is adopted. Unfortunately, as in the War of Terror, the enemy is within, and the war unwinnable.

    Australia

    A more tortuous, and arguably disproportionate, route to the elimination of Covid-19 was witnessed in Melbourne, Australia, which may serve as a warning to an Irish public desperate for the pandemic to end.

    With a similar population to the whole of Ireland’s Melbourne experienced a winter outbreak, beginning in June, that brought a stringent lockdown lasting almost three months. Notably, however, the number of cases peaked at seven hundred per day and the virus declined with the arrival of spring. Ireland has had ten times that number in a single day in January, and as of mid-February has still not brought case numbers down to that level.

    Just this month Melbourne went into another lockdown again after an outbreak in a Holiday Inn, giving the lie to the notion that elimination avoids recurring lockdowns; especially in a country such as Ireland conteding with leaky borders, a poorly resourced health system, and a history of distrust in State institutions.

    Advocates of ZeroCovid now call for a level of stringency that brought an end to the Melbourne outbreak, in particular advocating schools close until late April, seemingly oblivious to the damage on children, already denied months of education.

    Apocalyptic Warnings

    Irish ZeroCovid advocates have been unusually apocalyptic in their assessment of the danger posed by Covid-19, with Tomás Ryan projecting in June that a herd immunity approach, involving successive lockdowns, would result in 50,000 deaths, while Sam McConkey warned in March there could be up to 120,000 deaths.

    The latter death toll would be greater than has been witnessed in the U.K., which has the second highest mortality rate (after Belgium) in the world, and a population ten times that of Ireland. Even in almost libertarian scenarios – such as in the two Dakota states in the U.S. – death tolls have been nowhere close to those proportions.

    While ZeroCovid might be dismissed as a fringe organisation, or cult, the degree of media exposure its advocates have enjoyed, and their tendency to ‘shock and awe’ with outlandish projections has distorted debate in Ireland, drawing attention away from the profound damage of lockdowns.

    The Irish media has developed a fixation on the virus to the almost total exclusion of other challenges we face. Mortality from Covid-19 is not portrayed as equivalent to death by natural causes, but a consequence of moral failings in the population or an indulgent government. It has parallels with the attitude of the Pro Life movement.

    Looking forward to life improving.

    And yet, as spring approaches case numbers will surely recede, with a range of vaccines and new treatments reducing severity and mortality. Socially distancing has become second nature to many Irish people, and there is increasing knowledge of the importance of ventilation.

    The Irish government should resist a social experiment that holds no promise of success, and the public should look forward to life improving. In time we are likely to accept a seasonal mortality from Covid-19, just as we tolerate the burden of seasonal influenza, along with many of the environmental factors that cause or exacerbate the non-infectious diseases that remain our leading killers by far.

    Percentage breakdown of top ten registered causes of death, January – October 2020. Source CSO