{"id":13677,"date":"2022-05-25T19:43:41","date_gmt":"2022-05-25T18:43:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cassandravoices.com\/?p=13677"},"modified":"2022-05-25T19:43:41","modified_gmt":"2022-05-25T18:43:41","slug":"covid-19-in-ireland-pandemonium","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/2022\/05\/25\/covid-19-in-ireland-pandemonium\/","title":{"rendered":"Covid-19 in Ireland: Pandemonium"},"content":{"rendered":"

Robert Fisk wrote: \u2018we journalists try \u2013 or should try \u2013 to be the first impartial witnesses of history. If we have any reason for our existence, the least must be our ability to report history as it happens so that no one can say: \u201cWe didn\u2019t know, no one told us.\u201d[i]<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

To be an \u201cimpartial witness\u201d is, of course, impossible, as Fisk concedes, but this should not deter journalists from striving for objectivity. Inevitably, reporting on \u201chistory as it happens\u201d involves choices as to what information is recorded in the annals of daily newspapers, and decisions over whose account becomes canonical. What is left out is often as important as what is included.<\/p>\n

Since independence Irish journalism has often failed to interrogate the structures of power and privilege. Thus, in his seminal Ireland 1912-1985<\/em>, J. J. Lee notes \u2018the intellectual poverty of Irish journalism \u2026 [and] the lack of public demand for serious analysis.\u2019[ii]<\/a><\/p>\n

An older generation are sometimes heard to say, \u201cwe didn\u2019t know, no one told us\u201d, whether concerning the treatment of children in religious institutions, or corruption in the planning process. We may be revisiting a tendency to sugar-coat our reality in the Irish media\u2019s broadly self-congratulatory<\/a><\/span> response to Covid-19.<\/p>\n

Writing a first draft of history, in Pandemonium: Power, Politics and Ireland\u2019s Pandemic<\/em> Jack Horgan-Jones and Hugh O\u2019Connell, Irish Times<\/em> and Irish Independent<\/em> journalists respectively, offer an insider account of truly unprecedented times. The book recalls how the spectre of a devastating pandemic gives way to a realisation that democracy and the rule of law were undermined amidst extraordinary rules that deliberately orchestrated social atomisation, with unpredictable consequences. But it avoids addressing whether we were duped into an apparently popular commitment to lockdowns.<\/p>\n

Anyone governing Ireland throughout the period of the pandemic would naturally wish for their choices to be vindicated, especially the approach of permitting civil servants and technocrats to make many, if not most, difficult decisions; while riding roughshod over fundamental rights to associate, travel and conduct business freely, seemingly with popular consent, however manufactured.<\/p>\n

As an early assessment, drawing on interviews with many key players, Pandemonium<\/em> arguably suffers from its proximity to sources. After all, access is only granted to the chosen few. A reputation for being \u2018difficult\u2019 is not a recipe for a successful career in mainstream Irish journalism. This perhaps accounts for Pandemonium<\/em>\u2019s generally muted and conditional criticism.<\/p>\n

Nevertheless, the book brings to light important information, including an unpublished report cataloguing the catastrophe that ensued in many care homes in the early months of 2020.<\/p>\n

To explain the disproportionate \u2013 at times self-harming \u2013 Irish response to the pandemic a future historian might explore a Catholic inheritance conditioning acceptance of the Original Sin of asymptomatic spread; the Holy Water of hand sanitisers; the Heresy of the unvaccinated; and the Benediction of (repeated) vaccination. Our future historian, or anthropologist, might also note the Obscurantism of a dominant Hierarchy that denied the \u2018snake oil<\/a><\/span>\u2019 of antigen testing; the extreme unlikelihood<\/a><\/span> of outdoor transmission, and immunity conferred by natural infection<\/a><\/span>.<\/p>\n

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@frankarmstrong2<\/a> charts Ireland's response to the #coronavirus<\/a> pandemic sweeping the world, with hopes remaining that the curve of new cases can be flattened.#coronavirusireland<\/a>https:\/\/t.co\/WP2wrErHuK<\/a>@autofac<\/a> @broadsheet_ie<\/a> @think_or_swim<\/a> @ConorBlenner @itsmybike<\/a> @doctorskunk<\/a><\/p>\n

— CassandraVoices (@VoicesCassandra) March 28, 2020<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n