Well, look, it’s about time he took interest in something:
Taoiseach Micheál Martin has signalled a renewed focus on enforcing compliance with the requirement to produce a Digital Covid Certificate to enter a restaurant, pub or café.
It comes as Minister for Health Stephen Donnelly has called on pub and restaurant owners to “step up” and “do the right thing”, and check for both Covid passes and ID at the door.
Mr Martin said he will take a personal interest in ensuring certs and identification are being checked across the hospitality sector before customers are permitted to eat or drink inside.
Once again, and as ever with Mr. Martin, this is politics, and not science. The Government has no scientific data showing that vaccine certificates have played any role in stopping or slowing the spread of Covid 19 in the population. In fact, given the rise in cases, they have ample data showing that they have had no effect at all. In the past week alone, we have had NPHET members pointing out that the vaccinated are almost as infectious as the unvaccinated, and HPSC data showing vaccinated deaths approaching those of the unvaccinated.
But Government policy cannot be to blame. The golden rule of any Government policy is that if it is not working, it must be because somebody else – in this case pub and restaurant owners – is not implementing it properly.
The core issue here is that the data on waning vaccine effectiveness is now unanswerable, which means that there will be a need for booster vaccines over the coming months. The NIAC has already approved these for the elderly, and you can be assured that a wider programme of boosters will be announced in the coming weeks.
But the vaccine certificate, as currently constituted, makes no provision for booster shots. Therefore, you can logically expect that to change. Those who warned that the vaccine certificates would be extended to cover booster shots will almost certainly be proved correct, and those who denied it will be proved to be incorrect, because there is no other logical endpoint to the system which the Government has enacted: If vaccine immunity is waning, and vaccines are the answer, and vaccine certificates are necessary, then it follows logically that somebody who refuses to take a booster is no better than somebody who refused to take a vaccine to begin with.
One of the great stories of this pandemic has been how, persistently, critics of lockdown and Government policy have been able to predict the natural endpoint of Government policy far more accurately than the Government themselves. In the space of six months, Government policy has gone from “vaccine certificates are an imposition on civil liberties” to “vaccine certificates are a necessary short term imposition” to “vaccine certificates must be extended” to “I will take a personal interest in enforcing vaccine certificates”. Very shortly it will progress to “vaccine certificates are now booster certificates”. And in time, “second booster certificates”.
And, all the time, this policy is based on absolutely zero evidence that it works or accomplishes anything in terms of the reduction of case numbers.
Wouldn’t it be better for everybody if the Taoiseach took a personal interest in expanding the capacity of the health service? Because if he continues to rely on this, failed, approach, then he is going to be needing that expanded capacity for many winters to come.
But of course, that would require Governing.