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Results from the Children’s School Lives study show that “Irish children became less accomplished in reading and mathematics after the pandemic, with the gap between poor and affluent children widening even further than before”.
That result can be added to a slew of other studies which show the real harm caused by the Covid lockdowns, including these recently reported findings where 4-year olds are showing “significantly more executive-function difficulties than would typically be expected, particularly in skills related to working memory, planning, organization, and self-control.”
It’s a dismal enough picture, yet such news is now typically greeted with a shrug, especially by the establishment whose controlling and excessive lockdowns led to so much harm.
Ireland is not even having a Covid inquiry – an actual investigation that might compel witnesses or point the finger at those powerful figures in charge who led by fear in an unprecedented lockdown of society. Instead we are having a lame-duck evaluation which will avoid a supposed “blame-game” or “politics” – or even being a platform for bereaved families to seek justice. Useless, in other words, so what’s the point? Clearly, the political establishment and their media allies simply want everyone to move on – until next time perhaps.
Yet, in sharp contrast, the Irish Medical Council seems relentless in pursuing a small handful of doctors who disagreed with the State’s approach to what my colleague Matt Treacy describes as the Great Covid Panic.
Today, Limerick practitioner, Dr Pat Morrissey, is the latest medic to be dragged before the Medical Council in what increasingly feels like a vendetta against dissenters. As was the case with Dr Marcus de Brun, some of the charges he is being asked to answer are in relation to posts he made on social media alleged to be ‘inappropriate’ and which may have ‘undermined’ public health guidelines.
(Journalist Louise Rosingrave has covered all of the cases comprehensively on her substack for readers who want more detail, its well worth a read.)
Doesn’t it seem a little bizarre that doctors who differed from Nphet’s view are being pursued and punished (because the process is absolutely part of the punishment) when no-one is being called to account for the very many mistakes and false statements made by the public authorities during Covid?
THE REAL SCANDAL: NURSING HOMES
In 2020, when the world first decided Covid-19 was a global emergency, nursing homes across Ireland moved quickly to restrict visitors, since elderly people are generally considered more vulnerable than the general population. By March 6th, Nursing Homes Ireland had issued a general restriction banning all non-essential visiting for care homes nationwide.
But four days later, on March 10th, the Department of Health ordered that those visiting restrictions be lifted even though other countries such as South Korea had already been reporting clusters of Covid-19 in care homes by February 24th.
The error remains utterly inexplicable. In fact, in a bewildering turn of events, Nursing Homes Ireland were criticised publicly by the Department for moving too fast – and then nursing homes remained open at a time when parades and schools were being shut down.
Having made such a devastatingly bad call, the Department of Health then compounded the error by advising healthcare workers in care homes that they didn’t need to wear PPE. They were working with the most vulnerable people in the country in relation to an infectious disease that had locked down the world, and they were told they didn’t need to wear protective clothing. Naturally, the clusters of Covid-19 in nursing homes exploded.
The care homes weren’t being supplied with any PPE in any event. In a survey published by Nursing Homes Ireland in the first week in April 2020, just one-quarter of care homes reported having a sufficient supply of PPE.
One of the very few medical professionals who spoke up publicly at this time was the afore-mentioned Dr Marcus de Brun who was then a member of the Irish Medical Council, Here’s how the Irish Independent reported it at the time:
A prominent Dublin doctor has resigned from a medical board over the Government’s handling of the coronavirus crisis in nursing homes.
Nursing homes are now the frontline of the battle against the virus. Almost two-thirds of the deaths from the virus are residents of long-stay centres.
Dr Marcus de Brun has described the management of the crisis as “the biggest political blunder in the history of the Irish State”.
The GP has run the Rush Family Practice in Co Dublin since 2010. He is a graduate of Trinity College Dublin and a member of the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland. He also holds a degree in microbiology.
The doctor was appointed by Health Minister Simon Harris to the board of the Medical Council two years ago after being nominated by GPs for the role. He has now resigned from the board in protest at the lack of focus on nursing homes.
In a lengthy article, largely ignored by the media, Dr de Brun wrote: “it remains an evolving tragedy that these vulnerable people were not considered as the first priority for the state, rather than being the last to be considered.”
He also, at that early stage, noted that while the enormous variability in morbidity/ mortality data between countries and individuals in relation to Covid-19, “certain risk factors have been almost universally agreed upon”, namely age and the presence or absence of underlying health issues.
And he added: “It is very likely that the many deaths presently being reported as ‘deaths from Covid-19’, would more correctly or more reasonably be described as deaths associated with Covid-19”, further explaining that this was an important clinical distinction.
We now know that in those first few months of the Covid period, nursing home residents accounted for over half of all coronavirus-associated deaths in the country – and ultimately almost 30% of all deaths with Covid occurred in these homes. Yet no-one is answerable, except Marcus de Brun who tried to protect elderly patients?
Those early observations by Dr de Brun were exactly the insight that should have directed the State’s response to what did indeed become an unreasonable and authoritarian Covid Panic, with dire consequences for education, businesses, mental health outcomes, and a host of other negative outcomes that are now a mound under the carpet being steadfastly ignored by the media and political establishment.
CULTURE OF FEAR
But de Brun was ignored: and is now being pursued for making public utterances and opposing Nphet who became almost all-powerful and beyond question – an advantage that should not be bestowed on any public body, any more than it should be acceptable to come out with nonsense like ‘the science is settled’.
‘The science’ should always be questioned – and questioning. That’s how progress is made. Isn’t it true that, on balance, de Brun helped rather than hindered public health by calling attention to the nursing homes – in fact, if he was listened to thousands of lives may have been saved? And how can that now be outweighed by some tweets.
In any case, as we all know, Ireland’s absurdly long and harmful lockdowns ignored de Brun’s key point. What can only be described as a culture of fear emerged, with daily cases numbers (a pretty meaningless piece of data when hospitalisation and deaths were what mattered) rates being intoned on the airwaves like Dylan Thomas’s Mrs. Prothero ‘announcing ruin like a town crier in Pompeii’.
We forget, I think, how thoroughly insane the Covid Panic was. Perhaps we want to forget. Gardaí were sent to beat young people having a drink in the sunshine off the streets – though no such viciousness was shown to a BLM march which flouted lockdown rules . People died alone without their families: a harrowing and almost unforgivable outcome of mass hysteria. The harm caused to children and teenagers is long-lasting. Many small businesses closed. never to re-open.
The absolutism from the top-down led to a culture of compliance and fear amongst medical professionals – the kind of unquestioning obedience which surely should be anathema to scientific inquiry where no assertion should be above question or challenge. That should have been unacceptable – if the evidence is robust it should speak for itself rather than enforcing a culture of silence and bullying to question dissent.
A member of Nphet, Prof Martin Cormican, later spoke out to say that the measures imposed during Covid excessively limited basic freedoms and relied to much on fear – saying that many of the foundations of rational infection prevention and control were undermined.
But Nphet became all-powerful, to challenge their edicts almost a blasphemy. Heretics would be punished. And now we are seeing, again, that they are.
“THE DESTRUCTION OF NAMES OF GOOD PEOPLE
One of the other doctors dragged before the IMC along with Drs Morrissey and de Brun and Dr Billy Ralph is Dr Michael McConville who is also accused of professional misconduct because of “19 alleged tweets and one retweet by him on Twitter (now X)”.
The retired Cavan GP declared the case was designed “to target lawful free speech”, said he had “no case to answer”, accused the Medical Council of cynically engaging in “the destruction of names of good people” – and then left the inquiry saying he had “a bus to catch”
He also said that his fundamental right to free expression could not be turned into a charge of misconduct – and said the supposed misconduct with which he is accused, undermining public health guidelines, was created entirely for one purpose – to produce “a chilling effect on free speech”.
It should never be the case that any doctor is forced to comply with guidelines that they, in good conscious, believe are causing harm to their patients. I don’t share the concerns expressed by many of the doctors now being dragged before the IMC regarding the Covid vaccines, for example. But it should be right of every medical practitioner to question a public policy if they have genuine concerns.
Debate and inquiry should decide these matters, not a chilling crackdown on dissent. Yet the Covid ‘evaluation’ will limp on, holding no-one to account, while doctors who questioned the system are being punished. That seems grossly unfair.
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