Hopes of an honest inquiry into the surreal fiasco that was Covid-19 have been severely dampened with Taoiseach Simon Harris’s confirmation that the government will be pursuing an “evaluation” into the handling of the crisis, rather than setting up a statutory inquiry.
Harris claimed that such an approach will “get to the bottom” of our nation’s response to Covid, and that it will provide answers more than four years on from the beginning of crippling lockdowns which have left a legacy of harm across our towns and cities.
An early indicator that the process will not be the long overdue exposure many of us have hoped for: we now know that the ‘inquiry,’ to use that term loosely, will more than likely be handled behind closed doors. The public will also be forced to wait 12 to 18 months for a final report to emerge detailing what the government got wrong.
The public is deserving of all the facts, yet most of those who were platformed and pedestalled like Gods, rolled out on the national airwaves with hourly decrees, will not in fact be obliged to attend the inquiry. Some of the principal decison makers, like Dr Tony Holohan and former HSE chief Paul Reid have said they will attend but it will be behind closed doors.
The fact that the process is to be designed in such a way, so as to guard those most responsible from public scrutiny, is the opposite of achieving transparency and genuine public scrutiny. It’s an insult to those who suffered and lost loved ones.
Why should we be annoyed? Well, for a start, four years down the line, we know that a very large amount of what we were told, as the public, by then-Chief Medical Officer, Tony Holohan, was quite quickly proven to be false. We were told to ‘trust the experts’ when those so-called medical experts flip-flopped on the guidance. First, it was don’t wear masks – then it was do wear masks.
Don’t vaccinate pregnant women and children, do vaccinate pregnant women and children. Antigen tests went from being regarded as some sort of scam to being made mandatory. And don’t get me started on vaccines – we went from being ordered to take two doses, to three doses, and then four.
The Irish public were sold a package of solutions as the silver bullet which turned out, in many instances, to be a flop. Contrary to the guidance at the time, masks, for instance, were never of use for the majority of people. They did not stop Covid, with a number of studies since confirming their uselessness. Instead, I would argue, they did real damage, merely on a psychological basis alone.
Lockdowns didn’t stop the virus either – we now know that they impacted negatively on the economy, and were actually associated with slightly higher rates of excess deaths.
How many lives did lockdowns cost through loneliness, poverty, delays in seeking healthcare under the order to ‘stay home, save lives’? I guess we’ll never know.
As someone who did not take a Covid vaccine, in part because of the overt coercion labelled against people, vaccine certs were the most damaging part of the whole thing. I clearly recall a group of us trying to organise Christmas drinks, but reluctantly coming to the conclusion that we would be better to not go out to celebrate the festivities at all – because every bar or restaurant in the country demanded that guests be vaccinated. If you weren’t, you had to sit outside in the cold (literally) like a leper.
You couldn’t get as much as a cup of coffee or a sandwich at a petrol station if you were not vaccinated. Nursing students who refused a Covid vaccine were banned from taking up clinical placements with the HSE. That was a government enforced approach which promoted widespread division and segregation – and now those of us who deserve some sort of an explanation, a rationale, hear that nobody at the top can be held to account. The government wants to cover its tracks, and it is profoundly unfair that it is allowed to do so.
To have articulated any of these views at the time would have been a sure way of ending up in trouble. So many of us pursed our lips and went along with the State-enforced delirium, with basic truths remaining unsayable in most polite circles. But now we know that the ‘conspiracy theorists’ on the fringes were often right about the devastating effects to education and economy and healthcare, while the mainstream were often wrong.
And what about the families who lost loved ones, and were deprived the chance of saying goodbye? The heavy restrictions that meant so many older people died in nursing homes and hospitals, alone, robbed of the comforting presence of their loved ones? Not only were the restrictions enforced by our leaders bordering on authoritarian, they were often downright cruel and lacking in humanity.
Families were unable to grieve properly because only a handful of people could legally attend funerals. Toddlers and school children missed pivotal developmental moments with the shuttering of childcare and education, and we know so many have fallen behind.
There is also the issue of excess deaths. Suffice to say nobody in the mainstream media or on the government benches wants to touch that – because it’s a fact that excess deaths are higher now than they were before the pandemic. What about the people who have died due to delayed screening, cancer care and treatment?
The public who have suffered so much deserve, at a bare minimum, answers. No matter how ugly those answers may be. A white-washed, token inquiry would be the height of injustice.