Many people, by now, have likely blacked out the worst memories of Ireland’s covid lockdowns, and thankfully forgotten phrases like “ISAG” and “Zero Covid”. It might therefore be useful to refresh your memories.
ISAG – the independent scientific advisory group – was a self-appointed collection of people from the scientific world, mainly though not exclusively drawn from the ranks of Trinity College Dublin. Amongst its numbers was one Dr. Aoife McLysaght, pictured above, who was one of the most prominent spokespeople for the group.
ISAG was the country’s greatest advocacy group for a policy that it termed “Zero Covid” – in essence the idea that the country and the world should remain in lockdown until SARS-Covid-19 had become extinct or functionally extinct. In Ireland, the group persistently argued for a “10 cases” test before re-opening the country, i.e. that there should be a maximum of 10 detected cases in Ireland on a single day, on average, before any re-opening might take place. To put this in context, as you are reading this, on October 11th 2024, the Irish Health Service records 153 people in hospital in Ireland with covid symptoms. For better or worse, we are living with the virus.
On that subject, on Saturday August 28th, 2021, Dr. McLysaght took to the pages of the Irish Times to argue that the idea that people could “live with the virus” was “dangerous wishful thinking”. She argued, in that piece, that schools should not re-open without mandatory facemask wearing for children – including the very youngest children – that would remain in place until covid-19 had been eliminated.
In May of that same year, she wrote for the Irish Times that the hospitality sector should not re-open. She said that to open bars and restaurants, even on a limited basis, would be to “invite disaster”. She said that instead, businesses should remain closed until 80% vaccine uptake had been achieved, because that would deliver “herd immunity”.
In January of 2021, she was the face of the rollout of the zero covid plan, which would have seen Ireland seal its borders shut entirely, and demanded that Northern Ireland join the Republic in a one-island approach to achieving the same. This section of the contemporary Irish Times report, for example, is particularly instructive because of the rebuke McLysaght’s idea received from none other than our current Tánaiste:
ISAG is calling for a public health strategy that would seek to eliminate community transmission of the coronavirus on the island of Ireland. Cases must get to below 10 per day at which point they must be aggressively pursued “like a murder” with swift contact tracing and testing, the group says. The scientists and academics point to countries such as New Zealand, Australia, and South Korea where citizens are now going about their daily lives with very few restrictions.
Announcing on Tuesday an extension of the Level 5 lockdown to March 5th, Taoiseach Micheál Martin said a Zero Covid approach is not “possible or sustainable”.
Of course, having called for “Zero covid until herd immunity had been achieved”, ISAG and McLysaght changed their views once the vaccines had arrived on the scene – and instead argued for what they called a “vaccines plus” strategy. It may not surprise you to learn at this juncture that the “plus” here involved more restrictions on the public: Mandatory masking, vaccine passports for “any setting where people are expected to spend a considerable amount of time”, and so on. There was again a complaint that the Government was not mandatory masking primary school children.
In essence, the ISAG position throughout the pandemic was that any lifting of restrictions, in any time or any place, would lead to disaster. The group – and McLysaght – opposed or criticised every single move to liberalise the restrictions, arguing in each case that it was premature. They said, consistently, that the country could not “live with covid” or “allow it to become endemic”.
Of course, the country has subsequently chosen to live with covid and allow it to become endemic. The consequences have not been disastrous.
All of this is relevant because, as Ben reported yesterday, Dr. McLysaght has just been appointed chief scientific advisor to the Government.
As Ben noted, Dr. McLysaght’s views on covid-19 are not the only reasons that one might question her appointment to such an exalted role: She, as a scientist, is convinced that human beings can switch their gender from male to female and vice versa, which most people would consider to be a questionable scientific proposition.
One might have thought that a prominent requirement for the post of Chief Scientific Advisor to the government would be a track record of giving the Government good advice. In Dr. McLysaght’s case, that does not appear to be a record she possesses, based on the public record.
Of course, being consistently wrong in Ireland is not necessarily a barrier to upward career mobility – it is at least arguable that it is more important in the public sector to have views that are politically correct, rather than scientifically correct. And on that front, Dr. McLysaght is exceptionally well qualified.
As Trinity News gushed, for example, “Feminism in different guises is rooted within Aoife’s story.” She was, naturally, a committed repeal the 8th campaigner, travelling around the country as part of the 2018 feminist revolution:
A cursory examination of her twitter account finds views on Donald Trump, Brexit, the Tory Party, Gaza, and just about any other topic of relevance in recent years which would fit entirely comfortably within the mainstream conventional wisdom of establishment Ireland. If her record on Covid was even moderately defensible, she’d be the whole package.
But of course, her record on covid is not defensible: Had it been left up to the Government’s new chief scientific advisor, we know as a matter of record that Irish businesses would have been stifled longer, Irish children would have been masked, our borders would have been shut (with all the attendant economic chaos), and that we may well still have been in lockdown.
Zero Covid did not work, anywhere it was tried. The Government was smart enough to realise it was a stupid idea then, but it’s dumb enough to appoint one of the chief proponents of the idea today. It’s a disgraceful appointment.