The man who became so synonymous with public health advice during the pandemic that he famously claimed attacks directed at him were attacks on science itself, Dr Anthony Fauci has been hoovering up awards in Ireland this week for his contributions to the Covid response and more.
As is typical of prominent American visitors to our shores, Dr Fauci has received little but praise alongside the awards he was invited over for. The Royal College of Physicians of Ireland acknowledged his “outstanding” contribution to public health with its prestigious Stearne medal, which was followed by a Fulbright Ireland Public Service Award and an honorary fellowship from the UCD School of Medicine.
Despite the awards weighing his pockets down, Dr Fauci must have felt as light as a feather this week as a result of the warm words politicians and members of the media had for him.
Congratulating Dr Fauci on winning the Stearne medal, Tánaiste Micheál Martin said that his “commitment to evidence-based decision making and speaking truth to power had an impact far beyond the US”.
“It helped shape public health policy around the globe, and save countless lives,” the Tánaiste wrote on X. Meanwhile, an article in the Irish Independent described him as “the calm voice of reason during daily White House briefings with Donal Trump during the height of the pandemic”.
Congratulations Dr. Anthony Fauci on winning the Stearne Medal.
Your commitment to evidence-based decision making and speaking truth to power had an impact far beyond the U.S.
It helped shape public health policy around the globe, and save countless lives.@RCPI_news pic.twitter.com/HMbCDFTx6J
— Micheál Martin (@MichealMartinTD) April 17, 2024
I was taken aback, however, as I browsed the articles that appeared following a google of Dr Fauci’s name, by the difference in tone American articles struck about their former chief medical advisor.
Whereas Irish outlets noted the awards he was set to receive for his scientific life and employed only positive headlines, American outlets were less quick to give compliment.
“Mystery as more Fauci emails surface and raise questions about his links to Covid lab leak – after he was accused of secretly conspiring with the CIA,” read one headline, while another stated, “Four years on, Covid damage remains while Fauci & Co. pay no price”.
I’m not in a position to attest to the veracity of those claims (undoubtedly many of our readers have views on the matters), but what struck me was the mainstream scepticism – inquisition, even – in American media of those at the helm of their nation’s pandemic response. Meanwhile, as we parade Dr Fauci around on our shoulders and old friends rematerialise out of the academic ether to greet him with a triumphant smile (Dr Tony Holohan), our Covid inquiry has once again slipped out to the peripheries.
It was a pleasure to meet @DrTonyFauciMD today, to welcome him to @ucddublin
and to share our experiences of the COVID-19 pandemic. pic.twitter.com/jq6KpCdUyV— Dr Tony Holohan (@DrTonyHolohan) April 18, 2024
The last we heard of that was from Taoiseach Simon Harris at the recent Fine Gael Ard Fheis, where he said that a memo on the terms of reference for the inquiry is “almost ready” to be brought to cabinet. Mr Harris, who lest we forget was minister for health at the start of the pandemic, said that the inquiry would be “really important”.
That vaguest of timelines – “almost ready” – coupled with the limited time this Government has remaining doesn’t make me optimistic that we’re going to see any significant movement on our inquiry anytime soon, especially when the last thing they’ll want ahead of a general election will be to remind the public of their failures during one of the country’s most difficult trials. No doubt it was an extremely difficult time to be in office – no matter what way you turned you were going to make a significant number of people angry or scared to death, but the principle remains: an inquiry ought to dredge up failings, and that’s undesirable from the Government’s perspective.
But perhaps they wouldn’t have to worry about that – then-Taoiseach Leo Varadkar said in January that whatever form the inquiry eventually took, it would take a “no-blame approach” to proceedings.
Now, while Mr Varadkar’s word is no longer binding due to his rapid exit from political stage left, he isn’t the only person of consequence to think this way.
Tanaiste Micheal Martin said following the British approach of an “adversarial legal inquiry” wouldn’t be of benefit to Irish society: “I’ve always made the point that if you go in with this sort of interrogatory approach, the next pandemic or the next major crisis you’ll have everybody looking over their shoulders in terms of ‘how would this look in the context of a future inquiry if I behave this way or that way’.
Meanwhile, Philip Nolan, of NPHET modelling advisory group fame, agreed that the UK model was one to be avoided. Instead, he advocated for an “open, honest conversation about what went well and what could we learn”.
This is despite the fact that many in Government apparently acknowledged the negative effects of lockdown as a response to a pandemic, with Mr Varadkar saying in January of this year that those ill effects were “not just on people’s jobs and businesses but also delayed and deferred diagnoses… which did happen. In housing construction we lost thousands of houses because of the housing construction lockdown”.
Despite the softly, softly approach the political and medical establishment prefer, and despite the fact that a significant proportion of Irish society looks back relatively favourably on the way Ireland’s pandemic response was conducted (according to past polls, anyway), these negative elements cannot be ignored.
As of March 2023, nearly two-thirds (64%) of the public thought pandemic restrictions in 2020 and 2021 were continuing to impact on the education, emotional well-being and development of children.
An astonishing 39% of people surveyed in the same poll said that they socialise less than they did before the pandemic, while 20% said their mental health had deteriorated.
Around the same time, ex-NPHET member, Professor Martin Cormican came forward with strong words of criticism for the way the pandemic response was handled. He said that the decision to implement a complete ban on nursing home visits “was never a humane thing to do”.
He said NPHET depended “too much on fear” to influence the public’s behaviour and was influenced by “vested interests”. As well as this, he criticised restrictions such as the long-term closure of schools, social distancing and the mask mandate, among other things.
The list of accusations you could level at lockdowns is potentially endless, not least among them the excess deaths Ireland has suffered since the pandemic’s end. Eurostat noted that in February of this year, among the 12 EU countries that recorded excess deaths, the highest rates were observed in the Netherlands (12.5 %), Ireland (9.4 %), Slovenia (7.9 %), Austria (6.6 %), and Luxembourg (4.7 %).
It’s likely that there will never be a final word said, in any country, on what the correct approach to the pandemic response was, but there is plenty of evidence to suggest that the way we handled it was far from victimless. Perhaps our time would be better spent out from under Dr Fauci’s intoxicating light, where we can apply ourselves to sober consideration of whether the experts deserve awards at all.