A regular mistake made, since the beginning of the covid pandemic, by those of us who broadly oppose things like restrictions on business and movement, mandatory vaccines, and so forth, has been to consistently adopt a position which minimises the risks of Covid. Or perhaps more pertinently, to focus on the individual, as opposed to collective, risks of covid.
It is true, after all, that the chances of any one person dying from, or ending up seriously ill as a result of, covid, are very small. Because of this, some of us are inclined towards the view that “Covid is just a bad flu”, and “it’s insane to shutter society for a virus with a 0.2% fatality rate”. Those are valid positions, but they often fail to take account of the collective impact a properly bad wave can have.
If, for example, NPHET’s most pessimistic projection for December were to occur – that projection was about 800,000 cases in Ireland in one month – then a 0.2% fatality rate would work out at almost 1,500 deaths in a single month, and maybe 10-20,000 hospitalisations. In that scenario, very few health services in the world could expect to cope, and restrictions on movement, and so on, would actually be perfectly justified.
The problem, of course, is that NPHET have consistently made such pessimistic predictions and projections, and none of them have yet come to pass.
Over the summer, when neighbouring countries like the UK opened up fully, abandoning all restrictions – even mandatory masks – NPHET insisted that Ireland maintain restrictions, projecting an absurd number of cases in the Autumn. Those cases did not materialise, either in Ireland with restrictions, or in the UK, without.
The cost was that Irish people spent the summer in constant fear of a covid wave that did not materialise.
NPHET were not alone, either. Their fellow travellers in the media, and the zero covid movement have called for the maximum possible level restriction at every opportunity, and at every situation. To listen to them in 2021, you would believe that disaster is forever around the corner.
This pattern has been repeated this winter: Once again, NPHET projected an astonishing number of cases – 400,000 in the optimistic scenario, twice that in the pessimistic – and nothing close to those projections have come to pass. Because of those projections, restrictions have been enhanced, nightclubs have been closed, booster vaccines have been rolled out, and there is talk now of closing schools because of the danger of Omicron.
It should not be a surprise that a substantial chunk of Irish people – maybe 10%, maybe 20, or 30% – are simply no longer listening.
When NPHET says, as it did yesterday, that cases in Ireland could hit 20 or 30 thousand per day in January, due to Omicron, a good chunk of us who have been paying attention just roll our eyes and no longer react with any real concern. We are, in short, predictioned-out.
The problem for us all, though, is that it remains entirely possible that about Omicron, NPHET is right. Or, at least, right enough that the variant will actually pose a real threat to life and health by overwhelming the health system. Some of us have been trained to discount their predictions, with good reason, but the thing about always predicting doom is that at some point you will be right by pure dumb luck, and people won’t be listening. There’s even a children’s fable about it. Something about a young shepherd, and a wolf.
In this situation, how should, or can, Government react?
The first port of call should be the international evidence, from South Africa, and elsewhere. And the lesson of that evidence is, unambiguously, not to panic. There is no case, anywhere on earth, of Omicron overwhelming a health service. That is a statement of fact.
The second thing should be to make a commitment to maintain normal life as much as possible, for as long as possible. The default reaction cannot be to shut things down just in case. Which is what it appears to be at the moment.
The third thing should be to learn the lessons of the present. There is no good case for Ireland being under severe restrictons because 100 people are ill in hospital and there are 4,000 cases of covid per day. There should be a clear, and communicated, danger threshold: We will advance further restrictions if the number of people in ICU crosses this threshold, or the number of daily cases reach X level for three days in a row.
At the moment, case and ICU numbers are meaningless, and seem to have no impact at all on the policy of the state.
That is because the state has been at the mercy of those who have spent this whole year crying wolf. Many of us are no longer listening to them, and have lost faith in their policy.
That is not our fault. It is theirs.