It is not hard to feel sympathy for the organisers of the Dublin Marathon. Speaking to Kieran Cuddihy on Newstalk’s Hard Shoulder last evening (an item in which yours truly also featured), lead organiser Jim Aughney said that the cancellation was not because the organisers lacked faith in the vaccine programme, or personally believed in Covid caution, but simply because they could not guarantee that the event would be allowed to legally proceed. Investing masses of time and effort and money in organising the event made no sense, he basically argued, when a decree from NPHET could cancel it the week before it was due to take place. Far better to cut his losses, cancel it now, and give everybody a bit of depressing certainty.
There is no arguing with his logic. He spoke, he said, to the HSE and other stakeholders, and they were unable to tell him that the event would be legally allowed to take place. In those circumstances, how could they possibly plan to hold it?
The blame here rests fully with a political establishment which has embraced hysteria. By October, according to the Government’s own projections, every Irish person who wants to be vaccinated will have been vaccinated. According to the most recent polling on the question, that is about 90% of Irish adults. Unless the vaccines are completely useless, Ireland will have herd immunity from Covid by the time this event was due to take place.
The evidence, internationally, is that the vaccines are not useless. Even the most pessimistic recent data – a study from Israel showing that the Pfizer jab is 64% effective against the Delta variant (which means it reduces cases by 64% compared to an unvaccinated population) – shows a vaccine that is working to reduce cases and deaths. In the UK, deaths from the Delta Variant are one thirteenth what they were the last time cases were this high.
Even if we leave the vaccines to one side – pretend for a second that not a single Irish person is vaccinated – we have the Irish Government’s own data showing that less than one per cent of all covid cases were contracted in an outdoor setting. The marathon is an outdoor event. Not only will it be safe after vaccination, but there is a fair chance that it was always safe to begin with.
There is not another country in the world – not one – cancelling major outdoor events like this so far in advance.
In fact, next week, the UK will hold the British Grand Prix, which will be the largest outdoor event since Covid arrived on British shores. 140,000 people are scheduled to attend Silverstone on each of the three days.
Speaking on that Newstalk show last night, the presenter, Kieran Cuddihy, made an apt observation: He noted that it was worth questioning whether Ireland had moved from “protecting the vulnerable” to “protecting the fearful”. He did not answer his own question, but the answer is clear: That is exactly what has happened.
A person who is upset that the Dublin Marathon was cancelled, and was training for it, has other options. In October, they can run marathons in Belfast, or Copenhagen, or Amsterdam, or Athens, or one of a multitude of cities. Those countries are facing the exact same global covid situation as Ireland – hardly any of them, by the way, could be considered anti-lockdown extreme cases. Still and all, they are confident enough in their own vaccination and public health campaigns to plan to allow their marathons (and many other events) to proceed. Ireland alone is gripped by this hysteria. If it will not be safe to run the Dublin Marathon this autumn, when everybody is vaccinated, then we now face an existential question: When can it ever be safe?
The “conspiracy theorists” who said that lockdown could end up becoming permanent look a lot less crazy today, at least in Ireland.