Chief medical officer Dr Tony Holohan has advised that due to the recent rise in cases of Covid among five to 11-year-olds, that ‘discretionary’ social contacts in this age group should be avoided.
“In a very short period of time, we have seen a significant and rapid deterioration in the epidemiological situation, in the as-yet-unvaccinated five to 11-year-olds. This has resulted in a sharp increase in incidence in this age group,” Dr Holohan said.
Incidentally, school children in this age group mix with hundreds of peers daily. It isn’t clear what impact avoiding additional discretionary contacts is supposed to have. It won’t have any.
Rather than looking at the ‘significant and rapid’ change in the epidemiological situation as a ‘deterioration’, Ireland may be better off looking to the United Kingdom for how to manage – or not – the situation.
Only a short few weeks ago in Ireland, there was a repeat of the twitching curtains looking toward the United Kingdom as cases rose quickly. The idea that covid was running out of control – that the UK was taking part in an irresponsible experiment – was repeated in the same manner that Sweden was accused in 2020.
But the UK has made a decision that the covid pandemic is no longer an emergency. They are learning to live with it. And to live. Although they may be temporarily losing their nerve as they await to find out the factuality of the omicron variant – its lethality, its transmissivity – the general approach has been the polar opposite of that here in Ireland.
While the new variant has increased the paroxysms from just about every angle in Ireland, hyperventilating about unknown worst-case scenarios as if they are the only and most likely case, the United Kingdom has decided that there is a need to get back to a sense of normality.
So, last week, you could fly to the UK from Ireland without needing any form of covid documentation. You could not go in the opposite direction under the same conditions. And this even though the case rate in Ireland over the last seven days is almost 50% more than in the United Kingdom. According to statistica, the UK has had 453 cases per 100,000 population in the last seven days. In Ireland it has been 630. It makes no sense to be screening coming from the UK where there is a lower likelihood of contracting covid.
This is worth repeating. Ireland has 630 cases per 100,000 people over seven days compared to 453 in the United Kingdom.
At the moment, the UK is the control case for Ireland and the rest of Europe. Why are cases higher, and rising in places where the restrictions are much more stringent?
Why is it that in the England, where there is a population density of approximately 6 times that of Ireland, cases are lower and dropping? The theory behind social distancing and restrictions in relation to the spread of covid is turned on its head. If any modelling of social interaction actually worked, then cases in England relative to Ireland would reflect this.
Considering the population density differentials, any model of ‘discretionary’ social contact will be exponentially higher in the United Kingdom. Factor in the lack of restrictions and you can multiply the interactions by another unknown number. Factor in that 5 million people attend sports games every weekend in the UK and you would expect that the country would be a veritable petri-dish. But it isn’t.
A further consideration is that Ireland has a higher (double) vaccination rate than the United Kingdom. Sky News reports on our situation:
“Waterford, in south-eastern Ireland, epitomises the country’s coronavirus conundrum. Why is there a surge in COVID-19 cases in a nation where around 92% of all adults are fully vaccinated?
“A massive 99.5% of adults over the age of 18 in Co Waterford are double-jabbed. That’s thought to be one of the highest rates of any region anywhere in the world.”
Anywhere in the world. Yet, contrary to all models and expert ideas, Waterford has one of the highest cases of any region anywhere in the world.
As John McGuirk highlighted, there is little interest in anything other than catastrophising about the situation in Ireland. Very few are willing to put their neck on the line to say ‘Calm down, it’ll be grand’ because they know their head will be quickly lopped off. If you are wrong you will be called a granny-killer as if there are no consequences (in terms of lives and livelihoods lost) for taking the uber-cautious approach. If you are right, you will never know because ‘the restrictions’ will be wot done it.
Covid modelling is unfalsifiable unless we are willing to look at England and compare them with ourselves – but we only look to our neighbours when it looks like we will be in a position to point and laugh, or to take some perceived moral high ground. ‘They are so reckless. We are so responsible’ is how it usually goes.
When the UK – and their current laissez faire strategy – is achieving good results, and calling Ireland’s apoplectic reactivity into question, you would be hard pressed to hear that in Ireland. A large number of people still think that covid cases in the UK are spiralling and the situation in Ireland is vastly better.
The UK has 45,000 cases per day. Ireland only has 5,000. We are doing much better. Until the figures are put into context. The modelling that the government is relying on is unfalsifiable but also at this stage, been proven completely unreliable and dangerously misleading.
I wrote in March 2020, right at the start of all this, when we were told restrictions would be in place for a number of weeks to ‘flatten’ the curve, that we were not getting to zero covid any time soon, and the current governments plan seems to be wanting to drag this out as long as possible. I wrote in August 202o that we were on a hamster wheel of failure. It feels like nothing has changed over a year later. If anything, the management has deteriorated. Aside from the failure to increase the ICU capacity, the government and NPHET seem to be able to look beyond their narrow view of the pandemic: restrict, restrict, restrict. Across the water in the United Kingdom, Boris Johnson, despite how he will be portrayed in The Guardian or across the media in Ireland, is staying the course (for now):
“We don’t want people to cancel such events. We think that overwhelmingly the best thing for kids is to be in school, as I’ve said many times throughout this pandemic.”
At the very least, our governors and those advising them should explain to us why they think the UK is wrong even though it is getting the right results, and why we are not following their lead.
Maybe the theory or the science is not able to explain why the UK is not experiencing an explosion of cases, and an explosion of deaths. Does that matter? Theory is only as strong as it holds up in practice and covid theory does not.
The theory and the modelling around Covid have failed – and failed repeatedly – and it is time to start a serious conversation about ripping up the whole narrative that has been sold around masks (the evidence still isn’t there), around social distancing and social restrictions, and look afresh.
We have moved from the advice being 15 mins within 2 metres of someone in an enclosed space as the important factor and maybe it is time to revisit that practical advice for individuals to police themselves. Maybe the government should do what it is paid to do and look after the health service and put those ICU beds in place, instead of expending all its time, energy and money, trying to control its citizens, trying to foster petty grievances, creating division, calling the unvaccinated troublesome – all those things it has no place doing.
In Ireland, it seems there is no trust among each other to police ourselves, to behave responsibly, and increasingly, we are infantilising society, by requiring and encouraging the government to act in loco parentis. The refrain that the government needs to regulate everyday social interaction is all too common and apparently now completely self-defeating.
As we approach Christmas once again, Ireland is transfixed by ‘case numbers’ and when it is suitable, the number of people in ICU is brought into the conversation, but there is little, if any talk about fatalities anymore. There are whispers about the twenty-fold reduction in ICU admissions since last year from Covid, there are whispers of a need to spare children from the nonsense that is being proposed, but as Charles Mackay wrote in ‘Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds’
“Men, it has been well said, think in herds; it will be seen that they go mad in herds, while they only recover their senses slowly, and one by one”.
It is time to start recovering some sense otherwise this madness will repeat in Christmas 2022. We are no longer hostages to nature (or however the virus came about) if we choose not to be.
Dualta Roughneen hails from Mayo, and writes from Dublin.