Let politicos just talk — doctor knows best

The medicalocracy is doing a far better job than democracy in these uncertain times, writes Liam Collins

SO what is the great haste about getting a new government? The commentariat are tearing their hair out in despair that, as we slip perilously closer to an epidemic nobody really understands, there isn’t a government in session shouting insults and jeering at each other across the floor of Leinster House, trying to apportion blame to their political opponents or shamelessly grandstanding to get their names mentioned on the Six One news.

Does anybody out there, apart from politicians and political journalists, believe that, just by selecting any one of many odd permutations to become our rulers, the coronavirus will miraculously retreat back across the Irish Sea as the snakes did for St Patrick?

The truth is that we’re better off without a government in this crisis.

The medicalocracy is doing a far better job than a democracy in these dangerous and uncertain times.

Just reflect on the last Dail and the nonsense that got most attention.

Wouldn’t you rather listen to Dr Tony Holohan, the Chief Medical Officer who none of us had ever heard of, calmly talking good sense? Up North, Dr Michael McBride performs the same task without raising his voice or having to deny that he is, in fact, a doctor.

Suddenly it feels comforting that the people running the country are the National Public Health Emergency Team, a bunch of people we’ve never needed to know before the onset of this recent plague.

We know that the head of the Viral Reference Laboratory or the professor of bacteriology actually know what they are talking about and are not going on late-night radio programmes shouting at each other in order to drum up a few votes in Ballymagash and get the nutters on social media all stirred up before going to bed.

Let’s face it, it is usually the government which gets us into trouble, and then we have to hope that there is some rising political star who will find a way of bleeding the compliant taxpayers to get out of it. Or in the case of the Great Crash of recent years that odd-looking bunch called the Troika who ironed it out for us.

We don’t need a cobbled-together government with a mish-mash of conflicting ideological factions, because the coronavirus is immune to ideology. All we needs is a bit of leadership and we’re getting that from an unlikely source, the medical profession.

There has been no shouting or arguing, they all seem to be more or less singing from the same hymn sheet as they calmly and clinically lay out what has to be done.

In our hour of need, we should all sit back and let the politicians continue their interminable talks about talks about possibly forming a government with people they don’t actually like and hope, and even pray, that they won’t be able to agree a programme any time soon.

In the meantime the medicalocracy is the best solution to the present emergency, and when the coronavirus is finally repulsed, as it will be, our doctors and professors can quietly retreat to their surgeries and labs and allow the hot-air brigade back to fill the Leinster House vacuum.