Reopening pubs now because they want to is ‘inappropriate’ – warning from public-health expert
Fáilte Ireland guidelines are a ‘funny read’ with ‘woolly language’
“OF ALL the venues, you could go into a pub for a couple of pints and come out with COVID and be asymptomatic”
That’s the warning of Dr. Joe Barry, the Fermoy-born former Professor of Population Health in Trinity College, who spoke this week of his concerns regarding the plans for Monday onwards to reopen pubs that serve food.
The medic, who hails from College Road in the North Cork town, has come out of retirement to lend his expertise to the fight against COVID-19 and has contributed to a number of news reports in this newspaper.
He described the plans to open the pubs on Monday as inappropriate and premature in the context of the investment of financial, emotional, and social difficulty capital people have made in the past four months.
Speaking on RTÉ’s Morning Ireland programme, he said: “I think there’s a concern here – we spent the last three and a half months doing everything possible as a country to collectively limit the damage that COVID-19 will do our population, and I think everybody has been welcoming the easing of the different restrictions.
“I think that the publicans have been intensely lobbying to bring forward their opening dates, and they’ve also wanted to divert it to a certain extent from some of the public health guidelines.
And I think it’s a problem for two reasons and I sympathize in a sense with pubs because their business have been closed for three months and that’s not easy.
“However, a pub is a sort of an ideal vehicle for transmission of a respiratory virus essentially indoor locations - lots of people gathered around chatting, very sociable people talking out loud, loud noise, so people are close to each other to talk and hear what they’re saying, coupled with drinking alcohol at the same time.
“So obviously your judgment goes a little bit when you’re taking alcohol, even small amounts.
“So a pub is always going to be a risky place, and it’s not as if the country hasn’t got access to alcohol over the last three and a half months.”
Dr Barry is sceptical about the guidelines on pub/restaurant reopening issued by Fáilte Ireland last week, a 20-page document which he described as a ‘strange read’.
“I think the guidelines from Fáilte Ireland are strange and I’m not sure why Fáilte Ireland guidelines are sort of becoming the Bible because it says it’s from Rialtas na hÉireann and Fáilte Ireland, but they have sort of phrases like ‘as far as reasonably possible a distance of two meters and a minimum of one meter shall be maintained between employees’ and they say ‘if two meters cannot be observed all other efforts must be made.
“So there’s a lot of woolly-type language in the document.”
He added that, in his view and in the opinion of the Chief Medical Officer Dr Tony Holohan and most people, there is no difference between a pub and a pub/restaurant.
“A pub that serves food is a pub.”
While he sympathised with pubs because their ‘ business model’ was, through no fault of their own, a big risk for COVID-19, he said pubs were “by no means unique in the suffering they’ve [endured] by any means”.
“We’re still struggling with the education system, children have been off school for four months,” he said.
While he agreed that everybody wanted to get back to normal as soon as possible and welcomed the reduction in the number of cases, he added that the impact of the reopening of pubs would have to be ‘ looked at very carefully over the next three weeks’.
Referring to what he described as a ‘ balance of risks’, he said: “I think with the more risky environments we have to take it a little bit more gently, and I would certainly put a pub into this category.
“But the difficulty with pubs is of all the different venues you could go to. You could walk into a pub for a few pints and you could come out with COVID and be asymptomatic
“It is not trying to scare monger, but we’ve invested a huge amount of capital of emotional capital, social difficulty capital, financial capital and other capital over the last four months, and I just think it’s a little bit premature to let pubs come in now in the way they want to do it.
“I don’t think that’s appropriate. I don’t know what the view of NPHET or the cabinet is of the Fáilte Ireland guidelines.
“Have they read them? Because they are a funny read and I think it’s too serious to go just ‘ah sure, let’s get back to normal with a couple of pints’.
“I think we’ve a lot to lose by rushing this, and I think there are bigger priorities.
“And as I say, it’s not as if Ireland is dry country, you know, there’s plenty of alcohol being used already.”