No place for US-style truth twisters as lockdown eases
EXTREMISTS hate compromise, middle-ofthe-road, centre politics – and politicians such as Leo Varadkar. They also detest science, as much as they abhor the truth. They exaggerate and distort and bend things out of shape into their contrived reality, always managing to retain a sufficient degree of accuracy as a foundation for their falsehoods.
Extremists love caricature. And they thrive on fear and tension.
This coronavirus pandemic was always going to create the most extraordinary tension between rational, fact-based, scientific advice and the more common sense, emotionally-charged political decision-making.
Fox News television in America has rushed to exploit its extremist, right-wing agenda with a blistering campaign against what it brands the ‘Liberal Lockdown’. It pours scorn on eminent scientists like Dr Anthony Fauci, a key adviser to President Donald Trump until the president grew weary of his cautious approach to reopening the American economy.
Here in Ireland, thankfully, we’ve been spared that kind of crude, all-in political partisanship.
But we haven’t been spared the contradictions.
DURING the week Taoiseach Leo Varadkar said ‘amongst the safest things’ that could be done in the next few months would be to reopen schools. This was because of emerging evidence that children don’t appear to be ‘super-spreaders’ of the virus.
He didn’t mention, however, concerns from New York about a rare and dangerous inflammatory syndrome, linked to the virus, afflicting over 100 children there.
Within hours Mr Varadkar was clearly contradicted by the State’s Chief Medical Officer Dr Tony Holohan who dismissed the notion there was ‘mounting evidence’ showing children weren’t superspreaders.
Overlaying all this, of course, is the realisation that many lives have already been lost and, tragically, many more still remain at risk. And we know we must do everything we can to mitigate that threat.
But we also know that lives are for living and in order to do that we must earn a wage, put food on the table and educate the kids.
American expert Michael Osterholm of the University of Minnesota reckons that Covid-19 may become a permanent feature in our lives – like the common flu but much more deadly.
And, if that’s the case, we’ll be engaged in running battles, handto-hand combat with this dreadful disease for years to come.The challenge is to live our lives while also conducting a war on the virus.
General Dwight D Eisenhower reckoned that once the bullets started flying the plan went out the window and it was then up to commanders on the ground. Mike Tyson put that idea in a more accessible way: ‘Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.’
So we don’t know what’ll happen this week when restrictions to combat the virus are relaxed. As they are discovering in South Korea and elsewhere, there’s no guarantee that as we take one step forward we won’t be forced to take two steps back.
We now take many of our leads in culture, food and fashion, from the US, but the contemptuous dismissal of experts and fact-based commentary by Fox News and others should not be one of them.
ON THE other hand, we must not allow experts to be the final arbiters and decision makers. That’s for politicians and it calls for that classic example of centrist politics based on evidence and compromise, blended by a great deal of uncertainty.
The next few months will be characterised by the balancing of risks – the actual and potential damage to people’s health and lives against the multiple hazards presented by reduced or no incomes at all, by poverty, loneliness, missed opportunities and a spectrum of mental health issues caused by financial distress.
Political decision-making, assisted by unafraid expert advice is the best approach – it has served us well so far.
But, eventually, it’s politicians like Leo Varadkar who should make the final call.