Editor’s Note
Is it too much to hope for that the New Year will herald a winding down of daily Covid bulletins from the Department of Health and its emergency team? The unnecessary six-week lockdown and penal restrictions through October and November threw 131,000 people out of work and onto unemployment benefit. Before restrictions were eased in December, 570,000 individuals were in receipt of unemployment payments. Some ministers seem content to allow this appalling situation to continue until the end of March, when the wage subsidies and the Pandemic Unemployment Payment are scheduled to terminate. Despite the imminent arrival of vaccines, health minister Stephen Donnelly sees the Covid panic dragging on longer, and legislated recently for compulsory mask wearing in shops and on public transport until June 2021.
The facts suggest that a complete mindset change is required. Detailed analysis from the Central Statistics Office shows that the death toll solely due to Covid-19 is relatively insignificant, and does not justify wrecking the state finances and decimating the incomes of hundreds of thousands of citizens.
The CSO data shows that 94% of the c.1,800 people whose deaths have been confirmed as coronavirus-related had serious underlying health conditions. Only 116 people whose death since last March was Covid-related did not have another serious health condition. Those deaths are distressing for their families but do not justify denying tens of thousands of people the opportunity to earn a living.
One in three Covid-related deaths had chronic dementia, and four out of ten Covid-attributed mortalities suffered from chronic heart disease. Forty five per cent of Covid-related deaths in Ireland to date had two or more serious underlying health conditions that are very common in elderly people.
It never used to be the case that when individuals died from natural causes, their passing made the TV news, unless they are celebrities or politicians. Now that’s the case every evening, when chief medical officer Tony Holohan takes the stage. It would take a stroke of the Taoiseach’s pen to banish the CMO’s gloomy prognostications from the airwaves as part of a reset towards a return to normality.
A reset requires leadership and facing down the medics and academics. If necessary, everyone over 80, and maybe over 70 or even over 60, could be banned from attending gatherings and live events unless they can prove Covid innoculation. Everyone younger should be allowed to get on with enjoying their lives so that hospitality, tourism, sport and the live economy can be resuscitated.