No one is playing the blame game yet, Tony. Give it time
THE chief medical officer Dr Tony Holohan strayed outside the purely scientific this week when he rejected the ‘language of blame’ as public concern grows about the disproportionate number of deaths in nursing homes, arising from the coronavirus catastrophe.
The man, who gives hugely influential advice to Government on best-practice guidelines necessary to suppress the spread of this awful disease, said we should move away from the ‘language of blame and finger-pointing’.
Dr Holohan’s comments jarred with his role as the main influencer – based on science and medicine – of public policy in the war against Covid-19 and, at any rate, they were entirely premature because the issue of blame hasn’t actually presented itself at this point.
Blame – if there is any – will only come if we find out that our grandparents, parents, aunts, uncles and loved ones were avoidably put in harm’s way of a dreadfully lethal virus, the danger of which had been well signposted in advance.
And, crucially, blame will only arise if people – either in the private sector or in State bureaucracy – failed to do what was both within their power and which, they knew, if undone, would put people’s health and lives at risk.
The number of deaths in nursing homes as a result of the coronavirus is thoroughly shocking.
With over 1,000 nursing home residents killed so far out of a total national death toll of 1,639, it’s impossible to overstate the horror, pain and human suffering this terrible disaster has caused.
The tragedy has, up to this point, claimed nearly half the number of lives lost during the entire 40-year conflict in Northern Ireland. Clearly, something went wrong; not enough was done to protect vulnerable people, lessons weren’t learned (at least fast enough) from other places, including Italy and Seattle in the United States, about the deadly risks the virus presented.
At best, there has been a demonstrable system failure by the State to protect those to whom a clear duty of care was owed.
NEARLY three months ago, in early March, as we went into lockdown, the most horrific warnings were coming from Italy. They were struggling to bury their dead and referring to the number of elderly killed by the disease, one funeral director said: ‘A generation has died in just two weeks.’
From early March as well, there wasn’t a person in this country who didn’t know that it was the elderly who were in the firing line. Unsurprisingly, on February 28, Tadhg Daly, representing private nursing homes, wrote to the Department of Health pleading for urgent guidance to handle the outbreak.
He pleaded again on March 4 for the needs of the private nursing home sector to be addressed by the National Public Health Emergency (NPHET) and around that time private nursing homes imposed their own blanket lockdown, refusing to admit non-essential visitors. This was described by Dr Holohan as ‘premature’.
Meanwhile, sick people were being transferred from hospitals to nursing homes without testing, nursing homes were short of protective equipment and staff were being tempted away from private nursing homes to the public healthcare system.
At the same time, the State’s independent health authority was warning the Department of Health that some nursing homes were vulnerable to the virus. Their concerns were acknowledged.
When the virus finally entered the nursing homes, it became a brutal and utterly tragic walkover with the appalling consequences many families are now coming to terms with.
Tony Holohan previously strongly advised against a review of CervicalCheck after Vicky Phelan called for an investigation.
Who would argue now that the
CervicalCheck inquiry was entirely in the public’s interest and to its benefit?
EVENTUALLY, there will be another full inquiry to discover how so many of our elderly relatives died during this pandemic, to find out what went wrong and what could have been done better. That’s when the language of blame, despite what Tony Holohan has to say, becomes relevant – and necessary.
Was the risk of the high number of deaths in nursing homes foreseeable and did people fail to discharge their responsibilities of a duty of care towards vulnerable people who deserved much better?
Such failure, if it occurred, requires the apportionment of blame. In those circumstances, blame is right and proper, because it’s all we have to ensure this never happens again.
THE maths are obvious – government will have to involve Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael and the Greens. But, there’s a growing sense that Leo Varadkar fancies an autumn general election, by which time he’ll be seen as the man who saved Ireland from the virus and will reap the political benefits.
If he gets anything near the 36% predicted in the recent Ireland Thinks poll (poor Micheál Martin at 16%) he could offer the Greens full partnership in Government Buildings, deliver the coup de grace to a floundering Fianna Fáil and maintain Sinn Féin’s position on the naughty step in opposition.