Isle of Man Covid Strategy: Mitigation or Herd Immunity by Mass infection?

My article in today's Manx Independent

Our immunosuppressed & children are guinea pigs in government's "dangerous experiment".

Word version👇

The UK’s plan to ditch restrictions, including mandatory face masks and social distancing, exposing citizens to mass infection, was described by the WHO’s Dr Mike Ryan as “moral emptiness and epidemiological stupidity”.

Over 1,000 internationally renowned scientists published a letter in The Lancet admonishing the policy as “A dangerous unethical experiment”. Ireland’s Taoiseach, Micheál Martin, commented, "I certainly don't want to be presiding over something that says it's okay for young people to get Covid, it's not actually”.

On Tuesday, per head of population, IOM reported two thirds as many new Covid cases as the UK and three times as many as Ireland. In response to my article in Saturday’s Irish Independent, incredulous readers commented, “How did the Isle of Man go from safe haven to plague island so quickly”?

I’ve been reporting on International responses to the pandemic for 16 months. No jurisdiction, except the Isle of Man, has ever knowingly imported Covid in order for its citizens to “learn to live with it”. It’s all the more incomprehensible given the island had survived most of the pandemic living without Covid and all the restrictions necessitated by an infectious disease ripping through communities.

Just as the vaccination programme was gaining momentum, in an act of inexplicable self-harm, instead of waiting a few weeks, the Manx government imported the delta variant, jeopardising lives and livelihoods just as vaccines may be waning in our vulnerable.

Not only was Covid actively imported on island by the government, it did so without putting sufficient public health measures in place to protect the vulnerable and unvaccinated population. Unsurprisingly, delta now has the island in its grip. The educational and business disruptions, the cancelled operations, lost incomes and Long Covid that will ensue were not inevitable. They, and any resulting deaths, were entirely avoidable.

On 7 June, I wrote to Education Minister, Dr Allinson, asking“ Do you not think that deferring border opening until children break up for the summer is the safest  way of ensuring our children  are not unnecessarily exposed to harm associated with getting Covid and Long Covid in the high risk classroom environment? He did not reply to that. I removed my child from school informing Dr Allinson that I do not consent to him being subject to an “unethical, dangerous experiment” involving infection at school.

 The government claims to have a mitigation strategy which implies the existence of masks, distancing and work from home directions, for example. Not only are these not mandated, they are not encouraged and there’s no apparent role modelling of these behaviours amongst political leaders.

The government’s messaging/catchphrases, such as “Numbers don’t matter” and “we must live with Covid,” without mitigations and financial isolation support says, this is not serious, it’s safe to carry on as normal sending children to school, socialising indoors. If it wasn’t safe, the government would put mitigations in place, right? By saying “live with it” and “numbers don’t matter”, the government is lulling citizens into a false sense of security, implying that getting infected is fine. It’s not.

 Numbers DO matter because as more people get infected, hospitalisations will follow and with that, as we’ve seen elsewhere, the likelihood of deaths. How many avoidable deaths does the Chief Minister deem acceptable?  Increased infections also provide fertile ground for the emergence of new, potentially more dangerous, vaccine escaping variants, which would be catastrophic.

On Monday, BMJ columnists, Dr Helen Salisbury, explained the difference between achieving herd immunity by infection (unsafe, unethical, unscientific) and by population vaccination (safe, ethical, scientific). She described the UK’s plan of herd immunity through infection as “criminal”.

If herd immunity by mass infection is not the IOM government’s intent, in order to credibly claim a strategy of mitigation, it needs to urgently introduce actual mitigations, not least to protect the immunosuppressed and children from the now raging spread of what the WHO describes as a “deadly disease”. Basic public health mitigations include (but not limited to): Mandatory masks in indoor spaces and public transport, social distancing, financial support for isolating workers, work from home orders, installing ventilation in workplaces and schools, vaccinating children 12-16 years (as is already happening elsewhere in the world).

The government’s downplaying of the threat posed by Long Covid to the nation’s health and economy is concerning, particularly given children are particularly at risk. “This is not a benign virus,” Professor Stephen Griffin, a virologist at Univeristy of Leeds said. “We know that around eight or nine percent of hospitalisations are children at the moment.” We do not fully understand the long term implications of severe disease in children or the impacts of Long Covid and there have already been reports of neurological damage and damage to the heart and lungs, even in very mild cases.

10pc to 20pc of young people with Covid experience Long Covid, lasting many months. The UK’s Office for National Statistics reported that at least 13,000 children aged two to 11 and 20,000 aged 12 to 16 have suffered Long Covid. Contrary to Dr Ewarts astonishing claim recently that the risks posed by Covid to children were “vanishingly” low, the evidence raises sufficient doubts about longer term effects on children to NOT say the risks to them are extremely low.

 

Having imported a highly infectious disease, the IOM government has abdicated all responsibility by instructing us to “learn to live with it”. Failing to put mitigations in place to protect the most vulnerable, the government then came up with another catchphrase: “personal responsibility”. Public-health is about preventing sickness in entire populations. Infectious diseases are always collective problems because they are…infectious. An individual’s choice not to wear masks or distance, has widespread implications. One infected person can seed an entire continent of cases. The odds of any of us becoming ill depend on the choices of those around us.

The immunosuppressed, unvaccinated children and essential workers rely on the government to ensure our schools, workplaces and public transport are safe. Anything short of that constitutes moral emptiness and epidemiological stupidity.

 

Parent's should not be forced to choose between our children's education and their safety

 My article in today's Irish Independent👇

As parents, we must not settle for hospitalisations & deaths as the only valid metrics in this pandemic. Long Covid threatens to saddle a generation of children with chronic, disabling illness for years to come. In 10 years time our children will ask us what we did to protect them. They have no voice, no vote, no agency. We must speak up on their behalf 💓

https://www.independent.ie/opinion/comment/we-shouldnt-be-forced-to-choose-between-school-and-child-safety-40635461.html

Word version 👇: 

“I’m skared of going to school”. Meet Aoife (not her real name) who contacted me after reading an article I wrote invoking Jaws to describe school safety. Until schools are safe, I pledged last August, “My child’s not getting back in the water”.

Aoife is 13 and was shown the article by a teacher months after it was written, as “proof” that her safety concerns were justified. Her anxiety, which manifested as school refusal and self-harm, was dismissed as “nonsense” by a priest, which made her doubt her sanity. Relief at being told by her GP that he’d seen “an explosion” of pandemic related anxiety in children (i.e. “I’m normal”) was dashed on realising the waiting list to see a psychologist was over a year. Clocking my background as a therapist, Aoife messaged me for help.

The contempt with which children have been treated throughout this pandemic reminds me of The West Wing scene where Director of Communications, Toby Zeigler, is confronted by a teenager for snubbing him. “In society we’re meaningless because we’re powerless” he railed, “No risk in offending us, we don’t exist”.

School closures (a feature of “living with Covid”), meant abuse and neglect went unnoticed forcing some children to call the gardaí. Pause for a moment and think how frightened and courageous a child must be to dial 999 only to hear an automated message promising a call back that never comes.

The recent Ombudsman for Children’s report, “A childhood paused”, showed that 100% of children who contacted them cited the impact of the pandemic on their mental health. The more socially disadvantaged and medically vulnerable, the harsher the impact. The highest number of complaints, 49%, were about education, describing 2020 as a “devastating year for children”.

Two months after emerging from a lockdown prolonged by importing the Alpha variant from Britain, the Delta variant, which is 60% more transmissible with higher vaccine escape, is on our shores. Public Health England data shows that, with increasing numbers of adults vaccinated, this variant is targeting unvaccinated youngsters. We also know that double vaxxed people can catch and transmit coronavirus and that vaccines may wane within months against this variant. This has significant implications for international travel, indoor socialising and the safe reopening of schools in September.

Unable to return our child to school last September, we weren’t offered any alternatives. Some teachers kindly kept us in the loop but others just didn’t have the time. Joy at being able to participate in remote learning with classmates in January, descended into dismay. Teachers did their best, but being in ear shot of live classes, it was apparent that many children struggled to cope. Some were sharing laptops and bandwidth with multiple siblings and missed classes. One child was so overwhelmed, she broke down in tears. The teacher offered reassurance to the faceless child, but her voice too faltered. The strain on everyone was palpable.

Instead of using months of lockdown to install ventilation, the government herded children back into unsafe, unventilated, overcrowded classrooms. Desperate to get my son back to school safely and seeing no prospect of that happening at home, we loaded up the car and came to the Isle of Man, whose elimination strategy meant life continued as normal for most of the pandemic.

As luck would have it, the Manx government recently announced they were shifting to a “living with Covid” non-strategy. Given there were zero cases at the time, they fast tracked the Delta variant’s arrival so that we could all learn to live with it. Schools are now several teachers down with pupils and parents isolating. Businesses that were previously open and thriving are shut because infected visitors ambled through their doors. Having 3 feet (see flag) doesn’t mean shooting yourself in one of them is advisable.

Aoife’s parents don’t have the luxury of upping sticks. They’re both (un)employed in hospitality, which has been decimated by the government’s choice to put the aviation industry before SMEs; the lifeblood of our communities and economy. Last year, with less than 10 cases a day, we were living without Covid. Rather than opening pubs and eateries, we opened borders and imported new variants instead.

A year on, “Living with Covid” has killed 5,000 Irish citizens and condemned the rest to a purgatorial existence where deprivation of human and social contact has become a way of life.

Hospitalisations and deaths cannot be the only metrics in operation “Saving Summer”. Nphet warned that actions resulting in higher cases now, jeopardise the safe reopening of schools. We know that children have suffered psychological and physical harm as a result of both school closures and attending unsafe schools.

UK data indicates that around 7,000 children suffer with Long Covid beyond 12 months. Dr Deepti Gurdasani, epidemiologist at the University of London warned: “Exposing children to a novel virus that has long-term impacts, is completely unethical”.

Parents should not be forced to choose between their child’s education and their safety.

For those unmoved by children being potentially saddled with a chronic, debilitating illness for years to come, gifting Covid unvaccinated, compliant hosts has other consequences. Dr Stephen Griffin, virologist and associate professor at the University of Leeds warned, “We can’t ignore children in vaccination campaigns. If we do, we could end up in a cycle of variants.”

Sunday’s announced plan to vaccinate 12-15 year olds, whilst welcome, was conditional on NIAC’s long awaited recommendation. For schools to open safely in September, as a minimum, we need eligible children to be vaccinated and ventilation systems installed in all classrooms.

Nelson Mandela said, “The true character of society is revealed in how it treats its children”. Instead of gaslighting children like Aoife (now fully recovered) for raising safety concerns, we should join them in holding this government to account.