My article in today's Indo👇
Extract:
"It’s a damning indictment that, in the midst of a public health crisis, there are more spin doctors in Leinster House (64) than there are public health doctors in the country (60). With the former briefing against the latter in the media, our jaded public health heroes have been forced into taking strike action.
Thanks to Leo Varadkar’s Trumpian style trashing of NPHET,
the country went into lockdown 2 too late, allowing infections to spread
exponentially resulting in a longer lockdown. And, even though cases are still
too high to safely re-open restaurants and gastro-pubs, we’re opening them
anyway.
For the avoidance of doubt, our government is not only
going against NPHET’s advice but that of the EY auditors they
employed to undermine NPHET. A University
of Warwick study found that the “Eat out to help out” policy accelerated the UK’s resurgence and was lambasted as “a policy failure
based on short-termism”.
So, in whose interest is the government acting?
Not the SMEs stuck in a purgatorial cycle of lockdowns, not our beleaguered
health professionals, not the workers coerced by unscrupulous employers to
return to the office, not essential low paid workers exposed to greater risk,
not the 82% of people who, according to last week’s CSO poll, said Level 5 restrictions
are “appropriate or should be stronger”.
That just leaves the lobbyists, who have
been allowed to frame the government’s narrative. Such
as, pitting lives vs livelihoods, which is a false dichotomy. It’s a manipulation tactic invoked
by lobbyists and politicians in order to achieve their vested interests. The pandemic is both a public
health and economic crisis so
public health strategies that reduce the spread of coronavirus also safeguard
livelihoods. The economy cannot function if a substantial proportion of
infected workers are off sick, sometimes indefinitely with long-Covid (self-isolating
nurses are being asked to return to work due to staffing shortages).
The OECD’s Secretary
General said, “The first thing we’ve got to do is beat the enemy:
the virus. It’s a false dilemma to say you have to choose between lives and
livelihoods because the sooner you deal with the question of lives the better
you will do on livelihoods”
Our World in Data
have Compared the COVID-19 death rate with the latest GDP data indicating that
countries that have managed to protect their population’s health in the
pandemic have also protected their economy.
SMEs have been poorly served by ISME. In March, their Australian counterpart lobbied their government
to follow scientific advice and pursue a zero-Covid approach in order to
safeguard lives and livelihoods. It worked. Being Covid free, everything is
open domestically - at full capacity- and small business are thriving. In
contrast, ISME is attacking NPHET, oblivious to the fact that its members’
businesses are being sacrificed at the altar of the aviation lobby in
particular. It’s like turkey’s voting for Christmas.
The “personal responsibility” chestnut is also straight
out of the lobbyist’s handbook, Chapter 1: “Blame shifting”. It ignores the absence
of power and choice of our vulnerable and abdicates the state’s duty to protect
its citizens. For example, our government’s lack of mandatory quarantine meant that one person
returning from holiday abroad was free to circulate, infecting 56
other people, including 10 households and a sports team.
No amount of personal responsibility can mitigate the
ineptitude and indolence of a dysfunctional government. The vaccine can prevent
people getting sick but we don’t yet know if it can prevent
infection. Without a mitigation strategy, we’re facing several more
months of restrictions.
Choosing to put their cronies’ interests before those
of everyone else, Messrs Martin, Varadkar and Ryan have hastened an inevitable
third wave in which far more than Christmas will be lost."
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