(Please note due to a reluctance to push certain media for reasons you’ll see below, and their refusal to allow for any balance that doesn’t scare for sales, I’m doing this independently of them. Therefore if you find it interesting, please feel free to share a coin at https://www.buymeacoffee.com/ewanmackenna, at https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/ewanmackenna, or on Revolut at @ewan0k7m4. Also please note that if you are going through a tough financial time as so many are, I don’t want a cent. I’ve always written primarily to help those worst off, not to profit from them. Thank you. Ewan.)
Back in March, a virologist that lectures at a major UK university muttered a stark warning. They asked to remain anonymous based on what they were suggesting around those they work alongside, but the message should’ve been clear and should’ve set off warning lights.
“My concern is that they will give medical scientists control. You have to understand that medical scientists are well meaning but they have no concept of real life. They don’t socialise, they are obsessed with germs, they think the world lives a grossly unhealthy lifestyle, they don’t think people should be in large groups ever. If a kid at their kid’s school has a cold, they keep their own kid off school for two weeks. So, if you let medical scientists have control, they will shut this country down for two years. It’s just in their nature. They won’t understand the problems that go with that thus they will carry on regardless.”
A generalisation to prove the point for sure.
Hyperbolic to ram that point home too.
But the point still sadly fell on my deaf ears.
Listening had ceased as eyes were drawn to images and data out of Lombardy. It was unrealistically high, but early figures suggested as much as a seven per cent case morality rate. It was easy to think this was the big one and that, if it got in, we were in big trouble.
The obvious reaction then was to call for the closing of airports; the banning of Cheltenham; the stopping of Italy rugby fans arriving en masse as they’d already booked flights even if there was no Six Nations game; the shutting down of pubs before the end of Patrick’s weekend as it was then rather than the day itself that saw the world come in as one to get hammered; the protection of the most elderly and vulnerable that were in nursing homes.
None of the above happened such were the experts in power then, and lauded in power now. In fact CMO Tony Holohan in his wisdom openly suggested Cheltenham was safe as outdoors and that nursing homes need not limit visitors at all, while the then Minister for Health Simon Harris couldn’t find time to meet with their umbrella organisation, despite having time to do the RTÉ children’s news.
Fear crept up and up, alongside the panic and the pandemic.
A perfect storm.
Thankfully though, many were and have been spared as circumstance changed. By October, Mike Ryan and the WHO suggested one in 10, or 760 million globally, had at that point had Covid by their “best estimates”, this at a time when tragically 1.2 million had passed away either of or with it. What it meant was an actual case morality rate of 0.16 per cent.
But the reaction has never matched that new circumstance and, nearly a year on, that fear and panic has been ramped up despite the virus not being what was first believed.
It was midway through all this that, confused by it all, I got talking to English journalist Peter Hitchens and a phrase he said then has stuck with me since. “Proportionality has to be the cornerstone of decision-making.” He knew better than most what happens when it isn’t, as he’d covered for years the authoritarianism and misery across the eastern bloc.
He was right in what he said. The virologist was right too. But it was too late.
The lunatics had been allowed to take over the asylum.
* * *
On Tuesday, despite trying to cajole myself away from the news, I flicked on the Six-One edition on RTÉ. I’d seen that the scary numbers from Christmas had continued to fall, that ICUs were thankfully freeing up, that the dam was no longer in danger of bursting open.
Yet this didn’t make the headlines nor did it make the first five minutes of what was supposed to update us about what the latest was. Instead the top story was essentially an ad for a show later that night that went inside Tallaght Hospital during darker days. A worthy documentary by the excellent RTÉ investigates team no doubt, but hardly news given it was a month old. But this is what has happened for nearly a year now.
There can be no good news or let up in bad news, as in this media climate you scare to sell.
It’s far from just RTÉ of course.
A few minutes after that Tuesday report, on The Last Word on Today FM, Professor Sam McConkey was on. Again. Once more he was introduced as an expert and given free reign to scare a nation on the edge when clearly this could push some over. He warned of vaccines not really working despite having been a well-imbursed member of the Scientific Advisory Committee of European Vaccine Initiative, and when asked how long he saw restrictions lasting he replied three to five years. A man that may well know viruses showed he neither understands nor has any ounce of compassion for human beings and their situation today.
Then again, this has never been about compassion.
That’s merely been the veil over the greed of capitalism from individuals and businesses growing their wealth and climbing the social and market ladder, as others fall away.
Media is no different.
You see, major outlets previously struggling have seen a resurgence in income due to this, and run with it under the guise of some greater good, and balance and care. If this was regular porn before and after the watershed, a lot of the male population would by now be strutting around within five kilometres of their front door with arms like tree trunks. But instead it’s fear porn. Morning, noon, night. And it shows now sign of letting up.
It doesn’t matter how much changes or how much is disproven, for questions have been traded for clicks, reality for sales. It’s why Luke O’Neill and the aforementioned McConkey are the go-tos because they are the whores of their industry, willing to say anything that suits the narrative with the compensation being an ego boost.
Don’t believe me? Well consider this.
Exhibit A – O’Neill.
On February 28th of 2020, he went on the Late Late with his scientific hat on, was asked “Are face masks worth a damn?” and this was his reply. “They are if you are infected… If you are not infected there’s no reason to wear a face mask. Two reasons – people fidget, and the second reason is it goes in through the eyes as well. So there is no evidence that wearing a face mask will protect you at all.” That quote isn’t to push back against masks but to show up O’Neill. For on September 20th on Pat Kenny’s show on Newstalk, he said, “We know masks work – the scientific evidence is so compelling. Anybody who denies masks… show me the scientific evidence against it, because the evidence on the other side is so strong”.
Science doesn’t change like that but there is gain from pseudo-science. Fresh from making millions from the sale of a pharma company he helped found, fresh from a best-selling book, fresh from playing guitar on national television to ring in the new year, fresh from rolling around in a rubber ball for amusement on the state broadcaster’s major politics show, sources say he’s been lined up for RTÉ’s next series of dancing on or with whatever they do now. A pandemic so serious, but one in which he can become a joke celebrity?
It was no different late last year when he said the end of this nightmare was nigh in the new year, except in January he said we’ll be back in beer gardens in July. It was like the whiskey in front of Father Jack’s wheelchair to keep him deluded and moving forward. Of course this is also the man that told a group of children they may need an irremovable tag on their arms to show they’ve had the vaccine and gain access to a basic life and services.
Exhibit B – McConkey.
Back in March, this grim reaper warned Covid could claim up to 120,000 lives across Ireland; back in June he said there was a one in a million chance of contracting Covid in Ireland; in September he said Dublin would have 5,000 cases a day. None of this happened but that is just that year and this illness for he has form. Sadly he’s previously warned of an Irish ebola outbreak and that there would be one million cases of swine flu that would kill four jet planes worth of Irish people.
He’s like a sports fan that can roll off the analytics but has lost his house in the bookies.
Err on the side of caution for sure, but hyperbolic rants are not science.
Yet these are the experts wheeled out more than any others. These are the ones making it up as they go and terrifying any who don’t know the real them. These are the people selling to a confused, dazed, frozen and fearful national audience.
They’ve made you forget what it was like to live and somehow made you scared of death too.
That’s a trick even the devil couldn’t pull off.
* * *
Of late, not that they were ever large, my friendship groups have begun to dwindle.
On one side, I’ve asked myself why I should continue to associate with those who find it unacceptable that I and others aren’t willing to lose the lot so they can lose nothing. On the other side are many journalists who have lost touch with reality and think anyone highlighting the lives of those struggling without Covid, and daring to consider there’s a downside as well as an upside to lockdowns, have been radicalised or had a breakdown.
Like me or not, the reason I got into this game was caring.
Their reasons were obviously very different as we are learning by the day.
I always saw the cornerstone of journalism as to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable. That led to being booted so far from the mainstream that it’ll take an age and many apologies to ever get back. The last time I wrote was for the Irish Independent, but I was told a meeting inside there had it agreed that “I was not one of them”. Since then one senior person in the paper said he had written to every big outlet in Ireland making sure I never work in any of them as my push for balance during Covid was extremist and far right.
On Sunday, that same paper had an article about how to build trust in journalism. Seriously. But it gets worse. The author, Peter Vandermeersch, the paper’s publisher to give his official title, went online to thank a former journalist who had jumped ship for a communications job with Fianna Fail’s Stephen Donnelly in the Department of Health for her help in pushing this idea.
It was so laughable, I wrote to him. He was as dismissive as deluded.
Trust? You earn it Peter, and scaring people and protecting those best off isn’t the best way.
But so many in Irish journalism go along with this and it’s for one of three reasons. Either they are too stupid to see what is going on before them, they are too clever and don’t care what is going on before them, or they are in such a bubble they don’t know what is going on before them.
I’ll gladly tell them.
Right now we have 25 per cent unemployed. Right now if you talk to those in mental health they warn of a suicide epidemic. Right now if you talk to those in societies, they warn that missed cancers have gone way past the 2,000 in November as we pile the ill onto the ill. Right now we know a generation of older children are missing out on education while we know a generation of younger children are missing out on the most basic skills of humanity via the now taboo art of interaction. Anecdotal, but one parent during the week talked to me about their son regressing to bed-wetting but also urinating himself across the day.
Right now our decisions are ruining generations to come and ensuring vital services around the worst off are slashed way into the future as the hardest austerity in Irish history comes along with the sort of stagflation that will make the 1980s seem like the Celtic Tiger.
None of that is Covid though, thus none of that matters.
There’s only one show in town.
* * *
Politics has flipped on its head this past year.
It no longer makes a shard of sense.
Those wanting balance via consideration for other illness and for those suffering from them, wanting less economic devastation for the worst off, wanting less rules around personal freedom, and wanting to see a halt to what Oxfam has said was a €3.3bn growth in the bank balances of Ireland’s billionaires are the new and dangerous right. Seemingly.
Those condemning the poor not just now but for a long time to come, pushing for locking people at gunpoint in hotel rooms if they enter the country, jailing those who go to the airport, and allowing for the greatest wealth transfer in even Irish history, are the woke liberals who know what’s best for you while actually destroying you. Seemingly.
It’s probably a bit like this.
Those on one flank want the right things for the wrong reasons.
Those on the other want the wrong things for the right reasons.
But what about wanting the right things for the right reasons? What about looking at this process holistically. It’s a pandemic so people will die, and people will lose, but everyone should lose a little to share the load and people shouldn’t die because someone with Covid just might.
Sadly that debate was never allowed, shouted down by the smugness of that modern liberal.
The sort who campaigned for equal rights for homosexuals but now thinks those out of work should not be allowed return as they sit at home on full pay; the sort that demand others take a vaccine but are all about my-body-my-choice when it comes to abortion; the sort that think an elderly and sick person dying with Covid was because of Covid, but that same vaccine killing an elderly and sick person was because they were sick; the sort that think they can go without a holiday or a meal and that’s the end of it as if these industries don’t keep people fed and housed and are just there for their pleasure; the sort that think their gastro pub in the city was open, so all of rural Ireland must’ve been sinking pints; the sort so caring for the aged that they speak for them without ever speaking to them.
For the record I am for gay rights and for abortion and so on. This has to be said as that is their first attack. Trumpian. Apply what isn’t applicable to destroy the person, after which their message doesn’t matter. But I also happen to think that while Covid is serious it is over-stated, I think the vaccine shouldn’t be compulsory but will take it myself, and think we should have a plan out of this now rather than more muddying of the waters and of weary minds.
That sample set makes me a fascist in the eyes of so many virtue signaling Latte drinkers that think liberalism is a hobby and a fashion trend. According to them it makes me want hospitals to overflow and to see death on an industrial scale.
It’s an unreasonable silencing of reason, an insult by those claiming to be insulted, all via an element of society that thinks words hurt having never been near a stick or a stone.
And it has worked spectacularly.
* * *
Christmas this year was just me and the dog and it was fine.
The dog was one reason as the thought of him alone in a kennel gets my soft side but there were two others.
Firstly, so as not to give the screechy curtain-twitchers a chance to deafen me and my views on this forever more. Secondly, to avoid the sort of reporters that used to go to the airport each Christmas to make sales off those they sold abroad via their establishment backing, but who now think it’s a necessary trip for them to show what they deem an unnecessary trip for others and shame them to the nation for breaking no law.
Anyway, it was fine for a reason too.
We were nearly at the end of a grim 2020 that made no sense.
Across it, it hadn’t been so much as moving posts but arenas, as if the minute you dared master soccer you were transported to a baseball diamond and flung a bat and told do this next. First it was two weeks to get it under control but thereafter it was about protecting the vulnerable when that was on the authorities, and then it became about flattening the curve, only when it was flat it was about the R number, and when the R number retreated it become about the five-day incidence rate, and when that didn’t suit it become about the seven-day incidence rate, and when both were all good it was about other strains and when they didn’t come… Basically there didn’t seem to be an endgame.
But then there was the vaccine.
It had arrived in the UK and was set to be signed off on by those in the EU.
Hope. At last. The academics surely couldn’t keep alive this fantasy of having the world test their theories, and the medics and scientists surely couldn’t keep kicking those who were down with threats and warnings? It was supposed to end all that. Yet here we are 10 weeks on.
Not only have things seemingly not gotten better since the vaccine came around, they’ve gotten worse if you are to look at the current situation and future talk around severity and length of lockdowns. McConkey is promoting up to five years; Varadkar noted that if we closed the airports until September you couldn’t open them then because it’s winter; Colm Henry of the HSE has said restrictions will go on well into 2022; Tony Holohan on February 1st amidst falling numbers took foreign summer holidays off the table and then hinted at huge domestic travel restrictions too when adding that you’ll only be going to a beach if it’s in your locality; Michéal Martin said any March reopening will be conservative meaning schools; Catherine Martin said that concerts, sport and the arts will be way off and last so deal with it as the GAA season died.
This makes zero sense but still this isn’t questioned by the only people they’ll talk to.
Surely the obvious plan from here is clear and nothing like the above. The most vulnerable will be vaccinated by May, which combined with a seasonal respiratory illness means months of low and safer numbers. During that time you vaccinate a critical mass so that when we come out of summer it’s back to reality. And up until the most vulnerable are vaccinated across the coming months, you set counties levels and targets that if achieved and maintained allow some sensible form of opening up. None of this creates a risk for a run on the hospitals and all of it allows for belated balance of societal, medical and economic issues.
Only that isn’t mentioned.
Instead we’ve large tracts of media more concerned with bemoaning traffic on the roads as they themselves drive around, while pandering to the sort of audience who make utterances of horror that other people went to Lidl at the same time they went too.
* * *
Remember the all-in-it-together nonsense.
Remember the vacuous pap of the green jersey.
Remember the get-me-a-beer-from-the-fridge inducing hold tight.
Through all this, did you ever ask though the only key question.
Who are those that have lost nothing for even in a pandemic you must follow the money.
For while politicians have been backed into a corner by the leaks and maneuvering of NPHET, they’ve also gotten numerous pay rises, more minders, helpers and keepers, and the likes of Jennifer Carroll-MacNeill and Eamon Ryan have seen family members get multi-million euro state contracts that didn’t go to tender due to a state of emergency, all the while voting down crazy notions like a livable wage for the poor who can live on applause.
NPHET certainly haven’t lost either as their power grew to the point that Tony Holohan, not long ago trying to bury the cervical cancer scandal he was chief medical officer for via an internal report, became man of the year thanks to viewer and listener polls, had graffiti of him as superman, and was awarded the freedom of Dublin. So high is his stock that when recently refusing to say sorry to the cervical victims as they die, many weren’t outraged that he refused three times, but that anyone would dare talk at him that way.
The celebrity doctors and medics haven’t lost nor have the media that glorify them either. RTÉ may have furloughed low-paid staff but Ryan Tubridy and Claire Byrne and Miriam O’Callaghan there, and Pat Kenny in Newstalk, and Matt Cooper in Today FM, are still on the big bucks and still cosy and favoured by the good people, by the right people, and all because they scare and keep down the other people under the guise of this pandemic.
So maybe that’s the worry about this coming to an end, or never coming to an end.
There has to be something up because it’s so preposterous that with some disgruntled at the path chosen and the lack of balance, the reaction has been a lust for harder measures for more time.
The Zero Covid crew have emerged as if there is no vaccine. They want to spend longer solving a problem that can be solved with a needle, and their solution in practicality amounts to forever quarantining visitors due to the risk of variants, breaking the Good Friday Agreement, turning Cavan, Donegal, Louth and Monaghan into internment camps or “buffer zones” as they call them, with Sinn Fein behind this and “maximum suppression”.
Worse, pushing this farce that will prolong the damage most forcefully is the Irish Times, who at the same time are pushing for mainstream newspapers to receive subsidies of their wages and other costs from a taxpayer that they are hurting because they think they are essential.
It’s beyond a lunacy that any jab could solve. And it has made me wonder if I am going mad as everyone else can’t be wrong surely?
Except it isn’t everyone. It’s just those you’re allowed hear. It’s the booming voices of the best off speaking for everyone. These were the people that were best placed in the old way of life and they are making damn sure they will be still there in whatever way is to follow.
What’s chaos for the fly will be a new normal for the spider.
10 February, 2021
Ewan MacKenna 
Bang on the money as usual. Only dead fish go with the flow!
Ewan,
I enjoyed this and agree with a lot of your views. However, there is “right” answer to how to come through this nightmare. I just hope that those running the country are making the what they believe the right decision is, not the easy one. I dread to think though that their decisions are to line their own pockets or for power or ego reasons ala John Delaney.
Anyhow, enough of that. I did enjoy reading your columns in the paper but I had come very close to unfollowing you on Twitter of late. This article puts alot of your Twitter rants in perspective and gives context to them. I do hope you return to more long-form writing.
Gavin
A great read and agree totally .Some people selling their souls for the guarantee of the big wage packet …..terrible stuff
Excellent , honest journalism 👏
I d forgotten what this was , the brainwashing repetitiveness has become the norm .
Thank you ..
Ewan,
An excellent read.
I haven’t read a piece anywhere simiilar to yours in the media that encapsulates all that is going wrong.
I opened a word document two weeks ago with a view to sending it to every TD.
I started writing various points, but I wasn’t able to put it together into a coherent letter or article.
My writing came across as pure frustration.
Your piece summarises it all.
Genuinely, thank you, you’ve most definitely lifted my spirits and given me some hope.
Hello Ewan, I have to say that was just magic. I have 4 brothers and all of us – thanks to mam and dad – possess a certain amount of independent thought that challenges an Ireland dominated by Jerusalema – with line dancing/Irish dancing adaptation to satisfy the easily mollycoddled Irish mind – enforced “fun” aimed to blindside the seemingly many carefree sycophants from the actual REALITY, without inverted commas, you have described in detail. I applaud you for articulating the situation that so many of us refuse to be manipulated by and yet at the same time lie silently in the background disorientated and almost without hope. I also need to congratulate you too because as a football fan who works in education you have described something that I have for years been so utterly frustrated by and that’s the sporting apartheid that permeates the system. Rugby good and respectable and appropriate for educational settings, football for corner boys and mercenaries and therefore ill fitting to an Irish educational ethos. That attitude has reached into the non-private sector too – very significantly as you well know because Irish people are event junkies – as Declan Lynch pointed out an in an article in the Irish “Bindependent” “Paddy” likes games that are played by few because Paddy gets to win and self-aggrandise – but of course the private sector is still the bedrock of producing that game’s “national heroes” and “team of us” types who coalesce quite well it must be said with this scenario that you described in your article above, I quote “For while politicians have been backed into a corner by the leaks and maneuvering of NPHET, they’ve also gotten numerous pay rises, more minders, helpers and keepers, and the likes of Jennifer Carroll-MacNeill and Eamon Ryan have seen family members get multi-million euro state contracts that didn’t go to tender due to a state of emergency, all the while voting down crazy notions like a livable wage for the poor who can live on applause”. Thanks so much again Ewan. Where there’s light there’s hope. COYBIG!
That is quality journalism. EM is the real Cobra Kai!
Brilliant article Ewan, only wish journalists in MSM could step out of line and call out what is actually going on. I hope this article gets a good circulation as it deserves.Thanks for using your platform on Twitter to call out whats going on in RTE, Today FM etc with their one sided debate around COVID
Serious read, worth 10mins of everyone’s time.
Good piece Ewan.
Thank you for a wonderful piece of journalism. I had begun to dispair of reading any fair alternative view.
Great article and long required. Would love to have a national debate on the contents. Appalling stuff on Joe Duffy at the moment.
Well done Mr. McKenna
I thought you had gone to the dark side after reading your interview with Hazel Chu last year but I must commend you on this piece.
Articulate and sincere, I can’t remember the last time I read a piece from an Irish journalist that had either of those qualities.
Well done you have covered it really well. There were cases in UHG from Christmas 12 months. 3 months before lockdown nó protocols in place we didn’t notice until the PCR casedemic started. It wasn’t showing to be the contagion we are leas to believe.
Ewan, as a mother of children who attend private secondary schools, I agree with all you say, which you might find surprising (it doesn’t do to over-generalise!). I also watch snd read Peter Hitchens, as well as Messrs Foster and Kisin on Triggernometry, Robert Kennedy Jnr, America’s Frontline Doctors, Brendan O’Neill, Sky news Australia etc etc. In fact the only thing I don’t watch is BBC news and RTE, nor do I read the IT or Indo.
I have friends from all walks of life and that’s how I like it – maybe it’s the Northerner in me; I don’t like to be pigeon-holed and where I came from, rich and poor were all at school together.
We are living in utter chaos and people’s basic freedoms (I don’t use “rights” which suggests someone granted them to us) and personal autonomy. We do not seem to be living in a free and liberal democracy after all, which is beyond ironic, given the efforts made over many decades to unshackle us from the strictures of Christian morality in our legal and governance systems. The last decade sounded the death knell of of those via several referenda and we gained our freedom. Our freedom from what, or whom? God.
And here we are, shackled and manacled to some kind of multi-stranded structure or apparatus which keeps lying to us and shifting the goalposts through a plethora of well-paid agencies. Some of us can sense (know) we are not free and some of those can’t understand how this has happened. Haven’t we just won our freedom – the freedom to define our own meaning of life and human existence and not conform to any objective norms or higher order?
Chaos doesn’t make sense therefore…unless we got it all wrong and we are now paying the price? Perhaps there is objective good and evil and we have rejected the good and been unwittingly snared by the evil we didn’t think existed.
All this isn’t about Covid – it’s much, much deeper and more consequential than most people realise. I’d be happy to tell you more if you’re interested.
I’d be interested to know more
The area of vulnerability is evident and its the same as it ever was. There are drugs available for the vulnerable but we’re totally censored like wonderful Doctors who called for a different approach. The jab is here so why aren’t the rest of us back to normal? Criminal what they are doing.
Fantastic read. Thank you
Dear Ewan.
I applaud your courage to speak honestly about the media our Government and the Celebrity scientists.
There is a constant desire by the above mentioned, to continue with the brainwashing tactics,and why not “IT WORKS.”
I’m not worried for myself but I am extremely worried for my Daughter and her Children’s Cival liberties and their Human rights going into the future.
The dying people of our Nation have been left to DIE on their own, which must be the most Terrifying way to exit this life.
Yet people of our Nation seem to agree with the policies that allow this BARBARISM.
Shame on our “HEALTH SYSTEM” Shame on our “POLITICIANS” and Shame on the “CITIZENS of the REPUBLIC OF IRELAND” to not only COMPLY with this INHUMANE treatment of our Elderly…but to actually agree with it.
When it’s their turn to Exit this life, they might then think differently and wish they could HOLD someone’s hand.
But it may be to late…..
Regards Reamonn
Great article, thank you.
Great article. Great that journalism still survives. The media saturation re covid is ridiculous given that 30000 people die every year in Ireland, half of those from heart disease and cancer. Yet no mention of these diseases only covid covid covid morning noon and night. The media drives everything of course and people sadly are happy to be ignorant
Thank you , I am bewildered by it all now . Definitely leaving Ireland for good ASAP . This has shown the Irish to be fools .
This is a brilliant piece, it cuts through so much of the one note mainstream media coverage we constantly see and hear. I believe many commentators on the fringes of the Coronavirus debate have much more support than the MSM would like us to believe. I can’t listen to Newstalk or RTE as both are basically a media platform for Government/NPHET to peddle their pessimistic outlook without challenge. Totally agree on your point about the vaccines, they act like the they don’t exist and we are still stuck in March 2020, it’s depressing.
Thank you Ewan – a great piece of work which challenges the ‘ orthodox’ view.
I am ashamed at how poorly we are being led , and how sheepishly the seeming majority lap it all up.I am unsure as to how many people share your view ( and mine).The comments section above are enlightening and relieving to hear that we are not alone .
The future as per our Governing parties ?
There is no plan , make it up as you go – and they are getting away with it.
Zero covid is an academic /hypothetical myth – which is not worth pursuing once a vaccination programme gains traction. In reality it’s is a pot of leprechaun gold at foot of a rainbow – with Alan Kelly and Co leading a possee of academics in search .
The only focus has to be firstly vaccinate to protect the old and infirm vulnerable groups as is being done .Give frontline health staff their due and support them.
After that – open up and deal with the real remaining issues :
– Untraced cancer ( likely to kill as many ( “excess deaths “ in 2021 – I really hate the term ) as Covid did in 2020.
– a mental health avalanche – with perhaps one in five on Xanax!
– unknown home alcohol and other substance abuse
– education of the majority in a heap.
– the return to normal of the personal freedoms expropriated under emergency power.
– general loss of fitness across most age groups under 50.
I will not speak about the mainstream media who I have tried to ignore for the past 6 months .You have said enough.
Another ‘expert’. There’s a lot of them about these days.
There’s a letter in todays Irish times where a writer says he must take his chances walking on rural country roads because he must stay within the 5KM limit. This is madness. On the upside its a good study in how fundamentalism works. A news report from the UK stated that even with all of the over 65’s vaccinated, because theres 20 million of them, a fourth wave could still cause damage. I have felt for a long time that we would end up with post traumatic covoid disorder, continuing to fight an enemy that had been pretty much beaten. I am exasperated.
Excellent article shame there is only one or 2 good honest journalists left and the rest have bought in to MSM, shame that you are the only one calling them out.. Amazing how no one wants to hear about the truth and they think the vaccine is going to cure them all.. People hv become stupid and brain washed
Good article – Thank you.
One question that never seems to get asked, is what is the daily average death rate in Ireland post and pre-covid. Surely this would be a good barometer of the deadly impact of this virus. Pre-Covid, I believe the average daily death rate in ROI was 99.
Why are we not asking what the daily average death rate is currently , or as current as statistical analysis allows, surely that would be as available as the daily Covid death rate which gets headlines daily.
Thank God there is one journalist left out there who has the balls to question the status quo. A nation fed on Government/medical experts press releases by a media who have forgotten to how to ask searching questions or are too lazy to do so. I have likened RTÉ to Fox News in the US for some time. We should refer to them as Fox RTÉ in future. Where is the focus on getting the vaccine rolled out. Where are the daily figures of roll out. Let’s not focus on this as it might bring some accountability on our political masters and medical executives.
As for our opposition parties their only response to Government is to demand even more draconian measures against society. They have become obsessed on travel restrictions as if this was our biggest issue. They want the return of de Valera’s era of isolationism. Their latest obsession is that a mutation of the virus could enter the country forgetting conveniently that this virus mutates naturally and will mutate at home anyway with or without foreign travel.
So now we are to have travellers who enter Ireland having had a recent negative Covid test whisked away and locked into solitary confinement for two week. What have they been found guilty of. Does it matter if they already have had the vaccine or indeed previously had the disease and are now immune. They are not to be even given the basic right to return to their own home if they live here. Incarceration without trial and the most fervent advocator of this horror is Sinn Féin . Have they forgotten the wrongs of Internment.
Of course no one is pointing out the damage this is doing to Ireland’s perception as a go to destination where a tourist is now to be treated as pariah.
It also does not seem to matter that this draconian policy has deprived at least 200000 citizens out of their basic right to earn a living. Tourism and Aviation and all it’s ancillary activities have been thrown to the wolves and being told to shut up and stay in your box where you must stay ‘for a‘very long time’ We are all in this together ‘ what a laugh!
While restricting travel for a brief period to bring down the peaks of the virus may have some validity the idea that as the curve is heading to flat in the very near future we are told that all external travel will be restricted for the rest of the year irrespective of the fact that all vulnerable members of society will have had their jab by the summer and our hospitals will have very few Covid patients.
Surely this must be an attack on our civil liberties. Travel is a basic freedom not a politically-granted privilege.
Everything should have opened up last May and back to normal. The evidence was in the area of vulnerability was evident same as it ever was. There were drugs available but total censorship because they have pledged €89,000,000 to GAVI over the next 5 years. Health people don’t need anything except vitamins D, C selenium Zinc and quercetin for inflammation to ensure good health. The wonder jab is here but no change. There were 3 months of cases in UHG before lockdown nó protocols in place it’s not the contagion they say. PCR casedemic and asymptomatic testing needs to be stopped. If the people don’t unite and stand up to this criminal behaviour it will never end. They are following instructions. They have sold us.
Thank you for providing some clarity and saying what alot of us are thinking im sure… but who are denounced as extreme left or right or antivax, just because we question if whats best for a few is actually best for everyone.
Fair dues Evans, on your article, your so on the money. The narrative in this lost all sense of reason, logic and proportionality a long time ago, and has become scarily dogmatic and dictatorial.
People are too nervous to speak because of cancel culture, and labelling. Adding to that the media’s non stop, never ending fear mongering. I feel we’re in a dangerous place right now as a society. With weak to no leadership or opposition besides Michael McNamara.
Good people have to speak up and I thank you for that..
Care home neglect was present in Canada long before Covid-19; however, we didn’t fully comprehend the degree until the pandemic really hit, as we horrifically discovered with the CHSLD Résidence Herron in Dorval, Quebec, 10 months ago.
Western business mentality and, by extension, collective society, allowed the well-being of our oldest family members to be decided by corporate profit-margin measures. And our governments mostly dared not intervene, perhaps because they feared being labelled as anti-business in our avidly capitalist culture.
But, as clearly evidenced by the many needless care-home resident Covid-19 deaths, big business does not always know or practice what’s best for its consumers.
Morally and ethically, the profit buck has to stop with the health and lives of human beings, especially those who have little or no voice.
Excellent piece, thank you
Just checked the CSO today.
As of Friday February 5th , total number of deaths in Ireland of Covid 19 with NO underlying health conditions is 365.
Average age of those unfortunate souls was 84.
A year or so older than the average life expectancy in Ireland.
This information is freely available on the CSO website.
They can manipulate the narrative but they cannot distort the facts…….at least not yet anyways
Brilliant article thanks Ewen. Maybe it’s just my circle of acquaintances and generally people I’ve met of late but I know more people that feel similar sentiments to this than don’t.
Thank you for writing this. I absolutely agree and have thought this way from the start. All I can do is try and influence people I can talk to and make my considered opinion known at work where I can.
The most well balanced piece of writing I’ve read in a year. And terrifyingly accurate
Thank you Ewan, a brilliant article. It genuinely saddens me how poorly this has been managed and the devastating impact that this will have for the next decade. Thank you in particular for calling out the many scientists who are appearing on news / entertainment outlets at every opportunity to scare / pontificate or patronize. The only positive to a lengthened lockdown is they stopped using the term ‘critical two weeks ahead’ line. Stay strong and keep it up!!!!