Letters From Lockdown 2 – Roll up, roll up, it’s the rights sale of the century. And everything in Wonderland must go

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‘Oh, how I wish I could shut up like a telescope! I think I could, if only I knew how to begin.’
For, you see, so many out-of-the-way things had happened lately, that Alice had begun to think that very few things indeed were really impossible.

Consider this for a moment in the cold light of long, lost logic.

A year ago, not many of you likely would have heard of Professor Philip Nolan. Not mixing with those in the administrative halls of Irish universities, I certainly hadn’t any reason to.

Yet at the weekend, having been given a role within NPHET who were and are supposed to be an advisory body behind the scenes – giving specific medical insight to a government who balance their views with economic and social concerns to attain the least worst outcome – he was once more hosting a major press conference and making major announcements.

Across it, this man who most wouldn’t have picked out of a line-up just 12 months ago was telling the nation that “we are looking at an outdoor summer… We continue to limit the number of social contacts that we have but not to as low a number as we have now”.

So go on, take a moment and digest that before coming back to us.

Unelected, but telling a country without shame or self-awareness what they can and cannot do with the most basic details of their lives and actions way, way off into the future. Providing a dictatorial answer to a question that nobody had asked of him. Pushing a stern, strict and solemn directive when nobody had ever given him the power or the place to.

That hardly anyone found that odd or frightening might be the new normal, but there’s nothing normal about that new. Indeed if this virus out of China brought misery and chaos the world over, it’s also transported their warped political ideology far and wide, for there is no other description of what’s going on other than undemocratic authoritarianism.

Covid may have helped play a part in the death of the 4,237 sadly lost souls at the time of writing but it’s also played a part in the stripping away of civil liberties and identity. If you think that all returns with a jab and a cert, you don’t get human nature or any of all human history.

It’s not just Nolan, but plenty of those around him in his cabal of unanswerable delusion. In fact also on Sunday, lost amidst the rest of the flak and detail being belched out by these demigods, another shocking nugget emerged. NPHET were able to tell about movement and behaviour as they could present ATM usage data for the country. Big brother, that makes you wonder if this is actually Covid1984 for how else can you justify all that’s going down?

Brick by brick, the blocks of fundamental freedoms are torn away and for what? And for how long?

A few months back when Stephen Donnelly wanted to know what you’d eaten – and I told him I was happy to let him go through it and find out himself if he cared so much – at least it caused the sort of laughter mixed with outrage that such stark-raving lunacy ought to bring about. By now though backs are broken and all is accepted by the weary and manipulated.

How many of you even knew, rather than raged, when last week NPHET made a long-term power-play by saying publicly they want restrictions to go on until they get waiting lists down. How many of you even knew, rather than raged, when their language that pushed this made it into the government’s long-term plan as they suggested restrictions come the autumn and on again into this time next year, and, by their own logic, long after that?

Is this really the best we have to offer?

Is this really what you want in control of your life?

For waiting lists were massively long before Covid, and have grown to nearly a million procedures due to lockdown, but their solution to get that number reduced is what caused them to go up. This has all the intelligence of a lad after burning a house to the ground then suggesting that putting a match to the ashes will cause it to rebuild itself. There aren’t many in white coats giving vaccines it seems, so could they head on over and drag these crazed bluffers from their position of assumed and complete control and power? Please.

That’s a daydream but back in this dark reality the onus is on the public for have they stopped watching or are they just ashamed to admit they’ve been played for the fool? Neither is good enough as either open your eyes or swallow your pride.

If not, then this isn’t the beginning of the end, but the end of the beginning.

People’s perception of rights have taken a kicking to the extent there are some that think Ireland was open last summer when in fact 330,000 were kept from work, many pubs were largely or completely closed, sport was kept to TV, and travel vastly restricted. But actual freedom, real freedom, it’s been suggested and hinted by the PUP extension, will see pubs and restaurants closed for more than another 18 weeks as we pass the nine-week mark of this latest post-Christmas lockdown. So you’re only a third of the way through at this point. Sport won’t come until after that. Then comes the autumn and that latest batch of threats.

But only if they have their way. Only if you let them have their way.

In a democracy those you never voted for cannot tell you how, where and when to live. Around that you should ask the five simple questions Tony Benn used to. What power have you got? Where did you get it from? In whose interests do you use it? To whom are you accountable? And how do we get rid of you? The answers will show this up as a soft coup.

NPHET are a one-trick pony to the point their being obeyed, never mind admired, is baffling as all they’ve said since this began was “level five”, while never coming up with a more inclusive strategy or even a way to ease out of those high-level restrictions. That’s dose one. The problem in this however is dose two, which is a spineless and cowardly government.

The perfect double-whammy vaccination for a lust for life that dares still to function.

That long-awaited Living With Covid plan, nearly a year into being denied living, summed up so much of them. Weeks in the making – and leaked over and over to mates in the media by well-paid advisors who came from the media as that mattered more than your sanity – it basically contained nothing. Six more weeks of level five, with no date or targets for opening.

This announced too after Michéal Martin had said this would happen, after Leo Varadkar said Martin never said it would happen, after Martin said he never said it would happen, after evidence emerged that he did say it would happen, and then an announcement that it is happening. Too many cooks? Nah, too little smarts and too little empathy or urgency.

If anyone in a private job took weeks on the most important file of their life and produced that, they’d be sacked. Yet these knuckle-draggers have just given themselves another pay rise. To over €100,000 for TDs and over €70,000 for senators. That may seem a harsh term to describe our parliament and much of its populace, but it’s true for this displayed a sense of intelligence you wouldn’t leave watch a drip tray for fear it’d overflow. At such altitude, an extra couple of thousand won’t make a huge difference, but the hatred it invokes could topple them. And still they couldn’t see that, and still they couldn’t help their greedy claws.

Say any of that though and you’d best be prepared.

What’ll come your way in establishment Ireland is as predictable as wide of the mark.

For the further society drifts from the truth, the more they hate those that whisper it.

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‘How do you like the Queen?’ said the Cat in a low voice.
‘Not at all,’ said Alice. ‘She’s so extremely…’
Just then she noticed that the Queen was close behind her, listening, so she went on…
‘… likely to win, that it’s hardly worthwhile finishing the game.’

The Irish establishment is like very little else across the European Union.

It’s where Denis O’Brien can make hundreds of millions from his empty private hospitals in a pandemic; where Larry Goodman can bring new strains of the virus into the country as he needs cheap labour to make more money, and he can spread those strains by housing those workers in cramped and crap conditions as he needs to save more money; where we rack up the greatest debt in our history but go to bat and court for multinationals that came as tax was so low at 12.5 per cent, but we want them to pay 12.4 per cent less; where RTÉ are like an untreated STD as they cosy up to the best off as people’s lives worsen, and they play the game that gets them higher places in that society; where the written press fall and fawn over Fine Gael and Fianna Fail leaders who visit their offices and play at soft power in their name; where they get you to tut-tut at the Mother and Baby home disgrace while a largely ignored outrage plays out in clear sight in the present; where the main two parties despite creating this mess with years of neglect, and despite mishandling this mess, and despite now prolonging this mess, still have people suggesting they’re as good as it gets.

That’s quite the bleak backdrop. It’s why I was stupid to get my hopes up on Tuesday. Initially I considered that it might be a good day when it was no more than another wasted nail in the already sealed coffin of reason and reality, of this generation and the next.

You see, arguably the biggest and most telling story since Covid broke that morning.

My jaw hit the floor. My eyes opened wide. My heart started to beat fast.

It began with Dr Anthony Staines, the professor of health systems at DCU, a proud and open backer of Fine Gael, and a key figure within ISAG who are the Zero Covid advocacy group. He was emailing Dr Gabriel Scally, who is also in the group, about strategy and it was stunning. That it was broken by Gript was unfortunate as it allows for deflection when all that matters is its veracity.

Your opinion on a publication does not have more credibility than the facts.

And the facts were and are proven to be this.

Staines instructed group members to “review and internalise” instructions to “look for ways to increase insecurity, anxiety, and uncertainty” and to “go after people and not institutions because people hurt faster than institutions”. He went on to remind ISAG members of the importance of ridicule as “man’s most powerful weapon” and that “the threat of a thing is usually more terrifying than the thing itself”. ISAG members were next told that they could count on “imagination” to “dream up many more consequences” so they could set the direction of where we go next.

More followed including screen grabs of discussions between these academics and medical folk in ISAG. The likes of Sam McConkey and Tomás Ryan, along with professors of science and education, mathematical science, an associate director of Irish studies, and some geographers. “Experts”. It was group think before media appearances, and it involved deceit and flat out lies to dupe the scared into thinking this Zero Covid strategy was achievable quick while getting people to doubt the vaccine’s ability so they’d stick by them. They were willing to underplay the cure, willing to tell the Taoiseach about the dangers of new strains regardless of what the data said, willing to approach treason to get their way.

Yet these are the people our media have trotted out throughout this?

Yet these are the people we’ve been told to trust as they are experts?

Yet these are the people we should listen to as working in academia is proof that they care?

A group secretly conspiring against the Irish people, and attempting to railroad the Irish economy, at a huge cost to mental health, all to further their own careers via exposure?

But we’ve warned that science is in it for itself, and will cross boundaries to further itself. This was no different and it was a telling insight into how this academic world will often and was again prepared to act. Not in your best interest but in the interest of their research. After years in labs, human kind had and has been turned into rats for their testing.

This remarkable revelation went ignored by the mainstream media though. Not a single mention.

It was back to what our minds are filled with and souls are crushed by.

By the Six-One news, rather than the walls tumbling down, Michéal Martin was instead building them back up. His uncontested monologue was the sort of Abe Simpson-esque ramble that if met with in a bar would cause you to move your business into the lounge. He cynically announced Irish and Northern Irish deaths together to make his next move look more necessary when accuracy had long gone. He said we’re nearing the end when refusing to offer a clear end that is at best long into the future. He promised that they’d continue with small supports to those kept from work when in fact those supports are your money you’ll be paying back. He scare-mongered to the electorate when saying the British variant “is equivalent to a new virus, almost” when the reality is that the head of the WHO said last week there’s little evidence it causes any more serious cases. He claimed to know what people are going through when his future is as secure financially as his present.

It was an insult to those that pay him.

Although those they pay in RTÉ were quick to brown-nose and ooze positivity and pride.

More of the same. A life’s worth of bullshit.

At the time of the speech, Ireland had the longest and hardest lockdown in Europe. With 163 work-day closures during this, that was 32 more than Italy in second, 113 most than Portugal, 156 more than Bulgaria, while Norway, Sweden, Poland, Malta, Iceland, Hungary, Greece and Finland didn’t close for so much as a day. Yet these are the places that the likes of RTÉ tried to convince you were the same as Ireland all year so you’d hold tight and firm and pull on their grubby green jersey.

Why change a strategy of misleading people?

As more details of the Living With Covid plan emerged, page 10 of that document jumped out as it contained the NPHET shots and warnings about more of the same come autumn. But this too was ignored by our state-sponsored and state-backing media.

Nothing insightful. Nothing critical. Nothing hopeful. Nothing helpful. For you at least.

Instead, come Prime Time on Tuesday night, guess who was wheeled out again? None other than Professor Tomás Ryan of that same Zero Covid group. One more of the self-proclaimed experts outside his field but letting hubris overestimate his insight and standing. Still, he again wasn’t asked about how that plan will make second-class citizens of those in border counties, how it will tear up the Good Friday Agreement, how it will involve quarantine for those coming into the country for years.

This time though Claire Byrne failed to even ask him about the group he’s a member of, attacking and bullying people to get their way, willing to ignore data to get Michéal Martin’s ear, willing to lie about how quickly it was achievable, willing to create misery despite the facts and despite how little it solves.

He’s part of the establishment. So is she. And you are nothing to them.

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‘To begin with,’ said the Cat, ‘a dog’s not mad. You grant that?’
‘I suppose so,’ said Alice.
‘Well, then,’ the Cat went on, ‘you see a dog growls when it’s angry, and wags it’s tail when it’s pleased. Now I growl when I’m pleased, and wag my tail when I’m angry. Therefore I’m mad.’
‘I call it purring, not growling,’ said Alice.
‘Call it what you like,’ said the Cat.

My favourite song lyric belongs to Pink Floyd. It’s a reminder of the need to make much of the most finite and valuable resource known to mankind. When things open back up, it’s the plan for a tattoo on my arm so I see it daily and keep it present with me.

“And you run and you run to catch up with the sun but it’s sinking,” it goes, “racing around to come up behind you again. The sun is the same in a relative way but you’re older, shorter of breath, one day closer to death.”

That it’s been stolen from you should anger and that it will continue to be stolen should enrage.

So let’s think about page 10 of the Living With Covid document for it reads like this.

“There are real risks that we may face challenges in controlling Covid 19 and protecting our health services as we did during this winter for a number of reasons. 1) The currently unknown impact of vaccines on transmission and the impact of variants. 2) Opportunities for transmission increase during the winter when people are closer together indoors and in poorly ventilated spaces. 3) If the same level of distancing measures are not in place, other respiratory infections will be in greater circulation potentially placing a double pressure on the health service. 4) Growing levels of fatigues with public measures have the consequence of lower levels of adherence.”

That should cause as many queries as concerns. For example…

Why this attitude since vaccines are working on variants in mild, serious and extreme cases?

Why was there no talk of seasonality when blaming people at Christmas if that was inevitable anyway, and why is there none when the summer is being taken away?

Why did other respiratory illnesses flooding the health service never matter before now and why has the sixth-most costly health service on earth not got the ability to handle the flu?

Why is there a suggestion of more measures to counteract lower levels of adherence due to people being fatigued with them to start with, as this is putting a fire out with petrol scenario?

Why do they think businesses after 18 months of closure can survive with social distancing and why do they think employees can live off a PUP cheque?

Why? Why? Why?

Science answers none of this for this isn’t science.

Then again long before this knife in the back the science was halted.

From two weeks to flatten the curve, the vaccine has made things worse. So either last year they risked people’s lives by underestimating this, this year they’re stealing your time, or after a year of ruining you they’re so bad at their jobs they’ve made this situation worse. It’s one of them.

But these are still quoted as the only experts in town so what would anyone else know?

Well what about the 30 papers as well as the WHO warning that lockdowns don’t work?

Lancet said of the UK: “Government actions such as border closures, full lockdowns, and a high rate of Covid19 testing were not associated with statistically significant reductions in the number of critical cases or overall mortality”. Official data from Germany’s RKI agency suggest that the spread of the coronavirus receded autonomously, before any interventions become effective. In Israel, research noted that “since the evidence reveals that the Corona disease declines even without a complete lockdown, it is recommendable to reverse the current policy and remove them”. Swedish researchers found “the reduction in transmission to have been only moderately weaker than in other countries despite no lockdown having occurred”.

On and on it goes the world over yet there’s no discussion of these facts. Just like there can be no civil debate as to why the data out of North Dakota and South Dakota is similar with different approaches, why Florida faired better than California when avoiding lockdowns, why Peruvians have been both locked away and died like no others.

Why? Why? Why?

The problem is we listen to scientists and not science.

Not long ago this was about the hospitals being overrun, but NPHET themselves admit that it’s seasonal, and that the most vulnerable will be vaccinated by May so why would there be any reason to lockdown after that point? We know the downside of these restrictions from work to mental health to education to debt to cutbacks to other diseases getting no treatment to young children’s development, so why would you force all that on people to protect from such a low risk? It reeks of control and power.

We also know from data that there’s a survival rate of between 99.8 and 99.95 per cent for under 65s, and we know come warmer months the chances of even getting something that almost exclusively won’t harm people is next to zero. By this sort of logic we are reducing life to that in the film Demolition Man where anything bad for you is illegal.

In fact at these numbers it isn’t like making seat belts mandatory in cars, it’s like banning driving. And if NPHET are going after this for such a low risk, why not go after fast food, soda, alcohol, cigarettes. Go further down that path and where does it end for should the healthiest person alive demand everyone have to live exactly their lifestyle? What’s the difference?

But as the threat level goes down to practically nothing, the fear is ramped up anyway.

We’ve learned so much about not just these vaccines but also the effects of Covid outside of Covid. In Beaumont hospital last week consultants were told of a 300 per cent increase in mental health issues in 2020 from the previous year. And now those who claim health comes first want to ramp that up when Scotland’s nearby vaccination programme in the four weeks after just the first dose reduced hospitalisations by a staggering 94 per cent.

The truth is that based on current NPHET briefings we’re still talking about cases and positivity. You’d think there has to come a time when cases are academic as vulnerable are vaccinated, and focus shifts entirely to hospitalisations and ICU numbers.

But that would be to think this is about getting back to normal as quickly as possible.

Tick tock.

And you run and you run to catch up with the sun but it’s sinking.

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One day Alice came to a fork in the road and saw a Cheshire cat in a tree.
‘Which road do I take?’ she asked.
‘Where do you want to go?’ was his response.
‘I don’t know,’ Alice answered.
‘Then,’ said the cat, ‘it doesn’t matter.’

According to NPHET, they like to see the virus through the Swiss-cheese model used in aviation accidents.

The idea is that basically when the holes align, the worst-case scenario unfolds.

But the more slices you move and block disaster with, the safer it all becomes.

Democracy works the same way. Or occasionally ceases to.

Step one in our scenario should have been keeping NPHET in their advisory role but the government failed badly in that. Step two should have been the government taking charge when they saw this, but they failed in that respect as well. This is where the opposition should step in and hold to account yet a look across parliament sees as bad as sits on the power side of the house.

This was an open goal and they couldn’t even make contact with the ball. The Irish left claim to represent those hit hardest by lockdowns yet they’ve almost exclusively aligned themselves with the Zero Covid group who, even before they were shown up to be disingenuous, were promoting lockdowns for far longer than needed with the vaccine.

If you want a snapshot of how that opposition tried to outdo each other for attention, consider Cathal Berry, a doctor himself. Just last week the TD praised the army for their work in Portlaoise Prison and wanted them to do similar in CityWest for those that soon will be forced to quarantine. He even mentioned the power of guns to deter. This for an illness with a vaccine, that is seasonal as we come into summer, and that has a median age of death of 84, with any of that age and above kept safe within weeks anyway.

And he wants regular people merely visiting to be treated as hardened criminals due to this? Not an eyelid was batted. Then again, the madness is all enveloping to the point sanity can’t be seen.

Last March you were told you needed to lockdown to protect the old and vulnerable yet a year on, eight weeks into nearly a four-month lockdown to start, the old and vulnerable are being vaccinated and still you are being told that won’t stop the restrictions.

But with nearly all politicians failing in their duty, this is where media is supposed to arrive to save the day.

Yet they have given the Zero Covid crowd free reign, ignored their lies, and refused to look at facts about what they are really about. They treat the establishment with the same kid gloves. So far from what’s going on, the toughest they gave it to the government was on Morning Ireland when Ainé Lawlor asked Michéal Martin if he’d stand up to people wanting summer and a mental health break when the vaccine protects the worst off, do the right thing, and keep us locked down. It’s symptomatic of a mainstream whose efforts have been an insult to this profession but hugely beneficial to their future prospects. When it comes to NPHET they go further and are like a lovesick teenage boy stammering and sweating when anywhere near their dream.

A Swiss cheese model, where so many holes aligned.

Where it leaves us is on the precipice and the last and only solution lies with you for there won’t be a ticker-tape parade that finishes what they call a war. There won’t be a flooding onto streets in celebration at the moment this all ends and we are all together again. There won’t be a lot of things for protest too soon and you’ll be tarred as murderers and protest at all and there’s the risk of democratic process being ruined by the far right, by Gemma, by the angry who are only out for violence which cannot happen.

But you still need to ask yourself why would we need to keep this up after over 65s, health workers and the vulnerable are vaccinated? Have you forgotten why we locked down to start? Therefore I’ve decided to wait until late May to get on with. That’s my line in the sand and that’s my personal choice around risk and reward. There’ll be complaints of course, as others will isolate and expect solidarity but while misery wants company, it won’t be getting mine.

What started out as stopping this history has already been reduced to being on the right side of that history.

What began as trying to halt death has long since become by accident rather than design about trying to cease living.

I won’t be going back down the rabbit hole. Although as Alice said, “How funny it’ll seem to come out among the people that walk with their heads downwards. The antipathies, I think”.

25 February, 2021

Tags: Anthony Staines, Cathal Berry, Gabriel Scully, GRIPT, ISAG, Leo Varadkar, Micheal Martin, Newstalk, NPHET, RTE, Sam McConkey, Tomas Ryan