Unfortunate timing… again

With an almost perfect inevitability the IT decides to do something unwise in relation to the pandemic again this week after this. Carrying a denialist advert from a ‘tech’ millionaire is quite a step even for that paper. And one that is so clearly open to question (and has its condolences tacked on almost as an afterthought).

Small wonder the letters pages of the IT aren’t exactly enthused. I like this one:

“The few who are vulnerable” are to be exiled from Moorezey’s Holdings Limited’s sunlit uplands, it appears. But no matter…we’re only talking about a million people after all. It prescribes a grand good shake for our doctors, nurses and hospitals this winter.

Not everyone can buy a full page in a national newspaper to express their “personal opinion”…we’re nearing a place where money is speech. It would be less galling if the argument was something more sophisticated than survival of the fittest – for as long as I’m fit.

But particularly bad timing given the headline in the IT notes that ‘Health officials say coronavirus ‘out of control’ and warn of 2,500 case by the end of month’. Alarmingly, “Dr Holohan said case numbers had nearly doubled and the number of hospitalised patients was growing faster than the exponential growth models predicted.”

Which as already noted this week makes a mockery of the political machinations early last week around the CMO. And unfortunately makes a mockery of nonsense like that advert. As noted already in relation to the lethal pomposity of The Barrington Declaration (sic) and those who want to do away with restrictions and supposedly ‘protect’ the vulnerable – there’s no guarantee of lasting immunity from this virus, those in younger cohorts are as vulnerable or more to long lasting chronic serious medical conditions (as noted in a recent Atlantic piece) and there’s no mechanism for isolating safely in societies with multi-generational households and so on those who are in older cohorts. As to herd immunity, quite apart from the ethical aspects, it’s pointless to place any hope in that given the effects on health systems and economies as the virus wreaked havoc on both.

Difficult not to agree with HSE chief clinical adviser, Dr. Colm Henry who notes:

“I don’t accept arguments that belittle the impact of the disease and reduce the strategy to something where older people can be siphoned off safely,” he said. “Everybody is only one degree away from somebody who has died from it.”