The Cedar Lounge Revolution

An intervention August 18, 2020

Comments by one politician over the weekend were fascinating. Chair of the Oireachtas Covid-19 Committee Michael McNamara was clear enough that:

The reputation of former Fáilte Ireland chair Michael Cawley has been “traversed” and Ireland is entering a “period of hysteria”, the chair of the Oireachtas Covid-19 committee has said.

Independent TD Michael McNamara said it appeared to him that Mr Cawley did not breach travel advice.

Though note that ‘enough’.

“I read the travel advice three times yesterday and it’s very unclear to me whether he breached the travel advice or whether he didn’t,” Mr McNamara said.

But clear enough to decide that:

“It appears to me that he didn’t breach it [the travel advice],” Mr McNamara said.

All of which he said ‘traversed’ the BF chair. Meanwhile:

“We are imposing much more strict and draconian restrictions on our citizens than any other place in the European Union.

“We are entering into a period of hysteria because cases are rising in Ireland as they are in every other country. The real metric of this is like other countries, in the UK and Europe, where detected cases are rising, thankfully hospitalisations are not rising and that was confirmed yesterday evening and thankfully our deaths are not rising.”

Is that true?

Or this?

“When this whole crisis started we said we would flatten the curve to make sure our health system was not overrun… we successfully did that, now we’re entering into a period of hysteria because cases are rising in Ireland, as they are in every other country in Europe, ” he said.

And he argued that travel restrictions were due to the ‘frailty’ of the health service and its inability to cope with increase in cases. But there is no ‘cure’ Covid-19 or indeed any particularly useful treatment. Even given the well-articulated limitations of our health service it is difficult to see how any health service could contain a significant surge in cases. As noted on this site some time back, a tenfold increase in numbers over those seen in the past four or five months, not impossible given what happened in Italy and parts of Spain, would see more patients hospitalised with Covid-19 than there are beds in the Irish health service. Arguably no health system could survive that sort of a wallop.

The Sunday Business Post noted:

The health service could be overwhelmed by even a “moderate surge” in Covid-19 cases over the coming months, a medical expert has warned, as the system braces for a backlog of thousands of delayed referrals for specialist hospital care.
Dr Peadar Gilligan, an emergency medicine consultant and former Irish Medical Organisation president, warned that the service would be unable to withstand the pressure of a second wave of Covid-19, coupled with the necessary resumption of acute and elective care procedures.

The chair is not for turning:

Responding to the criticism, Mr McNamara said he had listened respectfully to all experts who had appeared before the committee. “My views have been informed by those experts but I note that there was not agreement or consensus between them. I have found some scientific and medical arguments more convincing that others… It’s not a matter of second guessing the science when scientists and world-leading medics and academics have widely differing views.” he said.

Some pushback from SF and LP and indeed FG members on the Committee as reported in the same piece.