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As it becomes clear that the Level 5 lockdown is not yet working to the extent that public health officials and the Government hoped, Mystic Meg does not need to detect the emergence of discord in the field of policymaking such as the deadline to reopen the looms.
That’s always a risk when a Plan A seems to stagnate and there is no clear Plan B.
The Irish Times political team reported on Thursday on clashes between government officials and Tony Holohan, the medical director, over details of the plan to emerge from Level 5 restrictions early next month.
If that divergence turns into a chasm that affects clarity of decision-making, retail and hospitality companies will pay a price in the form of confusing advice. That is why Ibec, the business lobby group, was so exercised this week in its letter to the ministers calling for a decisive approach.
However, it would be more worrying if there were no lines, as that would mean that the essential economic needs of the state are not even being considered at the decision-making table. Any fair assessment must also take into account that such disagreements are being forged in the heat of the largest public health battle Ireland has fought in more than 100 years. It should be a bit fiery.
It is worth taking a look back just over six weeks ago, when the first signs of discord emerged between the Government and the National Public Health Emergency Team (Nphet), chaired by Holohan, over Nphet’s initial attempt to carry out Ministers at a Level of four weeks. 5 off.
Tánaiste Leo Varadkar gave a now infamous television interview to RTÉ host Claire Byrne in which he gutted Holohan’s rationale, before giving in two weeks later and agreeing to a six-week shutdown.
Later, Varadkar justified his U-turn on the basis that daily infection rates had continued to accelerate, a reasonable reason. It’s also reasonable to suspect that he may have been partly motivated to change his mind knowing that if the virus had gotten out of control, he would be forever remembered for that combative interview and blamed for any health disasters that followed.
After he changed his mind, the public narrative coalesced around a vague notion that Varadkar was over-hasty when he expressed concern about a move to Level 5, and that he was wrong to say what he said that night.
But was he really? Let’s recall their complaints about the proposed four-week move at that time to the strictest level of restrictions, and compare that to the current state, just over four weeks after the last round of restrictions. It doesn’t seem too wrong from this point of view.
Varadkar complained that there was no evidence that a Level 5 blockade, which has put hundreds of thousands of people out of work, is “enough”, although he did not define what might be enough. He asked a reasonable question about what would happen if Level 5 did not sufficiently reduce the number of viruses.
Given that the decline in the number of infections has stalled over the past week and the daily rate has been set at between 350 and 450 new cases, Varadkar’s thesis appears to be about to be tested.
Some public health experts have suggested in recent days that the decline in the daily rate may have temporarily stalled due to the schools midterm recess and celebrations around Halloween. We can still hope that turns out to be the case and that the downward trajectory resumes to some extent.
But what if it isn’t?
Varadkar said on Claire Byrne Live that if progress under the blockade stalled, the state would have to choose between “abandoning the process or moving forward.” Nphet, he argued, had not “contemplated” such a situation. Unless the current situation improves, it seems that it will be necessary to contemplate it soon.
Ministers, including Health Minister Stephen Donnelly, have suggested there is “no desire” to extend Level 5 restrictions beyond December 1, regardless of whether there are further improvements or not. Economic lobbyists, meanwhile, are up in arms.
The point is that Varadkar seemed to anticipate six weeks ago that a lockdown might not work as well as expected and that public support might wane, while Nphet didn’t seem to have considered that a real problem at all. Public health advisers seemed willing to ditch the economy for a month or more because they were apparently so confident it would be worth it. But the current situation suggests that Varadkar may have been correct in raising his concerns.
While some friction between the government and Nphet could be a good thing to help strike the right balance between public health concerns and the economy, it has a major downside: it gives license to the maniacs among us who are overly cheerful. to criticize everyone else for laxity in adhering to one of the strictest antivirus regimes in Europe.
Here, Nphet has made some clear mistakes. For example, I think Holohan’s deputy Ronan Glynn was misguided this week when he spoke publicly about an alleged “selfish minority” that a few crackpots later sought to blame for stalling progress in caseloads.
Glynn was responding to the latest in a long list of videos of embarrassing behavior on social media, this time showing people drinking take-out pints outside in small groups, albeit all on the same street, in Dublin.
The self-righteous sensed the assent from above and had a picnic, even though there is no significant risk associated with drinking outdoors in small groups, and the video was too recent for the behavior it captured to be a factor in the virus trajectory numbers we are seeing now.
A certain amount of human failure should be expected in any coherent strategy. So let’s not burn our fellow citizens at the stake for their failures just yet. There is also still a week and a half left of Tier 5 restrictions and the hope that a modicum of progress can be resumed has yet to fully evaporate. So, it will be time to reopen the economy again and also to keep your nerves.
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