A couple of weeks ago I travelled to England to attend a talk by the historian Tom Holland. The venue was packed with hundreds of people, none of whom seemed to be wearing a mask. I’m fully vaccinated, but we are now so used to public health warnings about crowded spaces that I spent the evening calculating the odds of catching Covid at the talk. More than two weeks have now passed, and I seem to have gotten away with it.
Was I being reckless attending that event? I’ve kept to the public health guidelines since the pandemic started, even when I believed they were going too far, but I have exercised as much freedom as has been allowed.
We’re now permitted to go to England for non-essential reasons, and British authorities don’t make us fill in passenger locator forms or show vaccine passports upon entry. Public venues don’t require vaccine passes either. So I was happy to go along with the English public health guidelines, or lack thereof, and attend that talk in a crowded lecture theatre. I knew there was a small risk involved, but was prepared to take it.
Nonetheless, some will claim I was irresponsible. Public health is now used as an excuse to police one another’s behaviour.
When the nightclubs finally reopened a couple of weeks ago, a young health worker made the mistake of posting an image of herself on social media queueing up to get into Copper Face Jacks. She was holding up her vaccine passport too, but this didn’t stop some people attacking her. As a health worker, they preached, she should know that, even though vaccinated, she could still catch Covid and transmit it to others.
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Given her line of work, she should be more responsible than the average person and go further than the public health advice, the critics insisted. If we are seriously expecting health workers to limit their personal freedoms in this way, then an exodus from the profession will surely follow because we’re simply demanding too much of them.
Last week Stephen Donnelly, the health minister, announced an extension of the state’s emergency Covid-19 powers until next spring. What this means is that the government is giving itself the power to enforce another lockdown, if it deems one necessary, perhaps forcing us to stay in our homes again except for exercise or essential shopping. When Covid-19 arrived in Ireland early last year, how many people expected we would still be facing this prospect 20 months later? Most probably imagined it was a case of battening down the hatches for a few weeks until the storm passed.
What might make the government impose another lockdown? Presumably if the hospitals could not cope with a surge in patients, or intensive care units were overwhelmed. As winter wears on, and more people socialise indoors in warm and poorly ventilated buildings, the perfect conditions will be created for the spread of all sorts of respiratory diseases, including Covid.
Given that hospitals are often overwhelmed following the Christmas festivities, you could imagine the government reaching for its emergency powers again if we have to cope with a big flu outbreak on top of Covid-19.
At present, lots of moral pressure is being exerted on the small percentage of over-12s that remain unvaccinated to get their shots. They are even being prevented from socialising normally, including taking seats indoors in restaurants. Other countries are not as punitive towards the unvaccinated. The UK, including Northern Ireland, is the obvious example, but we regularly criticise them for doing a terrible job fighting Covid, so we won’t be following their example.
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But what about Denmark, which is often held up as one of the best run countries in the world? It lifted all Covid restrictions weeks ago, even though its vaccination rate is lower than ours. Danes do not have to wear masks or show Covid passes to enter public venues such as restaurants. Announcing the lifting of restrictions in September, the Danish government said the “critical” phase of the pandemic was over and therefore Covid would now be treated more like a normal disease no longer requiring draconian measures.
The Danish government has surrendered its emergency powers. Its ministers might yet change their minds, and some health experts are already urging them to require facemasks and vaccine passports. But the point is they are showing a lot more respect for civil liberties than we are, while doing a better job of keeping Covid at bay.
With a population about the same size as ours, Denmark has recorded 2,717 Covid-related deaths, compared with Ireland’s 5,492, up to a few days ago. Clearly, the Danes are doing something right, and this involves more testing than us, including antigen testing, which we have stubbornly resisted.
As time goes on, the last of the vaccine-resistant in Ireland will either bare their arms and get the jab, or they will catch the disease and acquire natural immunity, at least for a while. After that, we will find that daily numbers continue to wax and wane anyway because the fully vaccinated can still become infected and pass it on, though the risk of severe illness and death is greatly reduced.
In Scotland, they were recording 8,000 new cases a day in September. But they held their nerve, and new cases are currently running at about 2,500 a day. In Northern Ireland, they were recording far more cases per head of population, and more deaths, than we were a few weeks ago, but authorities there also held their nerve. Cases have now dropped from the recent peak.
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Living with Covid means going through its waves. Thanks to vaccines, the number of patients in hospitals will never be anything like as high as it was last January. By all means, let’s give booster shots to the old and vulnerable, improve indoor ventilation, and have us wear masks if needs be, to keep cases as low as reasonably possible. But the reintroduction of emergency measures would be wholly disproportionate now that more than 90 per cent of adults are fully vaccinated.
The extension of the emergency law until February 9 could only come from a government that, unlike the Danes, has insufficient respect for civil liberties. This has been a feature of the pandemic right from the start.
