2021 Ireland

 Last week an article appeared in the Irish Times about the extraordinary case loads that occured in the LEA of Belmullet in Mayo.  Mayo, as some might know, had one of the lowest Covid 19 caseloads in the country until December of 2020. On 14th Jan, RTE reported that the town had the highest level in the country : 6000 cases per 100,000 of population. In other words, 1 in 17 people. In the area, 760 people had tested positive in the previous weeks.  The area takes in the town of Belmullet (c.1000), Achill (c.2500) and about 8000 others in West Mayo. The surge began in Christmas week with 266 cases reported in the last 2 weeks of December.  Yet the media stayed silent. On 22nd Jan, Irish Times chimed in with a detailed, and honest evaluation of the situation in Belmullet , including discussions with public health experts in Mayo and Galway, who all expressed the same thing: the problem resulted from a particular pattern of socialising in the area, which included a s...

Its no surprise to see the media flooded with hand wringing "why didn't the government tell us" howls, when talking about the huge rise in rates in Covid 2021 between 30th Nov and 22nd Dec. But in fact, the government told you, over and over, that like speed limits, lifting of restrictions was permission, and not a target for hedonism on a grand scale. Here are just a few examples. Back in March, the country became familiar with the wonderful Liz Canavan, who is the most senior official at Department of the Taoiseach, and has been for many years. Had the media bothered continuing to listen to Canavan, instead of obsessing over every minutiae the then Taoiseach, and soon to be Tanaiste, Dr Leo Varadkar, might say, they might actually have noticed. For example, on Nov 30: "if you are meeting people over this period, and indeed beyond that, there will always be an element of risk. What we are asking is that you actively manage that risk – outdoors is better than indoors...