The reality here is that we made a fundamental error early on in this, and itâs been repeated all over the World.
The politicians didnât have a clue what was going on or what to do (naturally) when it first broke out. They were absolutely shitting themselves so they put the NPHET lads front and centre and did a Pontius Pilate job on it and washed their hands of it and said these lads are in charge now we are just following their advice.
This meant that the health service wasnât just the primary concern, it was the only one. Which is fine for closing down, but not so much for opening up.
As the government have attempted to rebalance the lens through which this is viewed to take into account other factors such as jobs, costs etc NPHET have used the media as a tool to bring the government back to heel.
There is a very difficult adult conversation to be had about what is an acceptable level of deaths, the easy sound bite is no deaths are acceptable, and if we can save just one life etc. But of course thatâs insanity. People die, all the time, itâs shit but itâs reality. NPHET have been mandated to stop this virus which is fine and maybe if viewed solely through that lens everything they are doing is correct. But it only accounts for one factor of a much bigger picture and may not save many or even any lives on balance and the costs are phenomenal.
NPHET too are only human and they donât want to be seen to be to blame for people dying anymore than the politicians do. So they are going to be overly cautious in nature. NPHET are as someone else pointed out also extremely conflicted, being made up of a lot of very senior HSE staff and the danger of the health service collapsing under even moderate strain wouldnât reflect well on them.
NPHET should brief the government and then the Government should speak to all the different stakeholders and come back with a balanced approach, that tries to take into account everything and doesnât just destroy the country for the sake of it. NPHET should not be allowed to speak in public. They are an advisory group and they should fade back into the background where they belong.
We wonât know for maybe a decade as to who was right or wrong or what should and shouldnât have happened. There may never be a consensus on it. And in a situation where no one knows what the right thing to do is, it is very difficult to blame anyone for their decisions either way.
However anyone who dissented even slightly from what is after all just one theoretical way of dealing with this has been ostracised. It means the only ones willing to take the opposite side of debates are 5G, Gemma OâDoherty nut job types which means only one side is ever heard. This cannot be healthy.
We do know one thing for certain so far NPHET/HSE were tasked with sorting contact tracing and ICU capacity. Contact tracing has been a complete and utter failure. A shambles really from start to finish. And they are actually shouting loudly about how they did fuck all about ICU and using their failures as a reason to lock it down again. The experts should not only be questioned, they should be held to account.
