Honestly? Weâd have been informed by mcdonkey or some other govt stooge under duress/threat of losing their late late appearance that herd immunity was sufficient, and lockdown lifted. Needs must works both ways.
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The doctor who questioned Irelandâs Covid policy and lost his job: âWe destroyed young peopleâs lives for what?â
Martin Feeley, who resigned from the HSE after criticising the Governmentâs handling of Covid-19. Photograph : Laura Hutton
The only Health Service Executive (HSE) doctor to criticise the restrictions imposed at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic says he has no regrets about his actions, which cost him his job.
âThe only stupid thing I did was to say what I thought, which was daft. I should have kept my mouth shut,â says Dr Martin Feeley of his decision to speak publicly against lockdowns from inside the HSE.
Within days of The Irish Times in September 2020 reporting his criticism of âdraconianâ restrictions, and his belief that low-risk people should be exposed to the virus, Feeley was gone from the health service after a 45-year career. He blames former HSE chief executive Paul Reid for the decision, though Reid, when asked at the time, denied involvement.
As a young man, Feeley rowed for Ireland at the Montreal Olympics in 1976. Never one to stint in his efforts, Feeley once collapsed from exhaustion after a particularly tight race.
He went on to become a respected vascular surgeon and then â again showing his stamina â stayed on beyond retirement age as clinical director of the Dublin Midlands Hospital Group. But once he voiced his objection to the prevailing approach to the pandemic, the end came swiftly.
âI was forced to resign as opposed to just walking away,â he says. (At the time, he described his exit as a resignation.)
More than two years on, he remains an unrepentant critic of the approach Ireland took during the pandemic. The passage of time has cast Feeleyâs original claims in a new light. His contention that Covid-19 was less serious hit the headlines, but he emphasises he was talking about the under-65s, so those most at risk could be easily identified.
Back in 2020, Covid was considered about 10 times more lethal than flu. With milder variants coming to dominate since and most people having some sort of immunity, some experts see little difference in their current impact, though others differ.
Feeley also criticised the emphasis during the pandemic on daily case numbers â âthe deliberate, unforgivable terrorising of the populationâ is how he puts it today. This point was echoed recently by the HSEâs former infection control chief, Prof Martin Cormican, who said Irelandâs Covid response âdepended on fearâ.
Grafton Street in Dublin city centre, at the end of March 2020, during the first Covid-19 lockdown. Photograph: Nick Bradshaw
In 2020, Feeley said any assessment of Irelandâs strategy to combat the virus should take into account the cost to peopleâs quality of life, a point that has wider support now.
Initially, he thought the restrictions were justified and even wrote to Cormican looking for supplies of masks and protective gear. âI remember the absolute terror inflicted by the pictures coming out of Italy. It frightened everybody, but for me, the age-related aspect was hugely relieving.â
Within weeks, taking his cue from Swedenâs light-touch approach, he had changed his mind. âOn the day the Government decided they were going to cancel everything, we were preparing for the Gannon Cup [the annual boat race between UCD and TCD]. I had a crew ready to race when they cancelled the event.
âI remember explaining to them how ridiculous it was. We knew by mid-March [by which time the Government had ordered the closure of schools and pubs] precisely how dangerous Covid was and how the danger varied enormously and predictably by age,â he said.
âI remember saying to them: âYou guys are more at risk of being killed on your bike this evening than from ever dying of Covid.ââ
In mid-2020, when he says HSE officials were warning that hospitals in Dublin were in danger of being overwhelmed, he did his own check and found there were only eight Covid patients in ICU. âWhat they said was untrue. It was part of a terrorising campaign,â he claims.
Did he do anything about it? Ring a journalist, for example? âNot at all. It would have been ignored.â
How could he be so sure of the threat Covid posed, so early?
âI knew absolutely what the risk was to everybody, including myself. I decided I wasnât going to take any precautions whatsoever. I was going to get it and I would survive.â
Someone semi-responsible like me voices an opinion that is different from the accepted and, because they do, they are shut up not just by the HSE but by mainstream media, apart from you
As for all those Covid cases, he claims âthe goalposts were movedâ on their definition. âThey werenât cases at all. Before April 2020, a case was someone who had symptoms and was sick; after that, it was someone with a positive test, even if they felt perfectly happy and well.â
Feeley says he accepts âflattening the curveâ of cases made some sense in order to take pressure off emergency services, but he believes this could have been achieved by focusing on the at-risk groups.
People in a socially distant queue wait to enter Penneys on Dublinâs OâConnell Street in September 2020 during the Covid-19 pandemic. Photograph: Alan Betson
He professes disappointment at the reaction of his medical colleagues after he broke with the consensus. âA very small number contacted me and said they agreed with the thread of what I was saying. They thought I had a valid view and it should be discussed,â he said. âSomeone semi-responsible like me voices an opinion that is different from the accepted and, because they do, they are shut up not just by the HSE but by mainstream media, apart from you.â
Yet he was interviewed on television. âI was on the telly not because I spoke up against the system but because I was forced to resign. They werenât interested in my alternative viewpoint.â
The Medical Council, which has pursued other doctors with nonconformist views, showed no interest in Feeley.
âI donât know why; they certainly took after people who said and did much less than I did,â he said. âAll of those doctors and I would have infinitely more experience in dealing with patients than Tony Holohan or any of his henchmen. Public health doctors at that level never see patients.â
But Feeley wasnât seeing patients either. âYouâre suggesting my experience dealing with hundreds of thousands of patients in a lifetime and operating on thousands counts for zilch?â
The Government is expected to formally announce a review of Irelandâs Covid response shortly, but Feeley believes one is âcompletely unnecessaryâ.
âWe have the youngest population in Europe so we should have the lowest death rate. We shouldnât be slapping ourselves on the back.â
He finally got Covid in December 2021. âI spent a half a day in bed and then I went out and swept up the leaves. Iâve had swine flu. It was worse.â
The people in charge [of the health service] couldnât give a damn. Everyoneâs first priority is themselves and their careers, and that includes doctors, to a degree
The official response âplayed downâ the role of obesity in the pandemic, he argues. âIf people are obese or elderly, or have co-morbidities, they mind themselves and stay at home and you donât visit them. But why stop 85 per cent of the population living their lives for two years? Those two years are the best two years of the rest of your life and yet we just let them go by.
âWe destroyed young peopleâs lives for what? It looks like nothing was gained from it.â
To the riposte that many people are alive today thanks to actions taken during the pandemic, he points to a subsequent rise in excess deaths.
Why didnât he stay in the system and try to counter the prevailing orthodoxy, as Cormican did? âHe got nowhere, so he was as effective as I was. I donât see much evidence that he managed to soften the impact of the restrictions.â
Feeley, who draws inspiration from the radical Austrian thinker Ivan Illichâs critique of the over-medicalisation of society, is scathing about the wider health service. âItâs an absolute shambles. The people in charge couldnât give a damn. Everyoneâs first priority is themselves and their careers, and that includes doctors, to a degree.â
He joined one of the hospital groups believing they were going to take over the running of the health service and implement efficiencies, but that stalled after official policy to abolish the HSE was reversed. Getting sacked at 70 didnât bother him too much.
âThey have filled hundreds of acres of extra office space with people doing I donât know what. They brought in a layer of admin in the hospital groups, which I was in, on massive salaries and they all wanted to build their own little empires. And they produce absolutely nothing.
âMoney dictates everything these days. Peopleâs [sense of] importance, the focus on amassing wealth, drives me around the bend. Itâs so sad â American medicine brought in here, on steroids.â
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Itâs great to see a young man changing his views and stepping out from the shadow of propagandised groupthink.
@Malarkey might find the mention of criminality interesting.
Martin Feely is a corrupt, narcissistic fraud, the Ewan MacKenna of medicine.
I think for myself and are happy to listen to both sides.
My big bug bearer is nobody is admitting they got it wrong and they should apologise as well.
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Another big day of it for the lads
An admirable approach. We were all frightened and unsure and many of us put complete faith in the âexpertsâ, some for a while and many throughout.
Feely struck me as a mature, measured, intelligent, brave and humble individual - Iâd say many people realised something was wrong in government when they saw how brutally he was treated.
The bit about him getting covid and sweating it out overnight like you would a dodgy curry is very telling. Youâd expect that simplistic self centred guff from your atypical mentaller but coming from a doctor he can have no complaints about being turfed out.
Feelyâs most noteworthy contribution during Covid was to audibly fart live on television. That about sums him up.
I suppose his experience should rhyme with your presumption of what his experience should be?
Corrupt how?
He was out for his own personal notoriety and nothing else, and to hell with reality.
Same as every other corrupt grifter.
Iâm sure many doctors and nurses overcame Covid in similar fashion but if they were asked to tell us of their various experiences during Covid itâs unlikely theyâd telling us about how they had a good dump and were right as rein after. Any Iâve read were harrowing experiences. Feely like many mentallers focuses on how it affected him and paid little attention to thos that hadnât it so lucky. He says âyoungâ peoples lives were destroyed but only the elderly were at risk. When pressed to advise on what he would have done he says âSWEDENâ.
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That explains a lot
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If only Fartinâ Feeley had had a dump before he went on live television we mightnât have had to listen to his flatulence.
Martin Feely is an attention-seeking fuckwit. He is also in an exceedingly small Venn diagram when it comes to a perspective on Covid.
You might recall some of things you âbelievedâ.
You started off in 2020 by saying everyone should get Covid because you could only get Covid once and would therefore have immunity. Wrong.
You then scoffed and sneered about the importance of variants. Wrong.
You then said everyone should get Covid but be given Ivermectin. Wrong.
If I were you, I would be fair pissed off about spending countless hours supposedly learning about something and yet ending more ignorant on the subject than you were at the start.
But that craic is just me. I dislike wasting time studying that does not accrue into some sliver of wisdom at least.
Steady on.
Would you care to comment on this criminality, since you are so preoccupied with the topic?
Or is Shell Global a helpful bulwark against the feminization of the West that is represented by a preoccupation with climate change?
All his behaviour since proves what I say about him. Heâs whored himself to every media outlet who will talk to him, including Gript. Unfortunately media will talk to gobshites because it generates clicks for them. Feeley is a bitter, dangerous fucker out only for himself, and somebody believes and preaches lies and disinformation. He had no business having anything to do with any form of pandemic response. An utter cunt.