An article in today’s irish Times Let’s end the stand-up tragedy of Ireland’s pandemic policy.
“But there has been far too little capacity to learn the big lesson – that the pattern of lockdown and release, lockdown and release, does not work. Hundreds of people have died unnecessarily to teach us that lesson.”
Hundreds in Ireland, tens of thousands elsewhere.
“To do this, we have to stop pretending that Ireland is different, that strategies that have worked in Australia or Taiwan or Finland couldn’t possibly work here because we’re more open and connected than those societies. We’re not.
Our stand-up tragedy show has been on stage for far too long. There’s now a working script for how to crush the virus while we wait for mass vaccination to take effect. The job of the Irish authorities is not to keep inventing one on the hoof. It’s to adapt it for a local audience.”
We do know what to do, we just refuse to do it.