Letters

Ireland’s response to Covid was very middle of the road

Lessons from response to pandemic

Wed Sept 27 2023 - 00:04

Sir, – Pat Leahy draws attention to the undeniable fact that Ireland has had three books on Covid but still no inquiry. He asks, reasonably enough, “what’s going on?” (Opinion & Analysis, September 23rd). The answer seems to be a combination of the usual inertia, and the fear of embarrassment.

He then tries, and we believe fails, to assess our response to Covid-19 against that of countries where much tighter control of Covid was achieved (which he refers to as the “Zero-Heroes”). In reality, Ireland’s response to Covid was very middle of the road. Compared to other wealthy countries, we did well on vaccination of adults, very poorly on protecting people in nursing homes, and had long periods of stringent restrictions. We also paid a very heavy price for our “meaningful Christmas” in winter 2020/21, resulting in well over 2,000 lives lost. We did relatively poorly on preventing deaths, a fact only obscured by the atrocious performance of the US and the UK.

The countries that did best were those that chose to take rapid and serious action to control spread – these countries, as diverse as South Korea and New Zealand, recognised that prompt aggressive action would both minimise the economic harm, and maximise the benefits.

This is evidenced by the total Covid-19 deaths per million across countries, as of September 2023: Japan – 603; New Zealand – 638; South Korea – 694; Australia – 874; Norway – 1,040; Canada – 1,382; Denmark – 1,498; Ireland – 1,833; Germany – 2,099; Sweden – 2,348; Northern Ireland – 2,861; US – 3,332; UK – 3,397.

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Countries that aggressively suppressed the virus crucially also spent less time in restrictions, largely by prioritising border management and travel quarantine rather than lockdowns on all of society. There is also much to learn from the successful Asian countries on the central importance of air hygiene. His analysis omits the actual costs of people dying, going to hospital and getting sick, in favour of including the real, but overall more modest, costs of restrictions.

Elementary economics teaches that costs and benefits must both be considered when making economic decisions.

We now find ourselves in a situation where Covid is common, but also widely ignored, where testing has faded away, and where well-proven methods to reduce infection are implemented half-heartedly (like vaccination) or not at all (like clean air). We don’t know how many people in Ireland are affected by long-Covid, but the lowest estimate known to us is about 250,000. There are almost no services for this group, and little prospect of anything additional. As to the stringency of Ireland’s early pandemic response, the difference had we followed the less careful UK approach would have been about 4,000 extra deaths in that first 12 months. Who can argue those lives were not worth saving? – Yours, etc,

Prof MICHAEL BAKER,

University of Otago,

Wellington, New Zealand;

Prof DANIEL CAREY,

University of Galway;

Prof HELEN DOLK,

Professor of Epidemiology and Health Services

Research,

Ulster University;

Ms SIMONE GEORGE,

Human rights lawyer;

Dr CLARE KELLY,

School of Psychology,

Trinity College Dublin

Prof GERARD KILLEEN,

AXA Research Chair

in Applied Pathogen

Ecology,

University College Cork;

Prof DAVID McCONNELL,

Fellow Emeritus in Genetics, Trinity College Dublin;

Prof MARTIN McKEE,

Professor of European

Public Health,

London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine;

Prof AOIFE McLYSAGHT,

Chair of Evolutionary

Genetics,

Trinity College Dublin;

Dr JULIEN MERCILLE,

Associate Professor,

School of Geography,

University College Dublin;

Prof IVAN PERRY,

Emeritus Professor

School of Public Health,

University College Cork;

Dr TOMÁS RYAN,

Associate Professor,

School of Biochemistry

and Immunology

and Trinity College Institute of Neuroscience,

Trinity College Dublin;

Prof ANTHONY STAINES,

Professor of Health Systems,

Dublin City University.