Health Minister Stephen Donnelly and Dr Tony Holohan should have a good look at themselves in the mirror this morning.
The Chief Medical Officer, in case he forgets, is an unelected civil servant, yet he is being allowed to make decisions unchallenged by the Government and is not held to account.
Donnelly is supposed to be his boss, yet he behaves like a little schoolboy afraid of his life to upset the conservative, power-mad mandarins in the Department of Health. He has been largely invisible and ineffective in the country’s darkest hour.
The handling of the pandemic over the Christmas/New Year period by the Government left a lot to be desired. The politicians were nowhere to be seen and Minister Donnelly only emerged in the last few days.
As the number of Omicron cases went wild and people panicked, a lot more damage could have been done only for antigen testing.
Dr Holohan and NPHET had opposed antigen testing at every corner from the get-go and, although they didn’t publicly say it, they basically thought you and I were too stupid to do the test properly.
It was a bit like wearing a face mask which they opposed for months at the start of the Covid crisis, even though evidence showed they were extremely protective against the virus both indoors and outdoors.
They didn’t trust us.
These doctors would like us all living in a nanny state, where we lock down society indefinitely and all be good little boys and girls. Do as I say and don’t dare question or challenge me.
To hell with it if your business goes to the wall and you lose every penny you have, they will still get their big salaries and big fat pensions.
The mentality of our health officials has been to pursue their own agenda and ignore the science at various times. They have also repeatedly underminded and leaked against the Government, putting the fear of God into people, behaviour that would not be tolerated in most states.
That’s why our Department of Health is known as “Angola“ by politicians - because it has been a basket case for years. Just look at the cost overruns at the National Children’s Hospital.
We as a country were one of the first to shut down and the last to open up. We have had one of the longest periods of restrictions in the whole world and it has to end.
What is the point of vaccinations and boosters if we can’t get on with our lives and live with Covid?
The rules over the festive season were being changed at 100 miles an hour so that people hadn’t a clue what was going on.
If you got Covid, isolate for 10 days then seven days. You couldn’t get a PCR test for love nor money.
Close contacts were told to isolate for 10 days and then five days if they had a negative antigen on each day and were double vaccinated with a booster.
Antigen tests rightly became all the rage. In every house, people were checking to make sure they were negative before bringing elderly or at risk relatives into their home or visiting them.
They were also doing the same when they were going out socially to meet their friends.
It was the correct, responsible thing to do and we should have been doing it all along throughout this pandemic.
Worse still, we now have to pay between €14 to €30 for a pack of five kits, depending on which pharmacy or supermarket you buy them in.
They are costing families a fortune and should be made free immediately like they do in many other countries.
The Government wanted to subsidise the cost of antigen tests before Christmas, but Dr Holohan objected and it didn’t happen.
It would cost the state €30 million a month to give out free antigen tests for all of us.
The sooner NPHET is disbanded the better.
The Dail Committee on Covid-19 Response, which was disbanded over a year ago in November 2020, should be reinstated immediately and NPHET made to answer publicly before parliament for their decisions.
