A 24/7 MENTALITY IS NECESSARY TO HANDLE THIS CURRENT EMERGENCY
Dorcha Lee
Did we blow it or didn’t we? More than a thousand dead in January alone. How could we have come from being the least infected, to the highest infected Covid-19 nation in the EU, and, briefly, in the World? Did we learn nothing, as a society, from 2020, the ultimate annus horribilis?
The saddest images of 2020 came in the early part of the Covid-19 first wave. In March, Italian Army trucks moved in convoy by night, with dozens of coffins through Bergamo, as local cemeteries ran out of space. In Guayaquil, Ecuador, the bodies of victims were left out on the streets for collection by the Army. In April, Spanish troops were sent into care homes full of dead and dying residents abandoned by their terrified carers. Could it happen here? Its seems, it could, if we are to accept the analysis of Dr John Campbell, health analyst.
In a YouTube presentation on 6th January 2021, he gave a grim, if objective, assessment of the current Covid-19 third wave in the Republic of Ireland. Using official Irish HSE and Nphet sources he has logically concluded that our hospital services cannot manage, and many people will die who could otherwise have been saved. He calmly noted that the infection rate has increased exponentially and is now out of control.
His analysis is a more than a subtle contrast to the message that is coming across from our own media. Obsessed with trying to keep up public morale, our media’s main theme is that vaccinations will sort out the Covid-19 problem. The inescapable reality is that the vaccination programme will not have a national impact in time to affect the current third wave.
The word ‘emergency’ is, moreover, being tossed around like snuff at a wake, while test centres observe normal 9–5 working hours, with lunch breaks from 1pm to 2pm, and everyone gets home each evening in time for tea. True, hospitals are working flat out and gearing up for the worst scenario. Still, if there was a real sense of emergency this country would have been mobilised, months ago, temporary hospital extensions built, isolation centres prepared, and Christmas travel curtailed. Thousands of reserve care staff could have been trained in. The Gardaí would have been empowered to enter homes if necessary, and authorised to deal firmly with what is ,effectively, life-threatening anti-social behaviour. Mask wearing in public should have been insisted upon as part of Level 5.
Irish military planners, including myself, had, in the seventies and eighties, long-term experience in planning for the overwhelming of medical and other resources in the case of large scale nuclear war. In the present crisis, the Defence Forces, with its logistical and organisational capabilities, and it’s 24 hour, round the clock, operational procedures, might have been put in charge of the more critical anti-Covid operations assisted by the HSE, rather than the other way round. Frontline emergency services apart, our public service is culturally adverse to operating 24/7. But a 24/7 mentality is what is required in an emergency.
Life and death decisions may well soon have to be taken by medical staff during the process of triage, when patients are sorted into different categories. Faced with this crisis how should they decide who shall live, and who shall die?
Back in April of last year, quietly ignored by the media, the Dept of Health published two very important, and well-thought out, guideline documents for medical staff: “Ethical Framework for Decision-Making in a Pandemic” and “Ethical Considerations relating to Critical Care in the context of Covid-19”.
Both documents reflect the ethical standards we would expect of our healthcare system. Other societies would give the age factor less consideration. They may prioritise the young on the basis that they have most to contribute to society. As an old Africa hand, I have come across two conflicting attitudes towards older people. Usually, elderly people are shown great respect. At the same time, there is the view that anyone over 60 should be dead anyway, and that care and medicines should be reserved for the young.
The Irish media and Irish medical experts are reluctant to discuss the pandemic life or death decision making protocols. They don’t ever want to mention just how horrible death from Covid-19 can be. But, shielding the public from reality, ultimately contributes to complacency.
While anecdotally, 90% of the people may well be complying with Nphet advice, the policy of persuasion seems to have no longer an effect on the remaining 10%. It is time to take the gloves off and step up prosecutions. For the sake of the 90% the 10% have to be confronted and faced down. At least the Government have accepted that the chickenfeed €100 fines for 5km violations are too little, too late.
We still are a humane society. We prefer to prosecute rather than execute. Hopefully, very soon, the DPP will be buried in an avalanche of files.
