From top: Dublin city centre; Eamonn Kelly
The week that was
The clue to the possible causes of the fourth wave came when Joe Biden met the Pope and told him he was the only Irishman the Pope has ever met who has never taken a drink.
It’s not accurate of course. For one, Joe is an American, shamelessly proffering his Irish heritage, wrapped in a quippy cliché, to get on the Pope’s good side. The truth is, 25% of Irish adults don’t drink alcohol, though many believe that the other 75% over-drink to compensate. We like balance, and will stagger in droves to achieve it.
It might be that the handling of the virus in Ireland has come up against the elephant in the Irish living room. There isn’t really a whole lot about this in the media. That’s not surprising, because discussion of alcohol in Ireland is notoriously scant. It’s the great unmentionable, with 75% of adults apt to become surly and defensive at even a whisper of criticism of the gargle.
But the re-opening of the “economy” in Ireland appears to have really meant the re-opening of the pubs. There has been tremendous pressure to get the nightclubs and pubs up and running, but little attention has been paid as to what this actually might mean in the context of a pandemic where a highly infectious virus is doing the rounds.
Bravado
Stephen Donnelly told Pat Kenny on his radio show last week, that the re-opening is made possible by the vaccine. The vaccine is the key to allowing the pubs and nightclubs to re-open. This is why the push to get 100% vaccination coverage, on the assumption that the vaccine controls the virus.
However, the vaccine isn’t 100% effective, and neither does it prevent transmission. During the week the Indo claimed that it reduces transmission, but the expert cited, a Dr Monica Gandhi from California, made those comments back in January/February 2021.
So NPHET recommends the vaccine being supplemented by mask-wearing, hand-washing and social distancing, which many night-clubbers are apparently not doing.
Everyone has a fair idea what happens with masks, social distancing and handwashing when a group of people get drunk. The combination of sentimentality and bravado that comes over people when they are drunk is almost a perfect combination of forces to undermine recommended approaches to contain the virus.
Responsibility
Jordan Peterson, who did his PhD on the subject of alcohol abuse, argues that many people drink alcohol to escape responsibility. This makes a nonsense of the safety directive to “drink responsibly”, which totally misses the point of drinking, as practised by many people.
This may be called “relaxing”, “socialising” “letting your hair down” or any number of similar euphemisms. To escape responsibility. To put all the worries of the week away and just relax and have some fun. And there is nothing wrong with that. It’s a perfectly natural desire.
Problems arise however, when you factor in the virus and the necessary safeguards needed to contain the spread, such as hand-washing, mask-wearing and distancing.
Since we have been given to believe that vaccination reduces or even prevents transmission, the vaccine certs seemed like an ironclad way to admit people into a re-opened economy without risking a resurgence of the virus. But this has led to a dangerous relaxation.
Innocent Misinformation
On Newstalk, Ciara Kelly, ranking the importance of safety measures to prevent transmission of Covid, decided that hand-washing wasn’t as important as social distancing or mask-wearing because… the virus is airborne.
Her assumption appears to be that the virus can only be in one place at one time, and if it’s airborne, well it can’t be on surfaces…or something like that. The thing is, the idea wasn’t thought through and a lazy assumption was arrived at and broadcast over the airwaves to a mass audience that hand-washing is not very important in containing the spread of the virus.
This is probably a costly miscalculation, as is the idea that the vaccine prevents transmission, particularly when coupled with the Irish approach to drinking.
Denial
We’ve had a few weeks now of the 10% unvaccinated being held responsible for the latest surge, despite the high vaccination uptake and the conundrum of the high infection rate relative to the rest of Europe.
Last week it was the turn of East Europeans and children to carry the blame can. But it seems quite clear that people flooding into the pubs and nightclubs, mask-free, may be the primary cause of the fourth wave, through simply letting their guard down and having a long awaited “night out”.
No one’s really to blame in all this, except perhaps the culture itself, in not recognising that alcohol consumption was a serious problem in Ireland long before covid came along, and it is now simply contributing its own particular and predictable complication to the problem of the virus.
Once you factor in the role of alcohol, and once you look at all the other reasons that have been put forward to explain the surge in infections, the conclusion has to be that the ongoing denial the culture has engaged in about the destructive role alcohol plays in the society, is now manifesting as the fourth wave, accompanied by an habitual cultural unwillingness to query alcohol’s role in the spread.
Eamonn Kelly is a Galway-based freelance Writer and Playwright. His weekly round-up appears usually here every Monday (but owing to the Bank Holiday it was delayed for a day).
Its all well and good supposing that alcohol related socialising is to blame – but is there any proof of this?
Statistics point to schools being the great spreader as we obviously know they are – that doesnt mean they should be sanctioned: children are not at risk and their parents should be vaccinated.
As for the hand-washing issue – fomite spread has since been found to make up an incredibly small proportion of all transmissions. Its far more likely that if you caught covid, you breathed it in, rather than touching a surface and then touching your eyeballs or something.
Mr T, There’ll never be proof if it’s not measured and reported. But the circumstantial evidence of unmasked people queuing outside nightclubs, and the reports of no social distancing inside, taken with alcohol’s reputation for lowering inhibitions, would seem to indicate that a crowd drinking in an enclosed space, vaccinated or not, is not the best way to contain the virus. As for the handwashing, where are your figures on that?
The elephant in the room indeed. Over drinking of alcohol is often done in order to avoid personal responsibility. (Petersen et al) In Ireland being drunk is a substitute for low ability to express oneself emotionally. And how many babies are conceived in alcohol? And are ‘scientifically based’ school sex education programmes any good if they lack a strong component of alcohol education?
+1
Eamonn is absolutely on the money here. Since the start of the pandemic the media and government have only being concerned with pubs (wet and dry), GAA and churches.
Hospital capacity has not being increased.
Air filtration in schools was not addressed…….open windows and the odd CO2 monitor.
A week ago night clubs and pubs were jammed.
Hotels are breaking covid rules for weddings…..I know of a wedding that had 250 people, a band, a DJ and a late bar.
And now they are stopping kids from playing basketball matches.
Priorities are all wrong.
+1
Ireland 1950’s… alcohol presented a behaviour of escape from that everyday social engagement as influenced by the church .. requiring only a meagre portion of wage relative to cost of living etc
Ireland 2000’s .. a temporary escape from required behaviour established by cost of living, percentage of wage etc..
The truth about alcohol in ireland is not as peterson et al pretend … responsibility is not a meaningful measure, at best that is an outsider’s interpretation which is being employed to explain behaviour alien to an observer.. the real measure is how mental space and social space are occupied by powers for which the majority of individual agents like those on the lash have little to no means of agency in addressing their life circumstance any better than they do … class too plays a significant role in disguising this point about positioning just as the church was able to act in plain sight for decades.. But it wasn’t sobering up that lead to the acknowledgement of church abuse … it was merging with a world that existed in spite of more secular conditions.. put simply alcohol is not the issue now or pre covid. … it is and has always been how it is employed to the benefit of specific sets of irish society. … but landlords know this well enough … so too politicians
+1
It’s not difficult to understand one of the reasons Ireland has a problem with alcohol – lack of mental health resources for people who need them. I remember some asshat a few years ago telling that Irish people didn’t need therapy, all these needed was to go to the pub, watch a match and have a few pints and that sorts out 99% of problems. Obvious that not everyone goes to pubs, drinks pints or watches sport to me, but not to this guy.
People get anxious, depressed, lonely and when there is a cheap and easy escape in the form of alcohol they are likely to take it because what else can they do? Wait several years for a handful of appointments with an overworked therapist? Get a prescription for highly addictive psychiatric meds from a GENERAL PRACTITIONER with little to no follow up, just scrip after scrip until the person is a few pills short of an OD? I am not against psychiatric medication though, just its misuse in the hands of medics who either do not know or do not care about their overuse. I’ve know people whose lives were either saved and/or transformed by correct prescribing of the correct meds for them and their condition, but I also know a lot of people who ended up addicted as well.
Sort out the mental health funding and you will see less people turning to drink to drown their problems would be my opinion on this. It will not magically sort the problem by any means but it will lift quite a lot of people up out of their fear, depression, anxiety and struggles and equip them to handle life without having to get hammered every weekend.
+1
You’ve touched on a very significant issue in this country and an issue that, like housing, health and education, comes around time and time again with little or nothing to show for the intervening period of time between bouts of spotlight shining, discussion and first-hand experiences recounted.
While i’m no expert, a fried of mine has struggled with pretty serious mental health issues all of his life and I’ve witnessed first-hand the way the system in Ireland operates (or doesn’t). Complete lack of continuity in care, over-reliance on medication and psychiatrists and psychologists seem to view each others’ professions with a huge amount of cynicism. There is a lack of joined up thinking/strategy, or so it would appear.
A huge part of it though goes back to money, if you’ve got the cash you can get the care you need or the care you want. If you don’t you, as a vulnerable individual, are shunted through a system of cogs and pulleys that do nothing much in particular other than sometimes exacerbate the problems faced by individuals and process you like a unit – this remember is not based on my deep knowledge or understanding of the system, rather it is anecdotal.
My pal cannot count the amount of times he has had to explain himself from square one on the occasions he has been to see his mental health care-team. For one or two weeks it’s Health Professional A to whom he explains himself, for the third week it might be another person from the team to whom he has to summarise what he has explained to Health Professional A and do likewise with a third in the following weeks. Wash. Rinse. Repeat. Some he likes better than others on the basis of their ability to listen, understand and empathise. The lack of continuity frustrates and annoys him and can drive his mood on any given day.
Ireland is a great country if you’ve got a few bob, are healthy, housed and educated.
Flew in through Dublin airport yesterday minus one laptop (stolen from behind me by e-scooter bandit literally as I embraced my loved one goodbye)
I couldn’t have got my passenger locator form and negative COVID test checked if I had wanted to.
Surely the penny has dropped now?
“On Newstalk, Ciara Kelly…”.
Befitting not to include ‘Doctor / Dr.’. She broadcasts terrible advice.
I had a problem with my phone a few weeks ago and couldn’t connect it to the Bluetooth in the car so I had to try the…………..radio. Flicked around a bit, music that was on wasn’t to my tastes, tried all the other stations until I got to Newstalk.
Suffice to say after about 2-3 minutes of listening to her and that Coleman dude and I was quiet happy to drive in silence for the remainder of my trip.
I have since gotten a new phone thank God.
Himself listens to Newstalk and I really wish he wouldn’t. But then, he also watches Claire Byrne with alarming frequency.
You can’t beat a good book, I say.
I think I detect trouble in paradise Millie
But seriously not taking his side or anything but sometimes the alternatives are actually worse