Dr Marcus De Brun
Amid calls for a Zero Covid Strategy…
…Dr Marcus De Brun, writing in CassandraVoices (full article at link below)
The frankly bizarre ‘option’ of Zero Covid-19 that has been grasped by some on the left, and the right, in Ireland is a form of Utopianism. It ignores the virtual impossibility of eradicating an aerosol, sub-microscopic pathogen such as Covid-19 from Ireland.
Moreover, we remain one of the most globalized societies in the world with over half-a-million foreign born resident in the country and an Irish-born diaspora of three million; rely on international trade for most commodities; besides having a porous border to the North.
Moreover, New Zealand and Australia are currently enjoying Summer, when respiratory viruses retreat. This seasonal effect is enhanced by a depleted ozone layer over the Southern Hemisphere – causing the world’s highest rate of skin cancers – which elevates the level of UV light that destroys viruses.
Both countries are also insulated from the rest of the world by vast oceans and an uninhabited landmass. Even still, outbreaks occurred in New Zealand and Melbourne last Winter, prompting draconian responses.
Notably, however, the maximum number of cases that Melbourne – with a population almost the size of Ireland’s – experienced in a single day was just seven hundred, and it required an extreme 112-day lockdown – and/or the arrival of Spring before an apparent elimination. In contrast, case numbers in Ireland have exceeded eight thousand in a single day.
A Zero-Covid approach assumes the island of Ireland is sealed hermetically. Good luck with telling the DUP that they have to follow the rules of the South! And ‘success’ would presumably give way to a permanent state of siege against the viral dangers posed by the outside world.
At this point even New Zealand’s Prime Minister Jacinda Arden has had enough, acknowledging the long-term impossibility of pursuing Zero Covid she recently said:
“Our goal has to be though, to get the management of Covid-19 to a similar place as we do seasonally, with the flu. It won’t be a disease that we will see simply disappear after one round of vaccine.”
Comparing Ireland to East Asian countries may also be inappropriate as, Wuhan apart, no single country in that region has experienced a significant outbreak. Notably, Japan, which has avoided locking down throughout the crisis experienced forty times as many flu and pneumonia deaths during that period. This suggests other factors – East Asia has been the geographic origin of several modern coronavirus epidemics – may be inhibiting the spread of Covid-19 there.
Yet this message has not trickled either left or downwards into popular opinion as the Irish Times continues to print articles in support of ‘the plan’.
‘Zero Covid’ is as much a vote-winner, as a zero tolerance for crime or any other virtuous objective, but it’s political claptrap from an taxidermized left and a neoconservative right, furnished by scientists that seemingly have no conception of biological realities….
Fight!
Covid-19 in Ireland: Landfall (Dr Marcus De Brun, CassandraVoices)
Previously: Just For One Day
Previously: Marcus De Brun on Broadsheet
Meanwhile…
This afternoon.
Dishy globalist egghead and former Broadsheet columnist Julian Mercille shares his Zero Strategy diagnosis with the Tec Dr (not a real doctor).
