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).

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