Last Saturday morning, you’d have been forgiven for thinking it would be fairly easy to crack this Coronavirus thing. Keep washing your hands in soapy hot water while singing Happy Birthday (twice) and cough or sneeze into a tissue.
Sorted.
Alternatively, if you’re a real worrier, it’s only a matter of time until large swathes of the population are infected and, in particular, large numbers of over 80s will succumb to it fatally.
It’s a few weeks now since we heard of Coronavirus, or Covid-19, and we watched the strange, sci-fi scenes from China as officials wearing white boiler suits and surgical masks stopped people on virtually deserted streets.
It’ll hardly come here, we thought.
Late last week, though, it emerged that a woman was in hospital in Belfast, having travelled from Italy to Dublin and northwards, with a confirmed case. The Chief Medical Officer, Dr. Michael McBride was assuring us that the risk here had not changed.
An unusually subdued Nolan heard Dr. McBride use the term “confident” three times in rapid succession; he was confident that the number of individuals who would have to be contacted about being in contact with the woman was relatively small, confident that prompt action had been taken and confident we were in a position to contain this.
To be honest, I wasn’t feeling so, er, confident.
By Sunday morning, after another case was confirmed in Dublin, and the worldwide picture was getting worse, commentator Newton Emerson was talking “worse case scenarios” on BBC NI’s Sunday Politics; 70 per cent of the entire population could be infected and the mortality rate in the over 80s could be 15 per cent, etc.
Emerson, quite rightly, pointed up that no health service in the world could cope with what could be coming down the track, never mind ours which is at breaking point. It could need emergency centres and field hospitals and we haven’t heard if anything like this was planned.
On Monday, the World Health Organisation revealed that nearly 90,000 cases had been confirmed globally and more than 3,000 people had died from the virus; and if we needed any more proof that it had arrived in these islands, 39 cases were confirmed in the UK. (Though interestingly, this week Wuhan, the city at the centre of the outbreak, reported a drop in cases).
Boris “who’s the daddy” Johnson emerged from his self-isolation of recent days to admit that a “very significant expansion” of the number of cases is likely in the UK.
Between looking at alarming scenarios on one hand, and the other end of the spectrum playing things down, the truth one suspects is somewhere in the middle; there’s no doubt that this is something to be taken seriously without becoming too alarmist. To that end, surely the best thing is for as much information to be put into the public domain as possible.
The problem is that over the years Governments worldwide often don’t have the reputation for only trusting the populace with information they want to give them.
There was a fascinating article in the New Yorker this week, which recalled some episodes in history of how people in power tried to control information about epidemics, going back to US President Woodrow Wilson who passed laws to criminalise disloyal language about the Government in World War One. But as a Spanish flu epidemic hit civilian life, public health officials lied for the war effort; and in 1918 the virus killed more people than all the military deaths of both World Wars.
Headlined “The Coronavirus and how political spin has worsened epidemics”, the piece was presumably directed at Donald Trump’s rambling efforts to tell people that the country was doing “very well” and that Democrats were scaremongering about the virus.
I’m not suggesting such levels of duplicity here, but at a time when the authorities should work with journalists to get responsible information out, there are those who still can’t help themselves when it comes to mistrusting the media.
Personally, I thought the CMO looked nervous in his performances on the media on Friday. I don’t know if he was, but it would be understandable because he doesn’t front up enough to the media when it doesn’t suit. I regard his failure to address serious questions, for example, about the hyponatraemia deaths of children in hospitals unacceptable, and his failure to meet the Roberts family in particular very disrespectful.
As regards the unfolding of the Covid-19 issue last week, the Department of Health did not cover itself in glory, at least initially. Following criticism of the exclusion of some in the print media at a Ministerial event, most notably the Irish News, the Department’s Head of Communications, David Gordon tweeted that he accepted there was some “confusion”.
I tweeted one word in response “Confusion?” and was surprised to receive personal messages from him on Saturday afternoon, firstly assuring me that there was “no confusion” and then that “the confusion referenced was because….”
He then messaged to say “Was yesterday part of some grand plan to exclude anyone? Absolutely not”; thereby denying something I hadn’t accused him of.
The Irish News health correspondent Seanin Graham, though, also took to Twitter to say she didn’t think there was any confusion about it. And on the decision to exclude print media from hearing from the minister on a major public health issue, she said it was “hugely disappointing given calls Irish News put in yesterday to officials seeking information.”
If that is so, it’s more than disappointing; it’s irresponsible at a time when Irish News readers deserve and need to know what’s happening as much as anybody. The paper, by the way, is a very responsible one, led by an editor of integrity in Noel Doran, and with journalists such as Seanin Graham who maintain the highest standards in informing people of issues in the public interest.
Noticeably, the Minister Robin Swann’s statement at Stormont on Monday included a call for the media to be balanced, warning of panic and hysteria. Well, OK if you feel you need to say that, Minister.
The issue at this point in time is the response to the crisis, rather than the inbuilt suspicion and undermining of the media by many people in authority who would claim to be open and transparent. But the fact is that the public deserve as much information as possible and the media in this part of the world is playing a vital role in disseminating the knowledge of all the issues. Lack of detail, however well-intentioned, doesn’t build confidence in public officials.
For now, the main enemy is the Coronavirus, and people should follow all the guidelines being promoted, remain calm and keep things in perspective, but be aware that this is a developing situation.
Share