Mick Clifford: Delivering zero Covid the scientific equivalent of populist politics

ISAG experts cannot come to terms with the fact that they were wrong — they appear to still believe that we are all doomed because we didn’t listen to them.

Social distancing helped to reduce cases of Covid but ISAG's big idea of achieving zero Covid was doomed to fail. Picture: Brian Lawless

There was some good news this week on the accursed pandemic. The Bloomberg Covid Resilience Rankings has Ireland at number one. The rankings measure 12 different data indicators such as virus containment, quality of healthcare, vaccination coverage, and overall mortality. It isn’t a definitive judgement, but it does suggest this country is at a stage where things are going relatively well.

The ranking is a fillip for the National Public Health Emergency Team (Nphet), a government that didn’t stray too far from Nphet’s advice since the Christmas disaster, and the major efforts of people at large to pull together.

Not everyone accepts we are doing all right. Tomás Ryan, a Trinity College Dublin academic scientist and member of the Independent Scientific Advocacy Group (ISAG), was on RTÉ Radio’s Drivetime on Tuesday, pouring cold water on the ranking. 

He thinks we could have done a whole lot better if we had only listened to him and his fellow ISAG members. He was debating with Fine Gael senator Regina Doherty, who thought we all deserve a pat on the back. Ryan accused her of “political spin” and “talking nonsense”.

A few weeks back, Ryan was on Éamon Dunphy’s podcast, The Stand, warning of dark days ahead. “Their (Nphet’s) models are still quite worrying,” he said. “We are still vulnerable to 1,000 or 2,000 deaths in the coming months, depending on which scenario plays out. I have reason for scepticism about the high levels of optimism.”

No doubt he will be delighted to have been proved so wrong so far.

Ryan is not alone among his fellow academic scientists in ISAG in issuing dark prognoses. 

The members of ISAG have contributed widely to the public debate on the virus over the 15 months or so. Their big idea was to follow a policy of zero Covid in this country, but that ship has sailed. Since then it’s been gloom heaped on doom.

Here is Anthony Staines of Dublin City University in a tweet on August 25 about the discontinuation of source analysis in infection: “This is an admission of abject failure. We’ll pay dearly for this error of judgement.”

This is an admission of abject failure. We'll pay dearly for this error of judgement. @ISAGCOVID19 https://t.co/a8mYfwjhAR

— Anthony Staines (@astaines) August 25, 2021

Then we have another founding member of ISAG, Gerry Killeen of University College Cork, tweeting at the start of September that he was off to Africa with work for a while. “I really hope I’m wrong about what to expect in Ireland while I’m away, so please all look after each other and our children.”

Will be quiet for at least 2 months while I do some intensive field work in Tanzania, where there was no Twitter access the last time I visited. I really hope I'm wrong about what to expect in Ireland while I'm away, so please all look after each other and our children.

— Prof Gerry Killeen (@killeen_gerry) September 1, 2021

Last week, in response to the decision to discontinue contact tracing in schools, another ISAG member, Aoife McLysaght of Trinity, tagged an article about Florida where there is little contact tracing. “We’re Florida now,” she tweeted. Florida has been a disaster. Thankfully, we are not Florida and unless things go completely belly up we never will be Florida.

We're Florida now. https://t.co/VXPWVOp7Z2

— Aoife McLysaght (@aoifemcl) September 23, 2021

Doomsday theme

There is a variation on the doomsday theme on the ISAG website where pieces are introduced with the kind of language that would be meat and drink to a tabloid headline writer. “Have we had enough fairytale epidemiology and wishful thinking?” one asks. “Letting it rip, Irish-style,” another goes. And then there is the plea: “We must not sacrifice our children & youth to Covid-19?”

The spectre of a collection of intelligent people engaging in this stuff is disconcerting. A group offering an alternative view is vital during the kind of crisis brought on by a pandemic. One of the major problems in the run-up to the economic crash of 2008 was the groupthink that existed across the public square. Strong, contrary, independent voices are always to be welcomed at a time of crisis.

We have been lucky in that respect in the pandemic, with an array of independent voices like Luke O’Neill, epidemiology’s answer to rock ’n roll. 

O’Neill has been largely accurate in his forecasting and he converses as if he’s liable to at any minute pick up a guitar and compose a song about the sunny uplands alighting on the horizon.

ISAG is not a lone voice but a collective. Its members, for the greater part, are all in academia. A few of them are epidemiologists or public health specialists, but they span the whole spectrum of scientific study. 

To that extent, you could say that many among them are like soccer players advising on Gaelic football, which offers the benefit of providing a different perspective from those actually managing. They are all trained in critical thinking and analysing data.

And they are articulate and persuasive across the media.

So why do they so often present like merchants of doom? One can only assume it is because ISAG has been proven wrong on their big thing. 

They were the major proponents of zero Covid, at the height of the first and third waves of the pandemic. Zero covid was worthy of consideration as it was attempted — with mixed success — in various parts of the world. But it wasn’t for here.

Question marks

Nphet didn’t think so, most public health experts didn’t think so, and there are major question-marks over whether the population at large would have been amenable to enduring the strictures that would have been required.

On the Drivetime programme this week, Ryan painted a picture of zero Covid of delivering “less lockdowns, less deaths”. This, unfortunately, is the scientific equivalent of populist politics in which easy solutions to difficult, if not intractable, problems are put forward as an obvious and viable alternative.

The only political entity which advocated for zero Covid was People Before Profit, although the Social Democrats flirted with the idea for a while. Yet in the depths of last winter’s appalling infection rate, it was given major consideration in the public square, which was healthy for debate.

But, it appears the boys and girls in ISAG are clinging to their vision. They cannot come to terms with the fact that they were wrong, and while their hearts obviously want the country to come out of this, their heads appear to still believe that we are all doomed because we didn’t listen to them.

One can only hope that the ISAG people get over themselves pretty soon. They continue to have a contribution to make and have been doing so of late in highlighting the lack of ventilation in schools, an issue that is down, not to systems, but resources and priorities. 

More of that, please. And listen, all you docs and profs with your independent hats on, out here in the real world every one of us gets it wrong sometime. Just lay off with the doom merchandising.

That, as many of you will be aware, does nothing for the mental health of a nation still traumatised by what we have all endured.