Fergus Finlay: Covid is still here and so are the deniers

'I know how much people suffered from Covid in the early days, and I am immensely grateful that I live in a country where vaccines were made available — on a regularly updated basis — to as many people as possible as soon as possible.'

So I got it in the end. I worked through the pandemic, I was involved in all sorts of decisions about how to protect public health, I became really proud of how Ireland responded to the curse of covid. I’ve read all the studies about our relative performance. I know some of the things we did right and some of the mistakes we made — and I see no reason at all why we shouldn’t be completely honest about all of that.

Whenever a vaccination became available, I queued up like everyone else and took it. I never had any side effects, and have always been grateful for the protection they have given me and all the people I care about.