Irish Examiner view: Covid inquiry pledge is starting to look stale

People need to understand the narrative of the past few years

There were proposals for an intrusive surveillance system to monitor social-distancing laws. Picture: PA

As another week slips by, more random facts about our handling of the Covid-19 pandemic emerge into the public consciousness. For now, as it has been for a long time, no formal attempt is being made to join up the dots to provide a clear explanation of what we have all just lived through.

On Monday, we learned that just 53 nursing homes out of 580 across Ireland had experienced no Covid-19 since the virus arrived in February 2020. 

For this sliver of information we can thank the latest report from the Health Information and Quality Authority (Hiqa). Hiqa also noted that the chief inspector was notified of 1,895 unexpected deaths among residents in nursing homes in 2021 — slightly above the figure for 2020, but more than double the 703 deaths notified in 2019.

In the same week we were told that 70,000 children and adults with special needs did not receive a first dental appointment from the Government last year, because of the pandemic. 

Some 65,000 dental appointments were not offered to the HSE’s target groups across 2020 and 2021. That’s a failure rate of 54%. 

'Information in 'dribs and drabs'

Information has arrived in ‘dribs and drabs’ from a variety of sources, such as interviews, academic papers, books, and press conferences. 

We have learned that ‘rough’ modelling indicated that 20,000 people could die in Ireland; early forecasts showed that 400,000 people would require hospitalisation and another 100,000 might need high dependency or intensive care units; that it was a trebling of the number of reported cases in 24 hours to 27 which led to a Nphet recommendation to close schools, colleges, childcare facilities, and cultural institutions and to ban mass gatherings.

We now know that the Government heard, from the consultancy firm EY, proposals for a highly intrusive surveillance system, incorporating information from CCTV, credit-card transactions, and mobile-phone data to ensure people followed social-distancing rules. 

References from social media and banks on takeaway habits were also to be collated. While conservative estimates of the global death toll from Covid-19 stand at six million, authoritative research postulates the much higher figure of 18.2m excess mortality deaths between January 1, 2020, and December 31, 2021.

The science journalist and author Debora MacKenzie wrote recently that all big experiences in our lives have two realities: What really happened and the story we tell ourselves and each other about what happened. Of the two, psychologists say, it’s the narrative that matters most.

She added: “Creating coherent stories about events allows us to make sense of them. It is the narrative that determines our reactions, and what we do next.”

If Micheál Martin needed persuading to implement the promise he made in the third week of January to establish a public inquiry, or, as he liked to describe it, “an evaluation of how the country managed Covid-19”, he should need no further encouragement than to examine the research from University College Dublin, which suggested that one in three Irish people believe that the Government exaggerated Covid-19 deaths, with nearly 78% of respondents concerned about the long-term impacts of the pandemic.

Other countries 

In Britain, the draft terms of reference for their own Covid-19 inquiry have been published and the independent chair, 72-year-old retired judge, Heather Hallett, has received more than 20,000 submissions since April. 

She has urged the prime minister, Boris Johnson, to widen the scope of the inquiry — which already covers 26 topics — to examine the pandemic’s impact on ethnic minorities, mental health, and children. 

It is likely to become the largest statutory inquiry in British legal history. Hallett has told government departments to protect evidence, including WhatsApp messages, from destruction.

In France, former health minister Agnes Buzyn has been under investigation over her handling of Covid-19. Investigators at a special court in Paris concluded there were grounds to prosecute her.

Some experts believe that we were hugely lucky with our response to coronavirus. Vaccines were found more quickly than anticipated and the disease itself was not as deadly as it might have been. 

Even so, the WHO warns that there must be an international effort to watch for new infections and create remedies. That will cost, it says, nearly €30bn annually.

Only if people understand the narrative will there be any support for it. It is overdue for the Irish Government to put a process in place to answer the question: ‘What just happened?’