Letters to the Editor: Call for help from Cork’s pharma companies

We have now entered 2021 and speaking, thinking, and acting on the coronavirus has become tiresome.

There are continued warnings of how our health systems cannot cope as we enter a third wave of the coronavirus pandemic.

Yet it appears, despite this being the third wave, we have failed to learn and be prepared from the earlier waves.

Just look at the HSE’s performance in obtaining appropriate levels of the coronavirus vaccine and the appalling vaccination schedule. According to the Taoiseach, only 135,000 individuals will be vaccinated by the end of February, yet Israel has already vaccinated more than a tenth of its population of 9.3m and will have the whole population vaccinated by the end of March 2021.

Our situation looks like a re-run of the personal protective equipment supply debacle of February-April last year.

My message to Irish society is we need to involve the multinational pharmaceutical companies here in Cork. We should call on them to suspend some of their drug manufacturing activities and temporarily modify and/or repurpose them as coronavirus vaccine facilities.

Our society is in crisis at present and, with people losing their lives here and abroad, there is little point being a world leader in producing drugs such as Botox and Viagra.

We urgently need the vaccine in sufficient doses to resolve this crisis and our political leaders need to get the ongoing international industry operating on our shores to play their role in supporting the health of the Irish people first.

We do not need to wait for the EU to make a decision on the supply chain; we can as a country apply, to say Pfizer or Oxford-AstraZeneca, for emergency authentication of the respective vaccines.

James Heffron

School of Biochemistry and Cell Biology

University College Cork

No urgency in our vaccination plan

As this godforsaken pandemic continues, Israel has announced that more than 1m of its citizens have been vaccinated in 12 days. The US vaccinated 4.2m people in 13 days. The UK is pushing against red tape to vaccinate 2m a week by mid-January.

But Ireland? The HSE is apparently aiming to administer 40,000 jabs a week from mid-January. This “action plan” will take two years and one month to vaccinate the entire population, despite its very small size. And of course, current flu jabs are only considered efficacious for one year.

Where is the urgency? We are in a profound crisis; new cases and ICU admissions are soaring.

In England they are enlisting retired doctors to help and considering midwives, army medics, radiographers and anyone who can pitch in. Israel is moving so fast it hopes to wrap things up by March — not two years, plus.

It is high time for Taoiseach Micheál Martin to explain in detail the workings and timeline for the mass vaccination plan here. If there is some projected shortage of the vaccine — which Pfizer and Oxford-AstraZeneca insist should not be an issue — he needs to tell us what the Government intends to do about it. A dribble of supply from the EU can be no excuse for inaction.

David Monagan

Military Hill

Cork

Shouldering a heavier burden

Pat O’Connor has hit the nail on the head — ‘Covid-19 crisis: Some of us are shouldering a heavier burden than others’ (Irish Examiner online, January 4). As she points out, horse and greyhound racing continues as we grapple with this pandemic.

Ciara Kane, CEO of Northside Family Resource Centre, also writes on Twitter: “I understand why schools must close and childcare services operate at reduced capacity. I don’t necessarily disagree with the decision but … I [also] understand why it is detrimental for our children’s outcomes ... 

"Seeing people dismiss ‘a few weeks off school’ as a mere blip makes my heart sink. It is so much more. Your child may be safe. But other children are not. When professionals say ‘children are safer in school’ it’s because they are."

We know that in the first wave of the pandemic, levels of domestic violence increased. Decision making at both national and local level is heavily skewed in favour of a male world view. 

That world view dominates to the detriment of women and children.

Sadly as we commemorate the foundation of this state in the coming years, we are still in the position of women’s voices being silenced. Good decision making is about the involvement of all those impacted. I hope the Cabinet in 2021 understands that.

Colette Finn

Green Party

Cork City Council

Waterford Whispers to get TV show?

I’ve no great desire to join the controversy about the New Year’s Eve show on RTÉ. As someone attempting to follow Jesus — a difficult act — I would like to join with him in his words from the cross: “Father forgive them for they know not what they do.”

I didn’t watch the show but, from what I hear, it strikes me as, perhaps, a bit of adolescent posturing. However, I predict that Waterford Whispers will have their own show on RTÉ in the not-too-distant future; perhaps that is what they are aiming for.

Oliver JJ Broderick

Youghal

Co Cork

RTÉ has its own religious ‘pets’

You correctly state that in a democracy we should be free to cause offence — ‘Satire is not hate speech’  Irish Examiner , Editorial, January 5).

However, RTÉ clearly has certain “pets” when it comes to both satire and news reporting. Christianity, and especially the Roman Catholic Church, is treated as fair game, but certain other faiths and groups get handled with kid gloves.

Groupthink flourishes in RTÉ because its army of managers, producers, directors, researchers, etc, lack intellectual and ideological diversity.

Trust in the media is important for a healthy democracy. However, the media can only be trusted if it is fair and unbiased, and not governed by the prejudices of progressives and leftists.

Karl Martin

Bayside

Dublin 13