The National Immunisation Advisory Committee (NIAC) will this week advise on the use of the J&Js vaccine. With a similar risk profile to AstraZeneca’s vaccine, they may recommend limiting use to the over 60s. Unfortunately, if we limit the use of these viral vector vaccines to specific ages it will slow public vaccination. The risk of severe blood clotting events is between 1 and 10 cases per million. These events are serious but very rare; they are also treatable. The EMA advised: “Benefits continue to far outweigh the risks.” Internationally, the situation is precarious with 1.9m Covid cases in India over seven days. These rates are due to political mismanagement, taking
insufficient preventative measures. What isn’t political are high mortality rates among younger people compared to previous waves. In Delhi, 65% of cases are under 40 years. There is a real possibility that these rates are due to the emergence of worrying variants. The situation in India, and how Europe is reacting, has parallels with the start of the pandemic when people believed it was something “far away” which would not affect us. There was a feeling that everything would blow over, it was just a bad flu; we could ignore the negative stories despite the evidence. We’re in a better position than we were then, the vaccines are working.
However, the reality is that we are not out of this yet. We need to vaccinate the entire population quickly. While cases remain high globally there is an increased risk of more dangerous or vaccine-resistant variants. Assessments of risks utilise the precautionary principle. With Covid and vector vaccines it has been misapplied, incorrectly limiting assessments to national rather than a global outlook. The current view that we’re coming to an end of this pandemic, that things are under control, is hubris, and it may prove very costly.
Risks with viral vector vaccines are low; patients who suffer reactions can be treated. What is uncertain, and where we should apply the precautionary principle, is how Covid variants will spread; we cannot afford to turn our noses up at safe and effective vaccines. In a few months, if variants currently circulating throughout India are the predominant variants globally how will our under 60s feel about being left unvaccinated for their own safety?
Darragh Connaughton
Athlone
Westmeath
Restrictions for day honouring soldiers
The consequences of Covid are everywhere. There are a number of sensible restrictions designed to minimise the potential spread of the virus but not all restrictions are sensible.
Australia marked its memorial day (Anzac Day) yesterday for those who fought and died during the Second World War and the ceremony normally draws a crowd of over 100,000 but this year the crowd was limited to 8,000 and enforced with steel fences around the venue. In the afternoon is a football match which often draws a crowd of over 90,000 but this year the crowd was limited to 85,000. The Anzac crowd is usually quiet, respectable and well managed whereas the football match is quite the opposite, a rowdy football crowd.
There are many that will miss the chance to attend and pay their respects to the fallen, but everyone will be either able to go to the game or watch it on TV. There has been some discussion about the different crowd sizes but surely there should be a greater respect for those that stood up to protect their country?
We will remember the fallen.
Dennis Fitzgerald
Landale St Box Hill
Vic Melbourne
Australia
Homemaking was to be respected
It remains to be seen if the hopes expressed by the Citizen’s Assembly for a change to Article 42.1 of the constitution will come to pass, but irrespective, we have long moved away from the view that a woman’s place is in the home. Nowadays, her place would appear to be anywhere except the home, be it at an office, a computer, or a place where she will enhance the family’s financial well-being, even if this entails expensive child-minding costs. And while not decrying material advancement, this too appears to be coming at a cost.
While the mostly single-income families with stay-at-home mothers of previous generations were undoubtedly lacking materially, comments by Michele Borba, described recently in The Irish Examiner as one of the world’s most respected educational psychologists, indicate that our world hasn’t exactly produced a bed of roses either. Ryan O’Rourke wrote that Dr Borba “believes student mental health is plummeting, depression rates among teenagers are rising, and young people are reporting severe anxiety at ever younger ages”. She also believes that today’s well-educated youngsters are the loneliest, most self-centred, saddest, and most stressed on record.
In a run-up to any constitutional change, we will hear tales of deprivation and oppression due to archaic views on the roles of women in Irish society. However, if we accept Dr Borba’s expert views on the current state of affairs, we might well conclude that the era of the full-time homemaker was a time to be celebrated.
Rory O’Donovan
Killeens
Co Cork
Abortion affects more than just one
I read Louise O’Neill’s piece in Saturday’s Weekend with interest and considerable agreement. However, I found myself somewhat perplexed when she stated: “If I decide to have an abortion, the only person that choice impacts is me.” Might I suggest to Louise a little thought experiment: Louise’s mother is pregnant with Louise and decides to have an abortion. Is Louise’s mother the only person impacted?
Oliver Broderick
Ashe St
Youghal
Co Cork
Insight into life’s loss cannot be measured
Compensation cannot put things right for those with negligently inflicted catastrophic injuries, but it can help fund treatment, therapies, and care. Plaintiffs are entitled to be compensated for their pain and suffering, however, and for those with a catastrophic injury, life is changed forevermore.
Perhaps one of the most troubling features of new personal injuries guidelines which came into force last Saturday is in the section which covers those injuries resulting in a foreshortened life expectancy where it is stated that: “At the bottom, range will be the person who has no insight into their loss.” The idea that insight is a prerequisite is questionable. Is that to say that a child with cerebral palsy and associated severe learning disability due to negligence at birth need not be fully compensated for pain and suffering because they will never be able to understand their loss?
Can we as members of a progressive society really say that because these people may never know what it feels like to be “normal”, that it matters less? Loss of facility is an absolute concept; it does not depend upon the victim’s ability to evaluate it.
Doireann O’Mahony
Courthouse Chambers
Washington St
Cork
Gardaí were acting under a court order
Many have expressed concern at what they consider “distressing” images of gardaí removing former Debenhams employees from in front of the premises, Dublin.
I would remind those people the gardaí in this instance were acting on foot of a court order which in turn was issued in accordance with Laws passed by Houses of the Oireachtas.
People should therefore express their concern to “elected representatives” who are ultimately responsible for the laws passed.
Michael A Moriarty
Rochestown
Cork
More than a priest needed for a Mass
The government thinks only the priest is necessary at Mass and the congregation and even readers are not. This is based on a flawed understanding of what the mass is.
It’s true that, in Catholicism, only the priest has the place of Jesus in consecrating the bread and wine as the body and blood of Christ offered on Calvary. Jesus did not die in isolation, however; his sacrifice would have been pointless were there no people to save. The Catholic Mass is not another mere spectacle for people to yawn their way through or chat about ‘the match’ at the back of the Church. It is the reliving of Calvary. What is our role there? Are we disinterested bystanders; those who mocked Christ; those going about their lives unaware; or those who stood by to the end to console Christ and accept his offer of salvation? That is why the Church has taught that it is sinful to avoid going to public mass at least once a week on Sunday, with the understanding that going means to actively participate. Deliberately avoiding mass implies avoiding what is on offer at Calvary.
The government have placed the faithful Catholic in a quandary. When we face the final judge will we be judged as people who did their best to follow Jesus to Calvary, or as those who made it a criminal offence to do so?
Nick Folley
Ardcarrig
Carrigaline
Co Cork
