Rónán Mullen highlights Zero Covid ‘scare tactics’

Bradley Bytes – a sort of political column with Dara Bradley

Galway Senator Rónán Mullen drives the right-on, Left-but-always-right brigade bananas with his conservative, Catholic, Right-of-centre take on life. But the former NUIG Students’ Union President did the State some service when he highlighted in the Seanad the scare tactics employed by the ‘Zero Covid’ campaign, which advocates for harsher lockdown measures.

He cited internal correspondence of what he described the “so-called” Independent Scientific Advisory Group, which is pushing for a Zero Covid approach in Ireland.

“Many of the members of the group are virtually household names, such is the regularity of their appearances in the media. Its internal correspondence suggests that the group is not basing its positions on strict science but, in fact, has been massaging the facts to try to entice politicians into adopting a Zero Covid strategy,” Senator Mullen told the Seanad.

He added: “Four weeks ago, the head of the group wrote to its members asking them to ‘look for ways to increase insecurity, anxiety and uncertainty’ and to ‘go after people and not institutions’ because ‘people hurt faster than institutions’.

“He stated that ridicule ‘is man’s most powerful weapon’ and that ‘the threat of a thing is usually more terrifying than the thing itself’. In other words, people should be scared into accepting Zero Covid.”

You might not like who is saying it, but Senator Rónán Mullen raised a valid issue.

Scaremongering by lobby groups is nothing new – it is used all the time. But it just doesn’t sit well that a group of academics and scientists would deliberately exploit the nation’s already heightened fears about this deadly virus to persuade the population to accept the Zero Covid thesis.

Its website describes zero Covid strategy as “A better way forward: Toward Elimination of Covid-19”. And it may very well have merit. But surely it can better advocate for that strategy in a way that doesn’t scare the bejaysus out of us.

How are these tactics any different to anti-lockdown groups on the Right who, for example, scaremonger about the other – societal and economic – impacts of the pandemic in order to push for restrictions to be eased?

The Social Democrats, who appear to have swallowed ISAG’s thesis, should distance itself from tactics that would ‘increase insecurity, anxiety and uncertainty’.

We have quite enough of that already, thank you very much.
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