The Hard Conversation

There’s something very sinister going on behind the scenes in the world present. I haven’t wanted to believe it but everything that’s happening currently indicates that it is so. We cannot and should not ignore it any longer. There is a famous line in a Clint Eastwood movie- “ Don’t P..s down my back and tell me it’s raining “ It’s very apt when considering what’s going on at present. Society is at serious risk of never again being able to interact as we did 8 or 9 months ago. All this for a disease that is no more threatening than the flu about which we do nothing because we realised long ago it wasn’t appropriate.   The simple social interactions such as giving somebody a hug or shaking hands could be a thing of the past. We may never again be able to enjoy different cultures or even different customs and atmospheres within our own country. It will all be controlled and sanitised to the point that it is unnatural to us making us more robotic in an unnaturally controlled environme...

  “Imagine if you are as free now as you will ever be for the rest of your life” Most people are not even considering this and refuse to countenance that it could actually happen. Governments have a pretty good track record in making a bad situation worse, the financial crisis of 2008 being a recent example. There are those amongst us who would like to control our every move and this pandemic has presented them with a golden opportunity. In the 1950’s under the threat of an atomic bomb children were taught Duck and Cover Techniques to protect themselves. This typically meant hiding under their desks as if that would protect them from an atomic bomb landing nearby. Nevertheless teachers and pupils alike did it religiously. This was a fear based response which made people feel they were doing something to protect themselves when clearly they weren’t.   The measures being adopted by society today in terms of the lockdown are similar in nature. The mask has become the ultimate sym...

The current obsession the world has with trying to eradicate risk from our daily lives is not a result of the pandemic. The pandemic has just taken it to another level. In fact this desire to alleviate all risk from our lives has been at the core of how society has been changing over the last 30 years at least. At some point we transitioned from seeing structure and control as a mechanism to maintain our freedoms to a situation where we impose controls as a means of eliminating as much risk as we can from every situation possible. At the same time modern technologies were being developed at a rate which the world has never experienced before. This meant that the tools were increasingly available to allow governments and their offshoots to impose greater and greater control. It’s hard to know which fed which but the outcome is clear. To facilitate this trend legislation was required. Rules and regulations had to be imposed. This led to an avalanche of bureaucrats and consul...

It was refreshing to read the views of Dr Ivor Browne in today’s Irish independent. At 93 years of age he has a terrific attitude about death, personal responsibility and living life which we could all learn from. He is a retired psychiatrist with a history of not being afraid to challenge the convention of the day. As a spritely 93 year old with vast experience in mental health our newly formed government would do worse than entertain his views. So far this year 29M people have died worldwide. 500,000 of those have died from COVID-19. On may 20 th this year there had been 320,000 deaths worldwide from COVID-19. Within the same period 3.1M people died of cancer, 5M from all communicable diseases and 1.9M from the effects of smoking. Suicide and mental health issues will only fully manifest themselves over time but nevertheless will be a consequence of the lockdown. Governments across the western world addressed the Pandemic by doing two things. They handed the running of their...

The most significant death that could emanate from this pandemic is that of the free world. To the flat earther's I suggest “maybe the world is round after all “. Extreme levels of fear make us hysterical. Hysteria makes us irrational and leads to the kind of reaction we might expect from people who are prepared to trample on their friends and relatives in order to get out of a burning building. Conversely when we are in control and being rational we make perfectly good decisions every day balancing risk and reward. Will I cross the street here? Will I buy that car? What restaurant should we eat in? we balance our decisions based on whether we might get run down or can I afford that car or will we like the food in that restaurant etc. etc. For the past three months the world has been in a state of hysteria. We are not processing any risk and reward calculations because of fear. Since the fire alarm went off we are convinced that the building is burning to the ground and no...

We must lift the lockdown with immediate effect which means we should aim for June the 1 st . Meanwhile we should allow people to move around freely from a social perspective. Over the next 2 weeks businesses and other organisations should prepare themselves to open. This requires leadership and courage. Our leaders must balance the risks and the  implications of all options. Any sensible scrutiny will establish two things. Firstly that we can’t afford to keep the economy locked down and that it must be opened up fully, not partially. Secondly that the people will not agree with you initially because of the level of hysteria that has been generated in the past two months. We must all dig deep and have courage but the leaders must lead. They don’t have the luxury as has become common practice to check if the people will agree with them before doing anything. The initial reaction by governments was understandable. People wanted action and they needed to do something to sat...