Fintan O’Toole: Official messaging on pandemic a mess

In the early weeks of the pandemic in Ireland, we also had an outbreak of control freakery. The Government was obsessed with the need to control the message.

Civil servants were instructed to clear every little announcement about everything under the sun through the Taoiseach’s department – even those that had nothing to do with Covid-19.

Journalists struggled to get basic information. No questions were allowed at the morning press briefings in Government Buildings.

For briefings by senior Ministers, journalists were told to submit questions in advance – presumably so that the Ministers could also clear their answers in advance with the Taoiseach’s department.

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Fintan O’Toole: Why all the dithering on antigen testing in Ireland?

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This strategy was counterproductive. But it was also understandable.

Faced with an unfolding and unpredictable emergency, the Government understood that clear and unambiguous communication was literally vital. The authorities had to speak with one voice.

To be fair about this, there is a genuine problem. Governments are told: follow the science

This determination was wildly overdone. But things have now swung all the way to the opposite extreme.

Control freakery has given way to a free for all. Messaging has become mere mess.

To be fair about this, there is a genuine problem. Governments are told: follow the science. But when faced with a virus no one even knew existed two years ago, “the science” is not a single, fixed body of knowledge. It is educated guesswork. What makes any statement scientific is not that it is “true” but that it is capable of being proved false.

It is a hypothesis that has to be adjusted and refined as new evidence becomes available. And with this pandemic, new evidence is being developed on a massive scale, in relation to both the behaviour of the virus and the effectiveness of vaccines and other preventative measures.

So good, highly expert and public spirited scientists will disagree with each other, sometimes very strongly. Non-experts like myself can read and cite, for example the Ferguson report on the use of antigen testing, published by the Department of Health last April.

But we should also acknowledge that two of the five members of Prof Mark Ferguson’s committee dissociated themselves from its report. One of them, Dr Lorraine Doherty, is the HSE’s national clinical director for health protection. The other, Dr Darina O’Flanagan, is a special adviser to the National Public Health Emergency Team (Nphet).

It is not easy for Government to deal with such divisions among those it relies on for guidance. To merely deny them would be to engage in a “not in front of the children” infantilisation of the public.

Being honest about the uncertainty of the science, and thus of any messaging based on it, is one thing, though. Engaging in endless argument that confuses the public about official policy is quite another.

On October 18th, the Taoiseach said that he was a “strong believer in antigen testing” and that ways to extend its use would be considered by the Government “over the next 24 hours”.

When a Taoiseach says that, a line has been drawn. A decision has been made – the important thing is to explain it clearly to the public and get on with implementing it.

But there is an abiding resistance to this policy within the network of official advisers. It’s based on a sincere but highly questionable belief that the public can’t be trusted to understand antigen tests or to use them properly.

There was an extraordinary moment last June at a hearing on antigen tests held by the Oireachtas transport committee. One of the experts, Prof Mary Keogan, consultant immunologist and national clinical lead for pathology, held up two antigen tests, one negative and one positive. She announced that she had created the negative result by putting butter on the test. She produced the positive result with tonic water.

The implication was clear – self-administered tests are worse than useless because people can cheat. This was very much in line with the description by Nphet's chief modeller Prof Philip Nolan of a test being sold in a supermarket chain as "snake oil".

Perhaps to a certain kind of scientific mind it seems obvious that if people can do something they must be doing it

What was not produced, however, was any evidence that lots of Irish people are in fact cheating on antigen tests. Perhaps to a certain kind of scientific mind it seems obvious that if people can do something they must be doing it.

That suspicion seems unshakeable. Even after the Government decided on Monday last week to move ahead with a wider use of antigen testing, its chief medical adviser Dr Tony Holohan continued to lobby against the policy.

This open division has two bad effects. It slows down all decision making – Northern Ireland has been using antigen tests widely in primary schools since March, but the Republic is only starting to do so now. And it produces messaging that is not just mixed but self-cancelling. Parents are being told both that they should use antigen tests at home for their children and that doing so is not just useless but actively counterproductive.

This is a very risky business. There is enough misinformation and paranoia out there already. If the authorities are speaking with forked tongues, the only people who benefit are those who want to sow further confusion.

There is a difference between doubt and muddle. This far into the emergency, those in charge should be able to admit the first without creating the second.