'My duty is to speak out,
I do not want to be an accomplice' - Emile Zola
Last week, Dr Ciara Kelly challenged the Dublin government's insistence on the imposition of level 5 restrictions for a six week period as a necessary measure to curb the spread of Covid 19. While far from convinced that she has called it right, I welcomed her contribution to a discourse which seemed to be increasingly timid in the face of a regime of hush.
A public broadcaster, Kelly, up until August, had for three years hosted Newstalk Lunchtime Live but has since taken over the Newstalk Breakfast slot from which she aired her critical views. It allowed her to reach a wide audience which is probably what infuriated some of her detractors who seemed eager to take their masks off for the purpose of spitting venom her way.
While much of the critical commentary was robust it remained civil. At the same time there was no shortage of suggestions that Kelly, who tested positive for the virus in March, was some rabid right winger in the pay of big business, a Nazi fellow traveler, unfit to be a public broadcaster, a stooge of the ruling class, an unreconstructed Thatcherite prepared to sacrifice the vulnerable for the sake of preserving the capitalist economy, an advocate of 5000 people dying ... ad nauseum.
Much of this seemed pulled straight out of the jacksie, none of it grounded in plausible substance. Nowhere did she not advocate that citizens physically defy the government and break the law, cough and sneeze on everybody within reach or turn up with a tin hat at the next anti-masking protest waving a tricolour. Her thought crime amounted to saying:
While much of the critical commentary was robust it remained civil. At the same time there was no shortage of suggestions that Kelly, who tested positive for the virus in March, was some rabid right winger in the pay of big business, a Nazi fellow traveler, unfit to be a public broadcaster, a stooge of the ruling class, an unreconstructed Thatcherite prepared to sacrifice the vulnerable for the sake of preserving the capitalist economy, an advocate of 5000 people dying ... ad nauseum.
Much of this seemed pulled straight out of the jacksie, none of it grounded in plausible substance. Nowhere did she not advocate that citizens physically defy the government and break the law, cough and sneeze on everybody within reach or turn up with a tin hat at the next anti-masking protest waving a tricolour. Her thought crime amounted to saying:
I think it is the fact that in 2021, 2022 and 2023 deaths will be higher as a consequence of our behaviour in 2020. No one will talk about that — We’ll lose lives from this as well. I’m not alone — There are loads of doctors who feel the exact same as we put we don’t hear them. All around the country today, there will be people in absolute despair at this news. I am very afraid that, on balance, we are getting it wrong.
‘It is about the fact that in January the cases will climb again and we will be back to square one. We will have gained nothing other than being able to party for Christmas.
Kelly further alleged that the National Public Health Emergency Team was ‘flying in the face” of the World Health Organisation (WHO) by implementing more restrictions. In this she appears to be in step with WHO:
While, for now, at variance with Ciara Kelly on the usefulness of a lockdown, I firmly believe this is the type of discussion Irish society should be having, North and South. Dissenting doctors such as Ann McCloskey should not be on the receiving end of an email from the General Medical Council merely because she questioned the efficacy of masks.
We in the World Health Organization do not advocate lockdowns as the primary means of control of this virus … the only time we believe a lockdown is justified is to buy you time to reorganize, regroup, rebalance your resources, protect your health workers who are exhausted, but by and large, we’d rather not do it.
While, for now, at variance with Ciara Kelly on the usefulness of a lockdown, I firmly believe this is the type of discussion Irish society should be having, North and South. Dissenting doctors such as Ann McCloskey should not be on the receiving end of an email from the General Medical Council merely because she questioned the efficacy of masks.
For some as yet inexplicable reason Ciara Kelly's twitter account is no longer live. It might be related to the impact previous abuse has had on her.
I've been accused of things that I'm not as if they are fact, and then people have told me to kill myself, told me that they wish I was dead, told me they don't know how I live with myself, how I sleep at night, that they hate me, they despise everything I stand for. People I don't know from Adam talk about me like they know me and it makes me feel sick. It makes me feel physically sick when I'm in that zone, but it is part and parcel of being a woman with a profile at the moment with the way the online world works and that's just the way it is.
Vicious. Perhaps those who seek to suffocate a diversity of opinion think society would be better off if what Professor Kathleen Lynch feared two decades ago was to become even more entrenched, a situation in which 'there has been a neutralisation of public discourse and debate. A language of sameness prevails'.
To portray a competent dissenting voice as a Ciaronavirus that needs the vaccine of abuse and censorship to keep it suppressed is itself a malaise that is best treated by a good dose of "fuck off." As Eddie Holt wrote in 2001:
critical analysis and opposition even if unpopular in some circles, is the heart of democracy. When political representatives cannot or will not provide it, then the citizen must.
Which is what Ciara Kelly did.
Sticking fingers in our own ears and wishing it would all go away is not going to resolve the fundamental differences of opinion that have arisen around how best to tackle the pandemic. Yet, it is better than sticking a gag in the mouths of those we would rather not hear. Ciara Kelly, like the rest of us, should comply with the lockdown and accept the advice to wear a mask. She should not under any circumstance wear a muzzle.
⏩Follow on Twitter @AnthonyMcIntyre.
