At their press conference on Wednesday [1], NPHET members were asked why their advice is that public worship should not take place under Level 3 of the Government’s living with Covid plan. Dr Ronan Glynn said their view is that activities considered “less important” to society “in the context of a pandemic” should cease in that level.
This means public worship is considered less important than restaurants, shops, hairdressers, gyms etc which can all remain open under Level 3, while public worship must stop. (Dublin and Donegal are currently under Level 3 and a bit).
The NPHET members were also asked why we are the only country in Europe that is presently requiring that public worship be stopped in certain regions, especially as there is very little direct evidence to back such a move.
The Acting Chief Medical Officer, Dr Ronan Glynn responded, and the most telling part of his answer was as follows:
“The underlying objective for level 3 is to decrease discretionary social contact, it’s to decrease relatively speaking, and it’s not to anyway minimise the importance of these activities for individuals, but as a society it’s to decrease contacts in areas that, as a society, are relatively speaking in the context of a pandemic less important, so we have choices to make: we can have contacts for healthcarers, contacts are schools, in our universities, in our workplaces but we can’t have them everywhere so it is not per se, it should not be seen as an overarching message that going to Mass, for example, is a highly risky thing to do but the reality is it is one more opportunity for social contact, discretionary social contact and unfortunately, given the trajectory that we’ve seen, NPHET recommended that those types of social contact needed to be paused for a number of weeks so that, in our opinion, other more important social contacts could continue.”
Dr Glynn was pressed again on why we are at present the only country in Europe to impose such advice and whether we are being overly- cautious given that other countries are also receiving excellent scientific advice and do not see the need to stop public worship.
He answered:
“Maybe in time that would be deemed to be the case but I would much prefer in a few weeks time to have been accused of being too cautious than don’t have not been cautious enough.”
But this again raises the issue of proportionality. Is stopping public worship at the present time proportionate to the risk given the excellent job churches are doing at keeping people safe. No other European country at present thinks such a move is proportionate.
In fact, in France in May the courts ordered [2] the Government to permit public worship again, with suitable safety protocols, on the grounds of proportionality and respect for freedom of religion.
ENDS
Dr Glynn’s full response plus questions are as follows:
David Quinn: Why have we become such an outlier [in respect of stopping public worship] in the whole of Europe, in just one city?
Ronan Glynn: So, again, I think it’s important that people understand that each level is specifically designed as a package of measures with an underlying objective. The underlying objective for level 3 is to decrease discretionary social contact, it’s to decrease relatively speaking, and it’s not to anyway minimise the importance of these activities for individuals, but as a society it’s to decrease contacts in areas that, as a society, are relatively speaking in the context of a pandemic less important, so we have choices to make: we can have contacts for healthcarers, contacts are schools, in our universities, in our workplaces but we can’t have them everywhere so it is not per se, it should not be seen as an overarching message that going to Mass, for example, is a highly risky thing to do but the reality is it is one more opportunity for social contact, discretionary social contact and unfortunately, given the trajectory that we’ve seen, NPHET recommended that those types of social contact needed to be paused for a number of weeks so that, in our opinion, other more important social contacts could continue. To your second point, why are we an outlier. We are an outlier because, despite the fact that we had relatively few cases in our hospitals, relatively few cases in our critical care units, we’re already seeing that impact on the ability of our healthcare system on to provide other services and so we need to protect those other services. We also now because we want to protect our population. Other countries will take different approaches, many countries haven’t closed restaurants in major cities, for example, and that’s perfectly valid but we can only really assess whether or not they are correct or we are correct or the course of action we’ve taken or they’re taking is correct with the passage of time and it’s simply too early to make a judgement on that at this point .
DQ: But when you have a continent of 500 million and you have so many regions, so many health authorities and we’re the only one in Europe, to do this in Dublin, it does surely indicate that maybe we have been too cautious about it. Obviously the German authorities are getting excellent advice and so on, so why again, are we overly cautious?
RG: Maybe in time that would be deemed to be the case but I would much prefer in a few weeks time to have been accused of being too cautious than don’t have not been cautious enough. Look at the trajectory of this disease across Western Europe, the easy thing for us to do is to sit on this and just watch, and watch, and watch, our hospital fill up, watch our critical care units fill up, and then make decisions, when everyone is convinced that making those decisions were absolutely the right thing to do, but that’s not our job. We’re here to make tough recommendations at a point at which we think they need to be made to protect the health and public health for population, we know they’re not popular but in our view the recommendations were made last week, we made at the appropriate time, again at time will tell.
The exchange can be found here [1]. It begins at 56 minutes and 30 seconds.