Irish doctors call for living with the virus with a “proportionate de-escalation of the current exclusive focus on Covid-19 to the exclusion of all other health and wellbeing needs of our Irish society”.
The frontline doctors in the group say they feel more confident about managing the disease now and believe “we can effectively co-exist with the virus”. They say current “unilaterally enforced national strategy” has not evolved in step with improve scientific understanding since the spring.
“We are in effect managing this as a ‘crisis’, from day to day, level to level – as though it were March 2020 when the actual crisis was present,” according to the letter.
Other signatories include surgeon Martin Feeley, who resigned as clinical director of the Dublin Midlands Hospital Group last month after criticising the country’s approach to tackling the virus; one-time contraception campaigner Dr Andrew Rynne, who spoke at an anti-lockdown and anti-mask march in Dublin earlier this month; and retired GP and Aontú councillor in Derry, Dr Anne McCloskey, who has compared using masks to stop the spread of the virus to “using a sheep fence to keep out mosquitoes”.
https://www.irishtimes.com/news/health/doctors-letter-calls-for-new-strategy-to-co-exist-with-covid-19-1.4384968