Irish Quandary: Who to Blame When Everyone’s Vaxxed?

No one seems curious about the prevalence of the disease in an almost fully vaccinated population.

During his Thursday town hall meeting with CNN’s Anderson Cooper, President Joe Biden blithely dismissed the most basic assertion of those who have chosen to resist a COVID-19 vaccination. “Freedom? I have the freedom to kill you with my COVID,” scoffed Biden. “No, I mean come on — freedom.”

In his literally mindless way, Biden said out loud what health officials everywhere have been implying since the vaccines became widely available. Those who are not vaccinated are killing their more responsible peers.

In the Republic of Ireland, however, health officials are running out of people to blame. This has becoming embarrassingly obvious in County Waterford. As reported in the Irish Times, the nation’s establishment newspaper, two of the three most COVID-infected electoral areas in Ireland are located in the county “with the highest rate of vaccination in the country.” In Waterford, a remarkable 99.7 percent of adults over the age of 18 is fully vaccinated.

The Waterford news caught my attention because the first American “Cashills” hail from County Waterford. My great-great-grandfather came to America in 1847, “Black 47” as they called it, the mid-point of a potato famine that saw more than one million Irish die from starvation or disease and another million flee the country. For all their travails, the Irish were a hardy, freedom-loving people then. With some notable exceptions, they are neither anymore.

I have visited Ireland often over the years, lived there on two occasions, and watched the imperial Left slowly squeeze the heart out of Irish culture. The Ireland of today is not the Ireland of the Easter Rising. It is an Ireland whose almost total submission to the COVID authorities was as predictable as its giddy acceptance in 2018 of abortion on demand.

Embarrassed by Ireland’s traditional Catholicism, the nation’s media and government elites have been busily importing the whole enchilada of woke values concocted in the U.S. and codified in the EU — unrestricted sexual freedom, radical feminism, gay rights, divorce, alternative family structure, gay marriage, thoughtless immigration, anti-Americanism, and now COVID mania.

With their near lock on what the Irish hear and read, the elites have largely shamed their fellow citizens into acceptance or silence. Unlike America, Ireland has no effective alternative media. As a result, the range of acceptable opinion on controversial issues is as narrow as a country lane. In its most orthodox moment, the Irish Catholic Church could not have been more oppressive or vengeful than the monolithic Irish cultural establishment of the early 21st century. With the arrival of COVID, that establishment showed the common people its teeth.

As late as April 2021, Irish citizens were not allowed to travel more than three miles from their homes. All schools and churches were shut down, as were all bars, restaurants, and construction sites. Even after Ireland “eased out” of these restrictions in April, travel was limited to 12 miles and people were still not allowed to have...

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