Covid-19 'no more dangerous than flu', says Cork priest
Gurranabraher parish priest Fr Tomás Walsh said the saturation of Covid-19 news has resulted in fear and paralysis.
A Cork priest has made claims in his local parish newsletter that coronavirus is “no more dangerous than the seasonal flu” and says the annual death toll in Ireland will be roughly the same as any other year.
Gurranabraher parish priest Fr Tomás Walsh made a series of claims in a number of letters that have been distributed throughout his parish.
“The saturation of Covid-19 news across the media resulting in fear and paralysis throughout the land is without precedent," wrote Fr Walsh in a letter dated Sunday, October 25.
"Sane voices are desperately needed to put this Coronavirus into perspective — and to come up with proportionate responses. The truth must be told that Covid-19 is no more dangerous than a seasonal flu — to be taken seriously for sure, but certainly not to close down the whole of society with its catastrophic consequences.”
Fr Walsh claims he has no doubt the virus is real but that its deadly nature has been overstated.
“There will be no more deaths that will occur this year in Ireland, than any year before.
“That Covid-19 ‘Positive’ figures are rising is easily explained by the fact that more and more tests are being carried out. The sensational way that a Covid-19 outbreak this weekend in a Galway nursing nome, where 25 residents out of 27 were diagnosed ‘Positive’, was used to stroke-up further Covid-19 fears is sheer propaganda.
“The fact that none of these residents needed hospitalization is proof that Covid-19 is not the killer virus that we are led to believe. Common sense is the first victim of this virus!”
The can confirm that one of the affected patients at the Nightingale Nursing Home in Ahascragh, to which Fr Walsh was referring, died, with at least two others having been transferred to hospital for treatment.
Fr Walsh called for the Government to allow Mass to be held once again, as well as allowing for the practice of other religions, within safe guidelines.
“I think it is outrageous that we can not hold a mass of 50 people when our church can hold 1400. We would continue to advise people who have underlying health conditions to stay at home, but others should be allowed to come and practice their faith.
"The people themselves don’t want Covid. It is part of the Catholic doctrine that believers come to mass at least once a week.”
Fr Walsh says that the elderly in this country have felt the worst of the Covid restrictions.
“The old in this country have been abused by both church and state,” he said.
In another parish newsletter, dated Sunday, November 1, Fr Walsh said: “One of the important protocols listed for ‘end of life’ care in nursing homes is the necessity for the old to have access to spiritual care and sustenance. Since the lockdown in March 2020, almost all nursing homes have deprived residents access to sacraments and to visits from priests.
“To have cut this lifeline from the old whose focus and hope, in many cases, is on eternity, is a national scandal.
"If our national hospitals have judged that the chaplaincy services are an integral part of the ‘service of care’ it offers its patients — even in lockdown situations — why should these in nursing homes have this essential service deprived them. As Christians, we should raise our voices loudly for those who have no voice.”
The HSE's guidelines on long-term residential care specifically include those providing chaplaincy services in the list of essential service providers.
