GERMAN authorities announced on Tuesday of this week that the world famous Oktoberfest has been cancelled.

It was due to begin on the September 19, roundabout when the All-Ireland football final would normally be played. The Bavarian government concluded “there is no realistic possibility that we will have a vaccine by then and without a vaccine, allowing large crowds to gather together is impossible.” The Germans have been ahead of this throughout, and have a death-rate which is more than 50% less than Ireland (north and south) and almost five times lower than the UK.

We are shadow boxing with a virus that has no cure. Our social distancing has only been holding us back from the sort of catastrophe that has submerged Spanish and Italian hospitals. As Professor Graham Smedley (Director of the UK Centre for Mathematical modelling of infectious diseases) put it last Thursday, “People need to be clear that all that has happened so far is that lockdown measures have stopped health systems from becoming overwhelmed.”

Neil Ferguson, professor of epidemiology and mathematical biology at Imperial College London, and the UK government’s senior Covid-19 advisor, was asked a few days ago about a timescale for return to normality. He said “At the moment, we have relatively little leeway. If we relax measures too much we will see a surge. No matter what happens, it is not going to go back to normal. We will have to maintain social distancing, a significant level of social distancing, probably indefinitely until we have a vaccine available.”

It is now clear that until there is a vaccine, events involving crowds are impossible. The Spanish government announced on Wednesday that the Pamplona Bull Run, which begins in mid July and is the most watched live TV event in the Spanish calendar, is off. Every year, one million people descend on Pamplona for this wild series of bull runs. On average 100 participants are injured. Sometimes a runner is gored to death. It is an event that is second only in dangerousness to the Slaughtneil Disco.

In the town of Bunol, near Valencia, the Mayor and his council meet on Monday to decide the fate of the annual Tomatina. It was due to take place on August 26 but it is now certain to be cancelled. Held each year in August, it is another wacky Spanish tradition, where 20,000 participants gather in the walled town and pelt each other from dawn to daybreak with hundreds of thousands of ripe tomatoes (it was estimated that 145,000 kilos were thrown at the 2015 event).

The tomato fight dates back to 1945, when during a parade through the town, one of the participants had his giant papier-mâché head knocked off, went berserk, chased the culprit and fell into a market stall of tomatoes, knocking them all to the ground. A fight started, then spread through the crowd, and soon they were pelting each other with tomatoes. Now, it has become so big that the 20,000 competitors have to pay to take part. The rules are as follows:

1. No bottles or hard objects can be thrown.

2. Do not tear or throw clothes.

3. Do not punch, kick or wrestle.

4. Follow the directions of security personnel.

All of which could apply to any club championship game in Tyrone in the ’80s.

Spain’s famous Haro Wine Battle has also been pulled. Haro is a village in the heart of the Rioja wine region, where the coronavirus outbreak has been particularly lethal. Every summer, thousands of competitors gather and run amok through the town, drenching each other in over 70,000 litres of red wine. And we thought we were mad?

These decisions are inevitable. With this plague, there are only unknowns. There is no vaccine yet (this will take an absolute minimum of 12-18 months). It is not known if a vaccine will be possible at all. On Wednesday this week, China’s top team of infectious disease experts, led by world renowned Professor Li Lanjuan, released shocking new research that shows the virus is mutating at a rate that no one could have anticipated. Using a technique called ultra deep sequencing, they identified 33 mutations of coronavirus. They concluded that “the true nature and diversity of the virus is still largely underappreciated.” How do you find a cure for a plague you don’t understand?

Nor do the scientists know if having been infected means we become immune. On Saturday past, at a press conference in Geneva, the WHO’s infectious diseases team leader Dr Maria Van Kerkhove, warned governments who are putting their faith in antibody testing that “there is no proof that those who have been infected cannot be infected again.”

Mr Tim Brown, the renowned consultant transplant surgeon at the City Hospital spoke to me recently by Skype from The City, which has temporarily been turned into a Covid hospital. In the course of a lengthy interview with him about the prospect of playing the championship, any championship, this year, he said

“This is new for the human race. There are only unknowns. We have no idea whether herd immunity is even achievable because we don’t know if people who have had covid become immune. If they do, acquiring herd immunity means around 90% of the population would need to be infected, which would mean almost six million people on the island of Ireland and at least 60,000-100,000 deaths. But if having previously had covid doesn’t confer immunity, then there is no herd immunity.

“Another unknown is that we have no idea if a successful vaccine can be created. Even if the pioneering RNA/DNA work going on at the moment cracks it in record time, there would need to be lengthy patient trials, then global mass production. The bottom line is that restarting the GAA championships in 2020 would trigger an uncontrolled chain of infection transmission and result in a national tragedy. There are more important issues to consider than watching someone kick a ball over the bar.”

Professor William Hanage of Harvard, a world authority on infectious diseases, responded this week to people asking “What the hell are we locking down for?” by writing an article titled “No matter how you crunch the numbers, this pandemic is only getting started.” He said there were so many unknowns that ending lockdown completely and resuming normal life would be “like politely applauding the performance in a jazz club and murmuring ‘nice’ while the building is demolished around you and the piano player gets decapitated.”

It is of course important that we remain hopeful and do not allow ourselves to surrender to bleakness. But as Heaney put it, “Hope is not optimism, which expects things to turn out well, but something rooted in the conviction that there is good worth working for.”

Before there is a vaccine, 30,000 spectators at McHale Park, 45,000 in Semple Stadium or 80,000 in Croke Park would represent a covid bombing campaign. But what of championships behind closed doors? After all, the PGA tour is due (for the moment at least) to resume without spectators from July. Darts would be a safe TV sport also, and the broadcasters could pep it up by using the audience sound tracks from previous tournaments.

But our games? Brown again” “ GAA is a breeding ground for the virus. With everyone in a changing room together and sweating players constantly coming into contact on the field at close quarters this allows for rapid transmission of covid. It would be reckless to the players’ safety and as an inevitable by-product, reckless to the safety of their families and anyone they come in contact with. What about the bus drivers? Or the officials? Or the physiotherapists?”

Can you imagine the players from both teams coming out onto the field for the first round dressed like Homer Simpson at the nuclear factory: hazmat suits, protective goggles, perspex visors and overshoes on their boots? What would happen if a player tested positive after a match? In that case, every player on both squads would have to go into self-isolation for at least 14 days. What if a player went on to become seriously ill from the virus, or even die? Or if an infected player living with his parents was asymptomatic and infected them?

We are slowly driving away from a tsunami, staying just ahead of it. The championship would mean turning the car and driving full speed back into it.

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