Petition is addressed to: Leo Varadkar

We call on the Irish government to end the enforced restrictions and lock down of the people of Ireland without any conditions.

Protecting Our Vulnerable Citizens Is something we fully support should they so wish, along with the advice that anyone who displays any cold like symptoms stays at home until symptoms have abated.

Constitutional Rights We do not consent to the government’s removal of our constitutional rights including the right to privacy, freedom to associate, travel, assemble in public, interact socially, earn a living and freedom from arbitrary detention.

World Health Organisation (WHO) The government’s actions have been based on the pronouncements of an unelected health authority, the WHO, and a predictive model by the Royal Imperial College London that was never peer reviewed [1] and was later found to have greatly overestimated the mortality rate. The WHO and The Royal Imperial College are not independent authorities solely backed by nations. They are funded by private corporations and individuals, many with pharmaceutical ties [2].

Actual Mortality Rate Of COVID-19 As a nation, we have done as requested to mitigate the impact of the novel virus COVID-19 on our already beleaguered health system. The evidence no longer supports the crashing of our economy with the entailed loss of jobs nor the isolation, desolation and destruction of our societal structure.

There is no evidence of air-borne transmission [3]. Therefore the need for restrictions beyond hand-washing, respiratory hygiene and cleaning surfaces is unwarranted.

Emerging evidence points to this virus having a similar mortality rate to seasonal influenza as can be seen in the recent Stanford University antibody study which puts the fatality of those infected with COVID-19 at 0.1-0.2% [4]. This is borne out also when countries' mortality rates for for COVID-19 are compared to previous years influenza mortality rates e.g. The UK reports 44,000 [5] flu deaths for 2014/2015 compared to 28,734 deaths being attributed currently to COVID-19 [6]. Similar can be seen for Italy [6][7].

Individual's constitutional rights have been removed on the basis of a hypothesis. Previous novel viruses in the past (e.g.H1N1) have not warranted this approach.

Trauma Caused By Social Isolation The death of a loved one is traumatic at any time. It is even more so now as they die alone, terrified and without the comfort of loved ones, even if they do not have COVID-19. Does the data support these extreme measures?

Cause Of Death Reporting Has changed so we now no longer have true data with which to work. Deaths are being declared as COVID-19 without laboratory confirmation. The leading cause of death is being recorded as COVID-19 for those that had life threatening previous illness and were susceptible to die of many opportunistic infections. Why the change [8]?

The above means that the number of deaths is exaggerated for COVID-19. Even with these inflated numbers the overall rate may be lower than historical records for this time of year, according to European mortality monitoring activity [9].

The Fear Factor Is being used reprehensibly by the government and mainstream media to control the people of Ireland. Italy is being used as a terror story to justify the removal of constitutional rights. It is not being widely reported that in Italy 99% of those who died had an underlying health condition that was known [10] and that the average age of the deceased is over 80 years [11].

This is also true for Ireland. As of 05/05 there have been 1339 deaths, 86% had known underlying health conditions and the mean age of the deceased was 82 years [12] [13].

Why do the government and media not report the number of recoveries both here in Ireland and worldwide? Currently (12/05) 1,575,629 have recovered worldwide as compared to 252,675 deaths out of a population of 7 billion [6].

Co-factors must be considered. Dr Marcus de Brun points out that one significant differing cofactor between the UK and Ireland is that the UK has 12 million residents over the age of 65 while Ireland has 675 thousand [13].

Since only the sick are being tested, we do not know how many have already had the virus and were asymptomatic. This means that the rate of morbidity (death rate) is artificially high as it is calculated by dividing the number of deaths by the number infected (which could be an unknown under-estimate) [4][14]. Fear is being driven by the reporting in the media of children dying of COVID-19. Media reports are misleading in that many have serious preconditions, e.g. leukaemia, Kawasaki disease, sometimes undiagnosed and some deaths are being misrepresented [15].

What Is The Rationale For Lockdown? What is the rationale for quarantining healthy people on a long term basis? The curve has been flattened.