Irish Covid Satire? Review ‘Busting Anti-Vax Myths: Seriously EXPERT Arguments for the Covid-Deniers in Your Life’

If you have a weakened heart or nervous tremors brought on from a Covid vaccine you might have taken recently, then this book is not for you:  you’ll laugh so much you could easily find yourself being put out of your misery for good! 

This is a long overdue and very welcome satire on the madness we have all had to endure for the past number of years after the mysterious release of a man-made gain-of-function virus, the resulting efforts of Big Pharma to increase its profits at all costs and the widespread instigation of criminal anti-democratic agendas in so many once-liberal countries. 

Indeed, for most thinking people, it has been clear that the spread of Covid has resulted in dire (and wholly disproportionate) restrictions on our civil liberties and, in particular, on the legal framework that upholds these most important freedoms, freedoms that we all cherish so dearly: freedom of speech, freedom of movement and assembly, freedom to make our own medical choices, for ourselves and for our children.  

This book turns its focus on the utter stupidity of passively following the dictates of the MacAmadáins of this world who have politised science and used their warped logic to demonize sanity in order to usurp our society and promote a new kind of tyranny.

But when I say the ‘MacAmadáins’ of this world, I should probably explain a little bit more about who the purported author of this book supposedly is. The book’s most unreliable narrator is the entirely fictitious Prof. Oisín MacAmadáin of the equally fictitious ‘Termonfeckin Institute of Expertise’ (although the small village of Termonfeckin does indeed exist and can be found in Ireland’s Co. Louth). 

Now, Prof. MacAmadáin is a self-proclaimed Covid ‘expert’ and a man who embodies, to the letter, the mainstream approach to Covid: he adores hard lockdowns, the mRNA vaccines (indeed he has had seven of them and proclaims himself ‘needled all over and full of health’) and all efforts to segregate societies on the basis of vaccine passes. Prof. MacAmadáin represents, therefore, a combination of all the worst Covid experts we have had to endure. It is entirely appropriate, therefore, that in Irish Gaelic, his name means ‘Oisín Son of a Fool’.

And as will quickly become clear to the reader, he also suffers from a near-terminal level of cognitive dissonance: he has to maintain his worldview at all costs. How many times have we seen this cognitive dissonance come out in the Covid zealots in our lives to bat away, for example, Sweden’s proof that lockdowns are unnecessary?

Indeed, unless you somehow believe that the virus behaves differently in Stockholm than it does in London, Dublin or New York, the approach adopted by Anders Tegnell clearly demonstrates that the Lockdown Emperor has no clothes. But this is not a conclusion that Prof. MacAmadáin could ever reach. Instead, he writes: 

“After all, think what it is like up there in Sweden, those whole vast and empty plains, filled with roaming elk and the occasional shepherd. Sure, you’d have to go out of your way to catch the virus. Furthermore, even with those few Swedes who live in cities, they are very reserved and absolutely hate physical contact. Have you ever seen two Swedes hugging each other? Look, my point is that they are a little weird up there and these kinds of facts shouldn’t be exempt from scientific discussion. Sweden is clearly a different kettle of herring altogether from the rest of the world.”

Indeed, the only conclusion that Prof. MacAmadáin can really reach about Sweden is that it has tragically descended from being ‘a liberal utopia’ into a ‘far-right nightmare’. 

Prof. MacAmadáin also turns his attention to other disgraceful Covid outliers, such as Belarus (where they believe vodka kills Covid) or Romania where mistrust in authorities and the resulting low uptake in vaccination seems to stem from memories of their totalitarian past. With alarm, he realises that his weekly cleaner, Elena, is probably unvaccinated and must therefore be let go. Her response to being fired is priceless:  ‘You think this isn’t like what we went through under Ceausescu?! Let me tell you, Ceausescu is turning in his f**king grave that he didn’t think of this! What genius to control everyone with the f**king flu! Yes, I’ll get a vaccine and I’ll stick it up your f**king arse!’ 

But Prof. MacAmadáin is also happy to give praise where it is due and he has plenty of it when it comes to Australia, Canada and, of course, the dear old Emerald Isle. But it is his section on Austria, the ‘crème de la crème’ of all responses to Covid, that is, in my opinion, a superb piece of crafted satire. Presented in the form of a special supplement in

The Oirish Times, a paper at which Prof. MacAmadáin is an “expert in residence”, it features an interview with a philosophy academic, a certain Prof. Ann Schlüss, for whom the decisions taken by her government tick all ethical boxes “even those of Kant whose ethical boxes are notoriously hard to tick”. An opinion piece then follows in which relief is expressed that the days of ‘far-right discrimination’ towards minority groups, particularly Muslims and immigrants, are over.

As local Labour politician, Hermann Hundbisket, says: “It was really horrible to be part of a society where discrimination against minority groups was just so blatant and every day. It makes me so proud to think that those days are gone now and that people have found a way to pick on a societal group without causing any discrimination. It’s a win-win situation if ever there was one.”

The absurdity of targeting the unwilling or those who refuse to get vaccinated is mercilessly portrayed as just another pretext for a totalitarian mindset to shift its focus from one bedevilled minority to another and with just the same vehement hatred and desire to persecute others. The victims, this time, are not immigrants or Jews but the unvaccinated who are ‘thankfully’ locked away now in their homes and excluded from society. The victim changes but the attitude remains exactly the same.

The book really takes on the whole gamut of all-things Covid, from the focussed protection model of The Great Barrington Declaration (‘The Declaration of Great Baloney’ in Prof. MacAmadáin’s view), to the necessity of lockdowns, The Great Reset agenda (or ‘the much-needed plan to save humanity from itself’) and the supposed lies about ‘quack Covid cures’ such as ‘aromatherapy pills’ like Vitamin D or a certain famous horse-dewormer. Prof. MacAmadáin is particularly concerned about the bigotry of antivaxxers who don’t even regard the mRNA vaccines as vaccines: “All this ‘it’s not a vaccine’ nonsense frankly sounds a bit discriminatory to me…. If the vaccine self-identifies as a vaccine, then who are we to say otherwise?”, a line that brilliantly combines two of the greatest delusions of our age.  

The real author of this satire only ever so slightly tilts the official narrative and the frequently heard conversations we have all been witness to. By writing from the perspective of the madness, he pushes the official Covid agenda ever further into an epic satirical reflection of itself.  

As such, this book is not just for comic relief: it has a serious purpose. It is not a work for the fainthearted nor for those with any kind of delicate disposition. It is a ruthless read that stabs deeply into the heart of political perfidy, hypocrisy and corruption, revealing the truth of what is being perpetrated against us in all its vileness and sinister cunning. 

You will first laugh heartily as you follow the bizarre exploits of this mad-cap academic from ‘The Termonfeckin Institute of Expertise’, but after you put the book down and consider how closely its author navigates the truth about our human torpidity and breath-taking gullibility, you will weep.

Dr. Garry Bannister attended Trinity College Dublin where he studied Irish and Russian. On receiving a scholarship, he went to Moscow State University where he graduated with an MA in Russian language and literature and subsequently helped set up the first Department of Modern Irish. Bannister’s main interest today is the Irish language and its literature. He is an acknowledged expert of 20th Century Irish and the editor of the recently published 4^th edition of Teasáras Gaeilge Béarla (2023) and the English Irish Learner’s Dictionary (2018).