At 6:00 pm last Friday 21st January the head of government in Ireland flicked a switch and removed 95% of Covid-19 precautions. He spent a few minutes at the podium explaining the whys and the wherefores behind the decision. It was, he said, “A good day for Ireland.” and then he turned on his heels and walked back up the steps.
In moments he had ended two years of government-led resistance to the virus and said, “It’s over to you”. Now, with few exceptions, the burden of protecting the population from the virus is squarely on the shoulders of the population themselves. But then we always knew that. I mean, the government can announce whatever they like regarding the lifting of restrictions but each one of us has to decide whether some activity or other, is safe for us to participate in. Every day since February 2020 when we stepped outside our front doors we made decisions that potentially brought us into contact with the virus. We haven’t dodged Covid-19 this long to now blindly go partying simply because we are allowed to. That won’t change until we see proof in the numbers of new infections, the numbers in hospitals and the numbers in ICU going down, permanently. This virus has in the past shown itself capable of morphing into new and more infectious variants just when we thought it was coming under control. I, for one, am going to hold judgement for now.
However, the-getting of those numbers has already become harder. The Institute of Public Health’s medical advisory body NEPHET met last Thursday, proposed the removal of precautions and said “Adios amigo’s see you in three weeks!” This seems all seems a bit sudden and premature to me. Barely three weeks ago we were seeing record numbers of infections in the country and people close to me had been struck down, people that had evaded infection for so so long became victims of it. I felt worried.
RTE , the state television and radio station appear to have dropped Covid-19 as a matter worthy of reporting on. The daily reporter standing frozen outside the offices of the Dept. of Health and another stood outside Government buildings have both just disappeared from the screen. Now, four days on they have not returned and the daily Covid numbers merely appear as an after-thought on the six o’clock evening news. Is this good news then? Is there a callous attitude out there that since the vast majority of those in ICU now are unvaccinated they are there by choice and so not newsworthy?
I do get the message being spun to the general public which is “We got you the vaccines, we beefed up the health service and now it’s a matter of living with the virus.” The government seem to think that the health service can now cope with any new wave of infections. They believe the Omicron variant is less likely to block up the health service and some media report that it is 91% less likely to cause death. It appears to go for the nose & throat rather than the lungs. I hope they are right.
This latest change of government position could be interpreted as a giving-in to the inevitable, that we are all going to get it, it’s only a matter of when. What the last two years were all about was buying time. Time to develop and test vaccines, time to develop strategies to stop the spread of infections. The World Health Organisation says the world has suffered 5.6 million deaths to date due to Covid-19 and we still have to get vaccines to a large number of poor countries but that death toll is out of a population of 7.5 billion. We, as a race, have come through this particularly challenging experience but at some price.
Let’s hope this is the end for Covid-19 and let’s say a prayer for those we lost.
May your God go with you (Dave Allen).
Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) is an infectious disease, caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus.
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