Don’t panic, listen to the experts and don’t forget to wash your hands

MAY you live in interesting times. So goes the old curse that has taken on a new relevance amidst the global coronavirus crisis. This week we find ourselves in the midst of a national emergency unparalleled in modern Irish history. Our country is in the midst of a crisis that has left the vast majority of the people confused, terrified and deeply agitated.

To put it mildly the country is, understandably, very freaked out. We are still in the very early days of this crisis and – based on other nations’ experiences and government statements – things are almost certainly going to get worse before they get better. How much worse is up to us.

At his inauguration, John F Kennedy extolled US citizens to “ask not what your country can do for you — ask what you can do for your country”.

Kennedy called on all the people to take action, to take responsibility and to do what is right for the greater good.

That is precisely what we all must do now. Coronavirus poses an existential threat to our nation and our world.

It threatens lives and livelihoods and we must work together to stop it. This will involve sacrifices from us all but, if we do what is asked of us, we will emerge from this crisis.

The coming days and weeks will be difficult and they will be strange. They will be filled with challenges that will affect us all in ways we might not yet even foresee.

As the spectre of war descended in 1939, the British government famously told it’s people to ‘Keep Calm and Carry On’.

It was sage advice that we would do well to follow now. The best thing we can all do is to stay calm, listen to what the government and health experts have to say and follow their instructions.

While they may have been criticised for the slow pace of their response in the early days of this crisis, the caretaker government deserves praise for the robust actions they are now taking.

Putting the country into partial lock-down will not have been a decision that was taken lightly and it shows a determined focus on the government’s part to beat this virus.

It is reassuring also to see party politics put on the back burner and political rivals backing the government’s handling of the current emergency.

In the meantime, all we can do is follow the experts’ advice to the letter; do our best to keep ourselves and others safe and try, in so far as is possible, to keep on living our lives.

Try, as best as you can, to ignore the scare stories, the hoaxes and the swathes of misinformation that is being spread about the virus and the State’s response to it.

It serves no purpose other than to spread fear and to damage the chances of our country seeing off this threat to our society and especially to our most vulnerable friends and loved ones.

We are in uncharted territory and in the coming weeks we will learn a lot about our society and how it functions in a time of peril. We can only hope that what we learn is positive.

Until then the message is short and simple. Wash. Your. Hands.