Forget daily rate, just look at numbers in our hospitals
APPOINTMENT TV thrived in the pandemic. Normal People and Line Of Duty are the two most celebrated examples, but there was one long-running saga that held the country in suspense throughout the last year.
Families dutifully gathering in anticipation around the television at an appointed time, were supposed to be a relic of an older entertainment age, before streaming services gave viewers control of how and when they watched their favourite shows.
But since March of last year, the nightly bulletin revealing the latest figures around Covid case numbers, hospitalisations, and the grimmest detail of all, the daily death rate, drew huge numbers.
Interest lagged last summer as spread of the virus was checked and its threat receded, but the gathering gloom of late autumn revived the nightly vigil around the evening news. Come January and Ireland’s stumble back into the ghastly maw of Covid-19, the daily figures exercised a macabre fascination once again.
As the country makes tentative but encouraging progress towards lighter days, the appointment with the daily update feels less urgent. The figures that matter are changing, too, with the number vaccinated now an antidote to the stubbornly consistent daily record of new cases.
That tally is itself less relevant than it was, given the increasing protection afforded to the most vulnerable sections of society by vaccines, which is shown in declining numbers hospitalised and dying from this scourge.
Recurring tumbles back into the misery of lockdown have taught us to warily regard signs of progress, but this time does seem decisively different – and that is because of vaccines.
The extent to which Irish people have recognised this and valued science over the mischief and lies of anti-vaxxers, is a tribute to our collective good sense. This has endured despite the repeated setbacks around the AstraZeneca shot, and the decision to restrict its use to over-60s as a result of concerns around the remote possibility of side-effects.
The ramifications of that decision threatened to be significant until the EU’s announcement around increased deliveries of the Pfizer vaccine.
This was belated proof of how Ireland benefited as part of a large, powerful trading bloc.
It was also some domestic reward for Micheál Martin and his Government’s dogged loyalty to a European vaccine project that had faltered alarmingly.
They should appreciate, though, that expectations around the vaccination programme will remain high, because the people understand as keenly as the politicians do that contained within it is access to some semblance of life as we once knew it.
The majority of us will wait our turn for vaccination, and understand why health workers and other deserving frontline staff should be prioritised, along with the elderly and those whose health is compromised. However, the desperate desire for protection was clearly illustrated by the high numbers in their late60s who began registering for an AstraZeneca jab from Thursday morning.
Fears of hesitancy around the vaccine seem largely groundless thus far, but then this was merely another instance of citizens assessing the prevailing circumstances, weighing up risk, and taking the responsible decision for themselves and their community.
Time and again, most of us have behaved responsibly and fears of cracks in the national resolve have not come to pass.
Fresh impetus to the effort is provided by the expanding vaccine rollout.
Tendrils of optimism are strengthening. Longer, happier days, which seemed a distant fancy in the smothering bleakness of January, come with justifiable hopes of a familiar summer.
Wobbles in the vaccine plan were corrected this week.
Future ones – and they are inevitable – must be handled with deftness.