We need to treat Covid risk-taking the same as getting into a car drunk

LEAVING your house when you have symptoms of Covid-19 will have to become as socially unacceptable as getting behind the wheel of a car after a feed of drinks. The course of our battle against the virus has taken a ‘wrong turn’, the Taoiseach said this week, and the worrying upsurge in cases and hospitalisations prompted Professor Philip Nolan to make the comparison with drunken driving.

You can see the wisdom of the analogy: in both cases, innocent lives are put at risk by selfish or thoughtless choices. But let’s not forget that it took the best part of 20 years for drink driving to become totally unacceptable across all age groups and social settings. ‘Just two will do’, after all, was once the slogan for a drink-driving ad campaign here, as was ‘Think before you drink before you drive’. Even when road deaths were far higher than they are today, with fewer cars on the road, the idea of telling people not to drink at all before driving, rather than simply to check their consumption, was unimaginable.

And up to relatively recently, it was not uncommon to hear someone admit that they were going to ‘chance it’ and drive home after a couple of pints.

It was only the risk of being caught in a Garda checkpoint, rather than any real concern for the danger you might pose, that once restrained drink drivers.

Gradually, though, a much more effective behavioural modifier entered the equation – public disapproval.

The single factor that most affected attitudes to drink driving was not the fear of being prosecuted and banned. It wasn’t even the risk to other road users. It was embarrassment.

Being caught drinking and driving is shameful, despicable: it humiliates family, disappoints friends and disgusts employers.

Drinking and driving is not so much about breaking the law, anymore, as knowingly putting innocent people at risk, prioritising your own comfort and freedom over the safety of others, and that’s just not cool.

The question is: are we ready to be just as judgmental about Covid?

As normality resumes and the last restrictions are lifted next week, fingers crossed, Covid precautions will no longer be enforceable by law.

The experts put the current worrying upsurge in numbers down to the fact that we’re already beginning to act as if the restrictions were gone; we’re socialising, mingling, holidaying, going back to our workplaces, to cinemas and theatres, bars and restaurants.

After October 22, we won’t need masks in cinemas, theatres, nor vaccination certs for bars or restaurants. We won’t need physical distancing. We won’t see limits on numbers at indoor events and activities, and any amount of guests will be able to attend weddings and funerals.

But now that the Government and NPHET are taking a step back, we all have to step forward and assume personal responsibility for preventing the spread of the disease at events and occasions, in settings and environments that were outlawed just a couple of months ago.

In particular, that will mean not going out to one of these occasions, events, environments if you’ve got Covid symptoms. We still have around 300,000 unvaccinated people in our midst, and when those people catch the disease it is far more likely to kill or seriously debilitate them.

Older people are still vulnerable, even with their booster shots, and you never know who might have an underlying condition or immune issue, even if they look perfectly well. Covid is still here, and it’s still lethal.

SO Prof. Nolan is right – going out in public, perhaps into an office or a crowded pub or cinema, when you suspect you might have Covid, is every bit as dangerous as driving with a few drinks on board. We don’t have time, though, for public opinion around Covid symptoms to move at the same glacial pace as attitudes to drink driving. They took years to change: we’ve only got weeks. If numbers continue to rise, for example, we might be looking at renewed restrictions and another ‘meaningful Christmas’, and we all remember how grim that was last year, with everyone bringing their own knives and forks to dinner, a ban on shared gravy pots and poor old Grandad being forced to sit by an open window.

We’ve got to be just as hard on friends or relatives who take a chance on going to work or to party with Covid symptoms as if they were planning to drive with a skinful.

No excuses, no blind eyes turned, no sneaking regard for the chancers who get away with it. And we’ve got to be just as vigilant about our own behaviour. Even if you’ve only got a couple of symptoms, better not to risk it.

Just two won’t do.