Lockdown is a step too far for a society and an economy on its knees
WHAT happened to the Level ‘4-and-a-bit’ that might have kept most of the country sane and saved the local economy?
Just when we needed an ‘Irish solution to an Irish problem’, the Government caved in to the National Public Health Emergency Team (Nphet) and the draconian Level 5 leaves us facing six dismal weeks of winter lockdown.
OK, it might, just might, save Christmas.
But this is not going to be the walk in the park that Leo’s novelty spring break was, with people picnicking and playing football in the sunshine, enjoying leisurely walks and re-discovering a sense of family and community.
We’re now facing into a winter of lockdown discontent. The long nights after Samhain (Halloween) will bring the Irish economy closer to the cliff edge, condemn a swathe of small businesses to extinction, and put tens of thousands back on the Pandemic Unemployment Payment.
The only consolation is they kept the schools open – but for how long?
It is tempting to blame the freebooting attitudes of some people living along the Border for the rising levels of the virus in the Republic. But Dublin and Clare are just as bad.
Relaxing public attitudes and isolation fatigue has allowed the pandemic to bounce back to dangerous levels.
A few weeks ago outsiders looked askance at Ireland with our hospitality industry closed and a bizarre €9 meal required to have a pint. Now looking at Europe you see a thick red wall of secondwave infection, spreading alarmingly through Germany and the Low Countries.
But does this justify the Lemming-like reaction of our Government in imposing what is an arbitrary shutdown of the spine of the Irish economy, the small business sector? There is no denying the numbers but how many people know somebody who has actually had Covid-19?
It reminds me of the town hall meetings in the early 1980s when concerned citizens gathered to try to find an answer to rampant unemployment. Amid all the rhetoric at one such gathering, a speaker asked the packed hall for anyone who was unemployed to raise their hand. Not a hand went up!
In other words, people are always deeply concerned about something that might never affect them.
I personally know of two people who have contracted the virus, one bad and one not so bad. Most people I know haven’t met anyone who has had it.
That is not, in any way, to minimise the suffering of
those who do have it, or the 2,000 families who have seen a loved one die.
But where is the humanity in people living and dying alone in nursing homes and other institutions, seen only at the last minute by their nearest and dearest, because of the risk of spreading infection and the imposition of Level 5 lockdown?
Discounting the economy, does this lockdown warrant the damage we are doing to the fabric of society?
To the mental health of so many – young people who may be scarred for life or the elderly who will feel lost and lonely? Or indeed to the health service which will have to shut down all sorts of essential services to concentrate on a virus that many observers believe cannot and will not be controlled?
Last Sunday evening, sitting over a pint, looking up the main street of the town where I live, a local hairdresser said: “If we go to Level 5, I’ll have to close – and yet we have spent a fortune on precautions to make our business a safe environment. Where is the sense in that?”
Tomorrow, like thousands of small businesses, his doors will be closed.
Monday’s announcement of the latest lockdown has also exposed a dangerous fissure in the already delicate state of our three-way Coalition.
Governments rarely lead, they mostly follow. On the night of October 5, Micheál Martin’s Government broke that rule when it rejected attempts by the newly returned chief medical officer, Tony Holohan, to “bounce” it into Level 5. Instead it opted for a nationwide move to Level 3 and later measures in certain areas.
On that occasion, Tánaiste Leo Varadkar was the poster boy for prioritising jobs and protecting the economy. He was a hero or villain, depending on your point of view. But his political rather than medical strategy has backfired spectacularly in just two weeks, with the Government now adopting the Nphet recommendation he disowned with vehemence.
Now jumping to Level 5 looks like a knee-jerk reaction, not just to the virus but out of the Government’s fear that it ‘got it wrong’ two weeks ago.
Now is the time to rethink these blanket ‘Levels’. Surely the ‘big brains’ of Government and medicine can find a more nuanced approach capable of keeping the local economy open while containing the pandemic.