Retailers are let down as Covid lessons are not being learned quickly enough
Is it less hazardous to buy some paint now than it was in April?
Wear a mask. Wash your hands on the way in and the way out. If you do that, are your chances of getting Covid-19 or transmitting Covid-19 any greater in a clothes shop, toy shop or bookshop as they are in a supermarket?
I think not. And there isn’t a lot of evidence to show that retail settings in general are major locations for the transmission of the virus. An August study by the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control found the number of Covid-19 clusters across Europe in sales and retail settings, was very few, even fewer than construction sites.
So retailers have every right to feel deeply aggrieved that they are being told to shut up shop again. Whatever about some aspects of the move to Level 5 being prudent and proportionate, there are others which are not.
Are your chances of picking up or transmitting Covid-19 lower in a clothes shop that sells high-vis jackets and wellies, than they are in a clothes shop that doesn’t? I think not.
Yet there are clothes shops in some towns around the country which have begun to stock up these ‘essential’ items in anticipation of the new restrictions, so they can legitimately stay open.
Those who play it totally by the book will have to close.
Much of the evidence has been that people are passing on Covid-19 in social and household settings. Limiting these contacts is a big challenge but surely an important goal of any new restrictions.
If retail has to close to limit the spread, how come various categories of retailer are allowed to open this time round but were not in the Spring? Is it less hazardous to buy some paint and DIY supplies now than it was back in April?
No. It is simply that closing DIY stores in the last lockdown made no sense and that has been realised now. In the last lockdown you could go in and buy 24 cans of beer in a tiny off licence but you couldn’t buy two cans of paint in a large DIY store.
Last time out, primary schools had to stay closed. This time round they are – hopefully – going to remain open.
Yet, the evidence from other countries was there relatively early on, that primary schools were not major centres for the spread of the virus.
Again, perhaps a lesson has been learned. But each of these lessons is incredibly costly to learn.
According to Tánaiste Leo Varadkar, six weeks of Level 5 restrictions will cost €1.5bn and 150,000 jobs. The combined cost of three Government schemes will be €200m per week.
Throw in the impact that failed businesses will have on tax revenu es and the cost goes even higher.
Businesses have, by and large, behaved well and abided by the rules. There have of course been some exceptions. This is as much to do with their customers as with the firms themselves.
We have all seen clusters of more than 15 people bunched far too close together outside some pubs. We have also seen a failure by regulatory authorities to police these breaches.
Restrictions preventing people from leaving their county have been supported by a sizeable Garda presence, albeit without having powers to turn people back. Yet sometimes, just down the road from those county line checkpoints there have been breaches of restrictions that have gone on unchecked.
We will have to prepare ourselves for more multiple Garda checkpoints to implement the 5km exercise limit.
The 5km limit is an urban policy aimed at ensuring that large crowds don’t gather at favourite city recreational areas. In a rural context it is completely bizarre and irrational to be prevented by the Gardai from going for a swim, a run or a walk on an empty beach or a mountainside where there is hardly anybody else around.
Rural life provides opportunities to get away from people. The 5km rule inhibits this.
Yet, as with the last lockdown, we will see the 5km limit more heavily policed than any other element of the Covid restrictions.
Inter-county GAA players will be waved through, despite the obvious role post-match celebrations played in landing us at Level 5 in the first place. As a GAA fan I always look forward to the Championship. But I am not sure, as suggested by Tony Holohan on radio this week, that watching Louth Vs Longford will be better for my overall mental wellbeing than going for a walk, a run or a swim on an empty beach that is 12km away.
Against this overall backdrop, it is no wonder that retailers in particular feel so deeply disappointed about having to close. I don’t know of any clusters triggered by Smyths Toys or even hairdressing salons for that matter.
A lockdown at this time of year will drive more retail sales online. More and more of those will go to larger international websites. Online shopping is dominated by the big players. Smaller retailers in Ireland have made solid attempts to improve or begin an online offering. Some will do OK but they won’t be able to command a significant percentage of overall Christmas spend. The money will be mostly gone by the time they reopen. People won’t wait six weeks until December to shop. They won’t take the chance.
This will serve to drive more future business into the hands of larger international retailers. And it is unlikely to come back any time soon.
Business owners will legitimately ask the question: what it is we are trying to achieve? According to Nphet’s letter to Government of October 15 recommending the six-week maximum restrictions, if we can get the R number down to 0.5 for six weeks, it would result in 50-100 cases per day by the time we come out of it.
This would be a more manageable number of cases for the health service to handle. However, the letter goes on to say that a release of measures and return to an R of 1.4 “would be expected to result in cases not going above 300 cases per day until early January 2021”.
In other words, even if this goes to plan we may lose tens of thousands of jobs, fork out an extra €1.5bn in welfare payments and subsidies, and still find ourselves above 300 cases per day by mid-January.
What happens after that is anybody’s guess. We are all learning as we go through this awful time, but expensive lessons aren’t being learned quickly enough.
Those who play it totally by the rules will end up closing
People won’t wait six weeks to do their Christmas shopping