‘THERE IS A TSUNAMI COMING...’ I COMING...’
Former Limerick star and GP Lucey predicts stark times ahead but is proud of the GAA’s response to Covid-19
STEPHEN LUCEY paints a picture in foreboding colours. The former Limerick dual player is as a general practitioner in Limerick city. He’s in a position where he can check the pulse of concern among his patients while also warning that too many outside his Roxboro surgery still don’t get it.
‘There is a tsunami coming, people are going to die,’ he cautions.
‘The most important message of all is if people, especially young people, are not keeping a safe distance from each other, within two weeks we will have that spike and consultants will have to make this choice.
‘Imagine there are two patients, and one is your mother or father, and the other is your best friend’s mother or father, and if there is only one ventilator between the two of them, the consultant is going to have make the decision as to which one he will try to save.
‘But if those two best friends did not enact social distancing, then that consultant’s decision comes right back to them.
‘If they keep their social distance, that could make all the difference,’ he pleads.
This life-and-death message has been echoed through the nation this past week, but it still hasn’t penetrated some minds, and Lucey senses complacency from some.
‘I don’t think it has got through everywhere and that is why I am giving that stark, cruel possibility. Everyone I talk to, this is the message I keep drumming home and for the simple reason I don’t believe that people are getting it until it will be too late. This is the crux of the battle.
‘We saw those pictures from Temple Bar last weekend and we just need to stop things like that happening.
‘And it is not just young people either. It is older people, too.
‘People actually think they are doing social distancing by doing a bit of this, a bit of that, but it all comes down in two weeks’ time when there will be a lot of patients infected, with government estimates of up to 15,000, and as a result the critical patients will be higher in number and they outweigh the number of beds.
‘And the people who are not social distancing now do not seem to know that, but it is the consequences of their actions.’
That complacency was evident last weekend, when the Dublin Ladies County Board revealed on social media it had been told that some club mentors were seeking to defy the suspension of all GAA activity by holding behind-closeddoors training sessions.
The recklessness of that hardly needs stating, explains Lucey.
‘If you listen to the WHO and other experts then you will know this is not a good idea. Social distancing is what it says on the tin, which is one to two metres and you should abide by that.
‘The virus can live on an object like a football for up to eight hours. You could handle something which has previously been handled by someone who has been infected inside that time frame, but they may not know they are infected because they may not be showing any symptoms.
‘You can’t train as a group now but you can still communicate while training alone and that is what people should be looking to do.’
Lucey’s concern is rooted in the belief that the health system he works in is not resourced to deal with the horror that awaits, which is why he is adamant that if society does not play as one team, the losses will be brutal.
‘There is a lack of personal protection equipment and there is a lack of ICU beds in the country.
‘That has been known for a very long time and it has not been tackled, and a lack of ventilators as well as other technology which is critical for keeping people alive in terms of circulating their blood supply.
‘The whole reason behind ‘flattening the curve’ which is where you try to delay it, is so that the ICUs don’t become overwhelmed because they don’t have enough consultants, beds or the equipment and that is at the crux of this.’
As for his own practice, in the nine years he has been based there, he has never known a week like the one just past.
‘Over last weekend, things changed dramatically. I went to bed Sunday night and I woke up and I was thinking “Oh God, here we go” and so it proved to be.
‘The girls on the front desk have done an amazing job. They are under ferocious pressure with worried patients, people have so many questions. We are trying to do everything remotely so instead of getting patients, we are doing the majority of consultations by phone.
‘The number of calls we have taken, I feel like I’m working in a call centre rather than a surgery.
‘It is fundamentally changing the way we practise medicine and maybe in the future it might be practised differently. A lot of the stuff we do on a day-to-day basis does not need to be done. It can be done remotely and this may bring forward the whole idea of e-prescribing and maybe even video consults,’ he suggests.
However, in a worst-case scenario as the potential horror of the weeks ahead unfold, the call to the frontline may well be all-encompassing, he accepts. ‘Well you can’t be in two places at once and if you are in your own surgery for so many hours in a day, you need a break from it too,’ he says.
It is five years since he called time on a frantic 17-year inter-county career, one of the last to straddle both codes, but apart from still togging out as a 40-year-old with Croom, he also keeps his hand in as team doctor for the county’s football teams as well as the minor hurlers.
While the need to suspend activity brooks no argument, he accepts that the void it leaves for some should not be glibly dismissed.
‘You have to look after your mental health and looking forward to having the games back on is a big thing for a lot of people.
‘It is important because it is people’s hobby. The sooner we can get back to normality the better but at the moment we all have a responsibility to take all this advice on board and play our part for everybody.
‘We are all in this together. The games will always come back in the future – we just have to do our bit for now.’ In his own county, the GAA is doing just that. This week it emerged that Limerick’s seven Games Development officers have been deployed to co-ordinate a community-focused response from its 66 clubs.
‘It is not only that but we were the first to pull our fixtures in the April club month,’ adds Lucey.
‘There is a lot of stuff in May and June that will not be going ahead.
‘And in the next week things could change dramatically and the week after that maybe even more, so you can’t make a call on when we will be back at the minute.
‘It is too early to say, there are too many unknowns.
‘But I was impressed when they did that, what it did was give certainty to players but also to managements.
‘I think clubs were probably thinking they could still have been playing in the first week of April, but now they can relax and leave the players to enact the things that need to be done to control this outbreak so we don’t have to worry about sport for now.
‘But the biggest thing we are doing as an association is reaching out into the community. We have it on
our own club Facebook and social media that if anyone needs anything we are there – we have three lads there who can be contacted for help.
‘There is an Irish phrase called ‘meitheal’ which is another word for community, where everyone pitches in,’ explains Lucey.
‘For example when there is a funeral in the community, everyone pitches in from making tea and sandwiches, parking cars and anything else that needs to be done. We need to think of this as a more widespread, global meitheal.
‘There has been nothing like it in our time. This is world changing. This is history and I don’t know if anyone in the here and now will ever live through something like this again.
‘It is so important we get the message out, the hand washing, cleaning surfaces, social distancing, all of this has to happen.
‘And if it is not being done already, then people need to look hard at themselves and do it now.
‘We will get there, though, I know that.’
‘AS AN ASSOCIATION, WE ARE REACHING OUT INTO THE COMMUNITY’