Perspective lost in race to rant against reason
ADECISION taken around a sporting event and informed by the pandemic caused a great deal of excitement this week. The news was taken as evidence of the profound effect that Covid-19 has had on society, and critics have used it as fresh evidence of how Ireland has become petrified into a state of inaction that has grave repercussions.
Somehow, it was the decision of organisers to cancel the Dublin marathon that provoked the fury and brought the deluge of criticism.
It really is flabbergasting that, in a week when the wretched decision to proceed with the Lions tour in a country flooded with infection was exposed even further, and when the organisers of the Tokyo Olympics had to succumb to the awful conditions within Japan and move the Games behind closed doors, it was news that the Dublin marathon will not be held this year that was so triggering.
The usual voices led the criticism, those who insist that we must start living with Covid, the people who are happy to castigate public health officials and question their expertise, because they want to see Hill 16 full again.
They have set their faces so steadily against the National Public Health Emergency Team and the advice governing Ireland’s response to Covid, that news of the marathon being postponed for the second time in 12 months can only be seen as surrender.
It was, rather, a matter of logistics, not cowardice. The planning of a race whose field was capped at 25,000, and which attracts a quarter of a million spectators to the streets of Dublin on the Sunday of the Halloween Bank Holiday is a yearlong undertaking.
Therefore decisions about this year’s race needed to be made now, and with deep uncertainty kicked up again by the latest variant of the virus, it was impossible to make cast-iron plans four months out.
A call had to be made, too, for all of those registered to run. Even the most casual participant should be preparing for the marathon now, and to save people wasting weeks of training, the decision to call off this year’s race was made now.
It was regrettable, especially for those whose year was largely shaped around this goal. But it must have been devastating, too, for the organisers, most of whom are volunteers.
They devote hundreds of hours to the Dublin marathon, and it is their work that has transformed it into one of the most popular in Europe.
They have not surrendered to Covid, or been guilty of cowardice, or any of the other moronic slurs cast their way.
If the righteous want to get angry about a Covid sporting story, they could direct their ire at the nauseating spectacle of the Lions stumbling through the early stages of their tour.
This should never have happened, and the chances of the Tests being played diminish with each fresh case, either in the touring party or among the Springboks.
That is before considering the wider, dismal picture in South Africa, where vaccination levels are tiny and where large parts of the population live in conditions that make outbreaks both more likely and more dangerous.
Or the outraged could wield their
anger in the direction of the Olympics, where organisers were at one point ignoring public health advice and insisting on spectators being allowed into events.
The declaration of a state of emergency in Tokyo has seen those ambitions vanish, but the decision to proceed with the Games at all looked wrong from the outset, and supporting evidence of that gathers by the week.
We know why both the Lions tour and the Olympics plough on: money. Money from sponsors and money from broadcasters is contingent on the action going ahead, no matter how butchered it is.
It won’t take the passing of too much time before history judges these decisions harshly.
The argument that those urging caution, or who decide to listen to medical experts rather than pundits for insight into a global pandemic, are in some way caving in to the virus is preposterous.
Frustration is widespread at the delays in reopening the country, and the Government has spent a year struggling to find the balance between the urgent need for economic activity, and re-starting the country in a way that best protects people.
They have mostly failed in their search — but so have many other countries in Europe, too. These are wretched, unreadable times, but practically every stripe of opinion agrees that vaccines are the key to a settled future.
Until then, difficult decisions abound. Those making them deserve support.