Pull of the pint may yet prove lethal amid a new wave of fear
‘We cannot justify the risk just so we can go for a pint...’
WITH this pandemic, the fear comes in waves. We were terrified in the beginning about what it might do to us. Then complacency set in as the numbers stabilised and lockdown dragged on. When we hit June 29, people were ecstatic about getting their hair done and meeting their pals for a meal. Now the fear is back: we’ve heard stories about Americans taking over Killarney; we’ve seen throngs having takeaway pints on the streets and exiting parties from houses so tiny yet so full they must be like a Tardis inside.
The R number is being cited now as up to 1.8 and young people account for the majority of the climbing case numbers. So it seems surprising to me, given that increased palpable fear, that publicans would describe themselves as “shocked” that wet pubs — those not functioning as restaurants and serving food — will not be allowed to open on July 20 as was planned. It’s absolutely the right call.
Pubs, however much we may love them, are a highrisk environment with the virus. Some pubs didn’t do themselves any favours when they were allowed to open if serving food at the end of June. Many, probably the majority, adhered to Covid restrictions. But too many pub receipts were circulating showing two plates of curry and 49 pints of Guinness for them all to be fake.
And I spoke to people who told me they’d been in pubs where they’d been allowed to stay as long as they liked and drink away without a sniff of a substantial meal.
With cases climbing now, opening the pubs is simply an unacceptable risk. Too many people don’t seem to get that the pandemic hasn’t ended — just the worst of the first wave has passed.
Risk is a funny concept. You can cope with a high risk of something bad but minor happening. But probably only a low risk of something bad but severe occurring. Equally, we accept risk as necessary if what we’re trying to do is important, such as keeping hospitals, schools or supermarkets open. But we cannot justify accepting the high risk of outbreaks, just so we can head out for a pint.
I mentioned schools because although they are also places where people congregate and talk and occasionally sing, what goes on in them is essential to us as a society. Finding ways to keep schools open safely is vital. We can close our pubs without societal harm; the same cannot be said of our children’s education.
We’re moving into choppy waters now. And I’m not talking about the vintners kicking off. We are mixing far more freely than we did over the past few months.
The R number was always going to climb with that, as pointed out in this column previously. But Nphet is wrong to suggest we may have to go back to phase two of lockdown if cases hit 100 per day. The roadmap out of lockdown needs to be drastically tweaked. Retail of all types has managed to reopen safely and effectively. Visits to barbers and hairdressers are now like entering surgical clinics.
Many businesses and childcare facilities that were closed in the one-size-fits-all lockdown have reopened in a well-managed and safe way. Nphet should not pull the rug out from under these businesses and livelihoods in a blind return to a roadmap that was imperfect.
Instead, the mess that is foreign travel into this country needs to be sorted. And Nphet and Government should own the fact that they are incredibly late to the party on mask-wearing.
The fact that masks will be worn in the Dail next week for the first time, five months since our first confirmed case, is a bad joke. The Covid tracker app needs to be better incentivised, too.
When people talk about the ways in which the pandemic has changed us, we often mention being more outdoorsy, spending time with family and reassessing our priorities.
Our pub culture may end up being one of the biggest things to change — because pubs, like nightclubs, may not reopen any time soon. Possibly not any time in 2020.
Our relationship with drink and pubs is woven into the fabric of us. It has taken a pandemic to possibly alter our drink culture and I’m not sure how it’ll look when this is all over.
Pubs are not like other businesses. We may have tried to pretend otherwise but this virus has ripped that illusion apart. They (and large house parties) need to be shut down as the superspreading affairs that they are.
I wrote in this paper once that our love of drink was like America’s love of guns. We’d never give it up no matter how much harm it was doing to us; they’d have to prise it from “our cold, dead hands”.
How accurate that statement was is about to be put to the test.