Fergus Finlay: The only ones who can beat the virus are us

With record numbers of Covid-19 cases of infection being reported on an almost daily basis we need to knuckle down to prevent more deaths, says Fergus Finlay

We will beat the coronavirus by washing our hands, keeping a safe distance and protecting our friends — and strangers — by wearing our masks.

Can we do this? No arguments, no questions, no criticisms? Can we all just resolve that, like it or not, we all need to knuckle down again for each other’s sakes? 

It’s not going to be easy, and it’s not going to be fun, but the trend in the figures tell us only one thing. More people are going to die — and we can all prevent that happening.

A lot of it, anyway. In the last couple of weeks a very large number of people have already been infected. Day after day for the next fortnight, they will start appearing in the statistics. The number of new cases, the number in hospital, and most frightening of all, the number in intensive care.

We know that some won’t make it. They’ll be people we love, people we’ll mourn when they’re gone. The worst thought you could have, when you learn of the death of someone you know, is that their death could have been prevented by someone washing their hands or keeping their distance. Not by some amazing medical intervention, but by simple and common sense routines.

And we know now that many people who do survive the virus — young and older alike — still pay a heavy price. We know that the after-effects linger for months, and maybe (who knows?) for years. 

As well as being cruel, it’s a fallacy, and we all know this, to pretend that all we need to do is to lock up the old people so the rest of us can get on with their lives. Nobody is safe from the arbitrary and capricious ways this virus kicks people around.

In our heart of hearts, we all know that we haven’t applied enough cop-on to the challenge we have. And cop-on is largely an Irish characteristic, by the way. If you look it up, you’ll discover that no other English speaking nation uses the word cop-on the way we do. 

But if we were really copped-on, like we think we are, we’d have beaten the virus by now. By doing the simple things copped-on people do. Washing our hands constantly. Protecting our neighbours by keeping a safe distance. Protecting our friends — and strangers — by wearing our masks.

We haven’t been doing it enough. The numbers tell you that. When the public health experts use a phrase like “community transmission” they mean us. We’re the community that is transmitting the virus, one to the other. There is no-one else to blame. Just us.

So can we do this? Can we just decide, for the sake of every stranger we meet, that we’ll never be caught with the virus on our hands if we can help it? That we’ll never endanger anyone — friend or stranger, by crowding them or coughing at them? That we’ll follow the rules absolutely rigorously to the best of our ability, even if we find them unpleasant? Because the truth is we’re never going to find the rules impossible.

And could we, do you think, agree on a couple of other things?

Could we agree to stop calling the new rules restrictions, but call them protections instead? 

Could we accept that they’re being put in place by a government that’s taking no pleasure in it, but only wants to save lives? There was an interview with the TD who is chair of the Oireachtas Covid committee in which he was quoted as referring to another lockdown as an act of tyranny. That’s an example of the kind of stupidity that we really need to avoid.

Another (unnamed TD, purporting to be a Minister) was quoted elsewhere effectively accusing chief medical officer Dr Tony Holohan and his colleagues of becoming “violently political” (apparently because they use words like “reiterate” in their advice), and implying that they leak to the media. 

Chief medical officer Dr Tony Holohan and deputy  chief medical officer Dr Ronan Glynn have been accused of becoming 'violently political'. Picture: Sasko Lazarov, RollingNews.ie

I’d guarantee you a week’s wages that public servants of that calibre would rather cut their own arms off than leak to the media. People who make that sort of accusation just want to be rid of “troublesome priests”.

Let me make my own confession. On a radio programme at the weekend, I referred to an absence of leadership from the top, because no-one came out of Government Buildings after their meeting with the public health officials and told us what would happen next. 

I was complaining about being kept in the dark, not so much about decisions, but about the process of how we would get to decisions.

And I unkindly referred to a man in a high-vis jacket and a cycling helmet whom it took me a second to realise was Eamonn Ryan, one of the senior members of the Cabinet.

I was being stupid myself. I’m forever arguing that if you have a choice between doing a thing fast or doing it right, you should try to do it right. I should have been more ready to give the government a bit of leeway to try to get this right. It’s complicated, and there’s a tough balance to be struck.

Though I have to say that it’s becoming a bit of a cliché to talk about it as the balance between lives and livelihoods. 

Saving lives, preventing people from suffering or dying, alone and afraid — there cannot be a higher priority than that. 

Protecting the health system and enabling it to keep going, the way we did the last time, is in our absolute priority interest.

A short term economic hit — even a medium term one — might be a hard ask, but there is simply no equivalence. We all know, because every one of us have been there (some of us a few times), that the economy recovers.

And it will recover far quicker than families that have lost a breadwinner. We will all recover from the loneliness of not being able to see our kids and grandkids, as hard as that is. The hardship — if that’s what it is — will pass.

And another thing. Could we stop demanding more clarification? Could we stop blaming someone else, anyone else, because the protections they want us to adopt and observe aren’t spelled out in words of one syllable.

Every time we say “how come the kids are still in school but they can’t have friends over for a play date?” we know in our heart of hearts that it’s not actually as complicated as we’re pretending. It’s just inconvenient. 

The system we have to operate is as finely balanced as they can make it, and it’s also based on the assumption that we’re intelligent people.

Heaven knows we’ve managed to prove our intelligence over the years. Look at the country we built and that we’re very proud of. 

I don’t understand why, in the face of things we don’t like, we all pretend we’re too stupid to understand them. Because we’re not. Stubborn maybe, but certainly not stupid.

So maybe we could be just as stubborn in our determination to beat the virus. It’s the enemy. Not the government, not the public health people, not the people who run our essential services. 

The only ones who can beat the virus are us. That’s the one thing we know for sure. We can do this.