Joyce Fegan: Accepting the uncertainty of a hybrid life
While indoor dining is no longer a discussion, but a plan, the debate has moved to allowing or not allowing younger people to dine indoors
This week I found myself reminiscing back to January. The temperature ranged between zero and eight degrees. No one was allowed into your home. You weren’t allowed into anyone else’s home. The schools were closed. Takeaway coffee was the extent of our permitted public dining. And you couldn’t travel 5km outside your home, let alone outside your county.
The news was dire. Friends in the frontline of medical care confirmed the so-called sensational headlines. One friend who worked directly with Covid-19 patients said: “It’s wild in here.” Wild wasn’t meant in a good way. She was trying to be euphemistic.
The direness of the news and the distance to the vaccine rollout meant you’d no choice but to adhere to the restrictions — designing a life around them was straightforward. My life was neatly designed around walks, the volleying exchange of voice notes with friends, and afternoon and evening work.
The only thing that would come between me and this life was an extended low pressure with heavy rain.
My daughter’s first birthday fell on one of these days, but we took the new trike out when the sky had just about emptied herself come 5pm. Met Éireann’s local rainfall radar was the most visited website on my phone.
“It’s to rain all next week,” friends would announce. They were going by the iPhone weather app. “There’s only 0.3mm of rain due between 12pm and 2pm,” I’d reassure.
Met Éireann’s rainfall radar proved a constant and accurate companion.
And then come March I remember compiling a sort of bucket list of all the places I would go to when the 5k restrictions were lifted; the beaches I’d swim at, the forests I’d walk in. The forward-looking list was to get me through, when the routine and regimented monotony of the previous months started to wear.
Eaten bread is soon forgotten.
We now live in a hybrid model, neither fully restricted nor fully free. And I’m not sure what to do with myself in this limbo land.
That cliché about progress or recovery not being linear seems apt. In late May and early June, we were on course. The vaccine programme was being rolled out. My neighbour was double jabbed and my parents were waiting on their second. Even people in their 50s were starting to get appointments. Foreign travel was being discussed.
The dire news was no longer coming out of Ireland, instead it came from India and the gross mishandling of the pandemic by their government. It was apocalyptic.
“We are witnessing a crime against humanity,” wrote Arundhati Roy.
International vaccine equity was our biggest concern and getting people back to work.
Then came the Delta variant. And this week’s news from our scientists that one in 20 people who are testing positive for Covid-19 have been fully vaccinated as the Delta variant starts to spread.
To qualify that — full vaccination does provide greater protection from getting very sick from the virus, scientists report.
Along with the one-in-20 statistic this week is the number of cases. There were 994 new cases identified on Thursday, nearly 1,200 yesterday, and almost 1,400 today.
And while indoor dining is no longer a discussion, but a plan, the debate has moved to allowing or not allowing younger people to dine indoors.
The moving parts keep moving and with so many balls in the air — accepting uncertainty seems to be the only course of action.
Back in January, February, and March, the rules were few and simple. Wear a mask in the supermarket. Don’t meet up with people indoors and stick to your 5k.
For individuals, lives got designed around the unambiguous restrictions and for business owners in the food sector, takeaway culture was their unambiguous business model. For owners of gyms and yoga studios and other types of in-person classes — online tuition was their unambiguous business model.
There was no grey area, no doubt, no predicting, no uncertainty. Business as usual was virtual. Until the end of June, that was — when the plan didn’t go to plan for the reopening of the rest of society because of the emerging and highly transmittable Delta variant.
People who are not fully vaccinated are the “new vulnerable”, said Tánaiste Leo Varadkar this week. They should live “like it is March 2020”.
“People who are unvaccinated, including children, should continue to avoid high-risk, uncontrolled indoor settings,” said chief medical officer Tony Holohan. Then he mentioned September.
“We continue to keep all of the public health guidance under review,” he said. “That includes all elements of the further reopening of society and looking forward to September and a return to education for students.”
A friend who is a business owner was all set to open her doors in early July. The prep work that went into getting her studio space ready was not insignificant and after being closed for so long, the July 4 horizon was finally visible. Until it wasn’t.
Earlier this week, she said she now has September in her head — in ahead of the chief medical officer.
She has predicted or resigned herself to the fact September seems like a more realistic date for a steadier, more certain reopening of not just society, but life.
We have all been wearing inordinately tight shoes for coming up on 18 months now, the summer was meant to bring us reopening. It hasn’t. Vaccinations continue, but so does the uncertainty of Delta and the restrictions imposed to curb its highly transmittable spread.
“In the meantime, avoid crowds, wear a mask, manage your contacts, keep your distance, meet outdoors where possible, and, if indoors, ensure that the room is well ventilated,” Dr Holohan advised this week.
Aside from the bit about meeting indoors, the rest of his advice reads like it’s January 2021.
We now inhabit a hybrid model, it isn’t business as usual, but it isn’t locked down in our homes either. And in this space, we neither have the silence and slow pace of January nor do we have the luxury of full freedom.
Whatever good stuff the pandemic accidentally provided in the form of a slower pace of life is gone, but the good stuff of a full reopening has yet to appear.
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