Fergus Finlay: When we relax our guard against Covid, we do it with alcohol

Our columnist can’t help wondering about the coincidence of late nights reopening — with all that means in terms of alcohol consumption — and the huge increase in Covid numbers.

The core of public policy around the pandemic has been in the phrase “living with Covid”. But we’re not living with Covid now, we’re struggling with it. And it’s a pretty existential struggle.

A couple of weeks ago, I was in the queue at Tescos, waiting to pay for my chicken fillets and milk. Everyone was masked and maintaining good social distance. The guy in front of me told me to go ahead of him because he had to unload a full trolley. And boy was it full. Three two-dozen boxes of different kinds of beer, about a dozen bottles of red and white wine, some gin, vodka, and whiskey, and a slew of mixers.

I thanked him for letting me pass, and said, “that’s some gig you’re getting ready for”. He grinned and said, “Yeah. Confirmation. Mad, isn’t it?”

Not for the first time, I fell to wondering about our relationship with alcohol. We can’t, it seems, celebrate any of the rites of passage in our traditionally catholic country — birth, communion, confirmation, wedding, even funeral — without all getting blathered. And even though religion is more of a tradition now than a meaningful practice, we still insist on going through the motions and attaching ‘craic’ to them.

Don’t get me wrong. I’d be the greatest hypocrite in the world if I didn’t admit right now that some of the best nights I’ve ever had involved a lot of singing and a lot of wine after a religious ceremony. When we say that we do these things well in Ireland, we mean that any excuse for a right good party will always result in a right good party.

But right now you’d wonder. I’m no epidemiologist, but I can’t help wondering about the coincidence of late nights reopening — with all that means in terms of alcohol consumption — and the huge increase in Covid numbers. I think if we’re being really honest with ourselves, it’s hard to escape the conclusion that every time we relax our guard against this damn virus, we tend to do it with a few drinks at hand.

What's your view on this issue?

You can tell us here

I’m convinced that’s what happened last Christmas, for example. When the Taoiseach told us last year that the government wanted to relax things so we could all have a meaningful Christmas, he meant spending time with our families and close friends. What we heard was “time to go on the lash”.

And we paid a heavy price. I’m betting no senior politician will be using that language this year.

It’s the connection that dare not speak its name. It seems to me that no one in public health, or in politics either, wants to spell out the connection between alcohol and Covid too loudly or explicitly. You can be against everything in Ireland, but if you really want to be hated forever, come out publicly against a few jars. Sure what have we left?

More contagious

As a layman (although one who reads everything I can get my hands on), I’m satisfied that we’re in the grip of a variant that is much more contagious and easily passed from person to person. That variant has meant that we each have no choice but to double down for now.

We’re 600+ days into the pandemic, and the only thing we know for sure is that there’s no magic wand to get rid of it. It’s going to carry on in its vicious way for quite a while to come. It’s going to hurt a lot of us, and kill some of us. Many of us will live with the consequences of “long Covid” — and believe me, they can be devastating.

And there’s going to be collateral damage too. Children and adults who need urgent operations for things that have nothing to do with Covid may find themselves having to wait, in pain and at risk. People hurt in traffic accidents, who need access to ICU, may have to suffer longer than they would normally.

We know the reason, of course. Covid is filling our hospitals. We’ve all heard report after report that describes how our health system is under terrible pressure, and there’s no denying that. The only good news — and I’ve seen this up close and personal — our health system is full, from bottom to top, of brilliant people willing to work the round of the clock to keep the show on the road.

The other good news is boosters. All the signs are that they work really powerfully in terms of protecting people from serious illness. And they’re coming. There’s no reason right now why we shouldn’t get to a point in the next six to eight weeks where everyone who needs a booster gets one.

And if six to eight weeks from now seems like an awful long time away, think back for a second to when we were waiting for vaccinations to start. Seemed like an age then too, but actually, we flew through it once they came on stream.

I think right now there are two things we need to get into our own heads. The first is about blame. Is it just us, or does the entire world needs headlines like “it’s the government’s fault”, “it’s the HSE’s fault”, “it’s Nphet’s/NIACs/Tony Holohan’s fault”, “it’s the unvaccinated’s fault”?

Malign actors

You’d sometimes think there’s a set of malign actors out there, either trying to prevent us from getting the protection we need, or in some cases trying to deprive us of our civil liberties. The truth is there’s nobody perfect out there — just a lot of people trying to make right decisions, trying to make difficult choices, trying to get things done as fast as possible.

We know nobody is right all the time (and I admit to having a real struggle with people who choose to refuse vaccines and run campaigns about the right to be feckless), but it’s really clear, surely, that we’ve done better by trusting advice and enabling decisions to be made than we have by holding everyone responsible for the behaviour of a mindless but cruel virus.

The second thing we have to keep in our heads is what I said earlier about there being no magic wand. I was wrong about that.

There isn’t a magic wand. There are just over five million magic wands in Ireland.

Different calculations have been made of how our population has grown since the last Census was done, but as far as I can tell everyone is agreed that we’ve passed the five million mark.

But there’s still loads of room everywhere for us to maintain social distance. There’s still more than enough water and soap for us to keep washing our hands. There’s still a plentiful supply, with no sign of it running out, of the materials from which face masks are made. It’s still possible for us to protect ourselves and each other.

In other words, while the struggle against the virus goes on, there’s all sorts of ways for us to turn ourselves into the magic wands the country needs. That’s not just the only way we can put this virus behind us. It’s the best way. Then, and only then, let’s have the craic!