Irish Examiner view: Observe spirit of new Covid rules

Just as we all will struggle with these restrictions Government will struggle to balance the limits on social and commercial activities with essential pandemic defences.

The Government is expected to announce very challenging restrictions today to try to slow C19, a move made all but unavoidable as more than 1,200 new cases were recorded just last Friday. Even though this Government has already rejected National Public Health Emergency Team (Nphet) advice once it is hard to imagine it might, or could, do so again. Nevertheless, this will be a very difficult intensification on myriad levels.

As ever, context is important and today Europe offers a pretty sobering picture. Western Europe is the world's emerging epicentre of the current wave. A third of all new cases worldwide present in the continent's western countries where more new cases than India, Brazil and the US combined have been recorded in recent days. Italy has recorded a one-day rise of 10,925 and may impose tougher restrictions.

Just as we all will struggle with these restrictions Government will struggle to balance the limits on social and commercial activities with essential pandemic defences. Part of that struggle will be an inevitable debate about the clampdown. All sorts of opinions will be offered, some reasonable, others less so and still others, a minority thankfully, from the very fringes of sanity.

In many ways, the details of a new lockdown are almost irrelevant as observing the spirit behind them is far more pressing. Unless we do that today's unwelcome impositions will be just a step along the road to a darker place rather than something that might, just might, in time be seen as the beginning of the end.

We are, to a very large degree, responsible for what happens next.