Irish Examiner view: Darkest hour just before winter fades

Dr Ronan Glynn, Deputy Chief Medical Officer, believes Ireland has passed the worst of the pandemic for this year. Picture: Colins Dublin

As we reach for another warming layer, and as we turn up the temperature dial on the heating controls to fend off the cold snap a promised blanket of snow might bring that old saying: the darkest, coldest hours are just before the dawn, rings true.

Just as spring is at hand, there seems to be a step-change, or at least the very strong hint of one, in our struggle with Covid-19. January's worrying, almost overwhelming surge has ebbed and numbers now seem more manageable though that is not to underestimate the grave challenge faced by those fighting the virus or the vulnerable, exhausted health workers leading that fight.

Deputy Chief Medical Officer Dr Ronan Glynn has said, in a longed-for statement, that Ireland has passed the worst of the pandemic for this year and that he is hopeful we won't have to endure a repeat of January's surge. 

There are many reasons to be optimistic, said Dr Glynn: “We have already passed what is the worst of this disease...  there are many reasons to have confidence that that’s the case... First and foremost is the performance of the population... and their willingness to keep going with these measures."

He stressed though that the reopening of society next month remains ”uncertain” and that the focus should be reopening schools and resuming non-Covid health services. Even if that optimism proves, in time, to be a hostage to fortune it is easy, and almost important beyond its heft, to enthusiastically embrace that view this cold February morning. 

The widening availability of vaccines plays a part in that step-change too. So too does the very public and visible preparation of vaccine centres across the country. They generate a very valuable psychological momentum that will eventually contribute to restoring the emotional and social equilibrium so challenged for a year now.

Covid-19 origins

The World Health Organization (WHO) statement that it was “extremely unlikely” that Covid-19 is entered the human population as a result of a laboratory-related incident can only add to the idea that the tide is beginning to turn. Sars-CoV-2 “may have originated from zoonotic transmission”, the WHO concluded, but the “reservoir hosts” remain to be identified, they warned.

Members of the World Health Organization travelled to China on a fact-finding mission on the origins of the coronavirus.

This reassuring analysis will further marginalise those wild, paranoid voices already struggling to find an echo chamber since the White House administration changed. It is, however, disconcerting that a minority of HSE and private hospital medical staff are part of a Facebook group sharing anti-vaccine and conspiracy stories about the pandemic. It seems daft to imagine that those voices can have it both ways.

It would be premature to imagine that the battle has been won, that will require many months more of responsible, self-limiting discipline.

 However, it is not too early to begin to calculate the cost of the last year. Many lives have been lost and more will be but the impact on the living has been profound too, No more so than in the case of the health workers working extremely long hours in hospital wards full beyond capacity sometimes with inadequate protection. This pandemic offers many lessons but one of the most pressing is that we must learn to prepare better for the unexpected. We cannot allow our nurse and doctors and all of those who work with them to left so exposed if another pandemic arrives.