Irish Examiner view: We have no choice but to play the long game with Covid

Speculation and half-cocked analysis only add to the uncertainty

Unless the obligation is undeniable, only a vainglorious politician would today seek a microphone to speak about Covid-19. 

Any advice offered, any promise made, can become irrelevant as quickly as the virus spreads through a restrictions-defiant wedding or funeral. 

Promises sincerely offered today are tomorrow’s hostages to fortune. 

The pandemic goalposts pinball like mercury on a granite worktop, changing circumstances the only certainty. 

Needless, avoidable damage is incurred by grandstanding, and not just to politicians’ standing.

Even the most responsible representatives, unless they have full access to all the facts — all, not most — risk undermining public confidence and squandering political capital by offering wishful thinking dressed as authoritative advice. 

That is, as so many of the arguments offered by Dr Facebook show, the stuff of social media and is best left in that universe. 

A variation of that old warning from a lifetime ago, “loose tongues sink ships”, seems apt. 

Today, loose tongues help spread the virus and undermine efforts to contain it.

It is, however, difficult to argue for political circumspection in a world where a Tenerife dentist has a surge of bookings from Ireland. 

The surgery staff admit they believe people are doing this to try to evade travel restrictions. This foolishness is confirmed as most appointments are broken. 

It is difficult and infuriating to try to understand the selfishness behind this behaviour despite the possibility of a €2,000 fine.

Is it possible that the ever-changing, inconsistent narrative around the pandemic, particularly the changing expectations and delivery dates around vaccination programmes, has helped create an impression that a certain laxity, a let’s-go-to-Tenerife-on-a-spree recklessness is tolerable?

Reluctance to be specific

That possibility has been recognised by ministers’ new-found reluctance to be as specific or optimistic as heretofore. 

As it becomes apparent that level 5 restrictions will persist until late April or early May, when low infection rates might have been sustained for several weeks, discretion becomes the order of the day.

This “cautious and conservative” approach enunciated by Taoiseach Micheál Martin has, it seems, been wisely extended to communications. 

That ministers are now reluctant to define timescales because of the unpredictability and high transmissible nature of the UK variant and the slow decline in infection rates may have made a virtue of uncertainty.

The prospect of another 12 weeks in lockdown is so grim, so life-greying, that anything that undermines the extended lockdown’s effectiveness is not acceptable.

Speculation and half-cocked, shooting-the-breeze analysis will do just that. 

Accepting this is not in any way to sidestep accountability but rather to recognise that repeated declarations of uncertainty create a vicious, undermining spiral of uncertainty. 

This is a moment to focus on the bigger prize rather than any issue peculiar to any 24-hour news cycle. 

It is not a get-out-of-jail card — the public inquiries will certainly come later — but a recognition that this is a long game demanding focus and patience. 

As ever, the best outcomes follow when people think before they speak.