Irish Examiner view: Let’s keep an eye on the bigger prize

Hunger to get life back to normal as the pandemic wanes needs to be balanced with a responsibility to the vulnerable in our population

The urge to return to business and socialising, such as indoor dining, needs to be balanced with public health requirements Picture: Leah Farrell / RollingNews.ie

There can hardly be a single person who is not heartily sick of the pandemic and its wretched impositions. Though a defining factor in our lives for a little over 18 months, the pandemic seems to have chained us forever. Those who have lost family members or good friends to the virus are particularly bruised, especially as they wonder how an earlier vaccination programme might have averted tragedy. Those over 60 waiting for a second vaccination shot as the Delta variant gathers momentum are increasingly uneasy. Justifiably so.

There is certainly not a single buffeted and all-but-broken businessperson still blase about an endless series of graded lockdowns. Those who earn their living through the performing arts equally so. Students, especially those sitting the Leaving Certificate, face an unprecedented — but surmountable — challenge. Young families struggling with confined children while working from a crowded, noisy home without the usual support of an extended family, are particularly hard hit. Single-parent families even more so. These situations are often exacerbated by pathetic broadband. Those who commit physical or emotional energy to one sport or
another look on as a second summer slips by, the season’s set-pieces curtailed or confined in ways that drain them of their substance and lifeblood.

Yet coronavirus is utterly indifferent. As if to underline that detachment, Sydney began a two-week lockdown yesterday. An outbreak in Darwin prompted a hard two-day stay-at-home order. Australia has been more successful in managing the pandemic than many societies through swift border closures, social distancing rules, and high compliance, reporting just over 30,450 cases and 910 deaths among its population of 25m.

We are on the cusp of a similar set of decisions, ones that may frustrate and cause no little anger, much of it misplaced. An earlier-than-anticipated decision on the next steps, whether it is a release or renewed confinement, will be made this week. The urgency around extending a window to completing vaccinations is influential too. Taoiseach Micheál Martin said yesterday that reports that he is erring towards a delay in reopening indoor hospitality are “not entirely accurate”. There may be some hope in the fact that Mr Martin
acknowledged that the year has been “devastating” and any delay beyond July 5 for indoor dining will make Ireland the only country in Europe without indoor dining. He also confirmed that the spread of the Delta variant is unlikely to postpone non-essential EU travel. He said Ireland has signed up to the Covid digital certificate and will continue to do so.

What's your view on this issue?

You can tell us here

It is not surprising that this situation, this almost endless uncertainty, causes frustration, some of it bordering on unspoken fear. Yet we should appreciate by now that uncertainty, an inability to commit to a long-term response to an ever-changing situation, is a defining characteristic of this assault on our lives. As is the way of these things, the need to be ever more patient grows indirectly in proportion to the frustrations that undermine that necessary but tested resolve.

This is not a moment to lose sight of the bigger prize.