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.