Irish Examiner view: Help fellow citizens in a broken world

Poverty and deprivation, far from being driven into retreat, is advancing at a dramatic speed

'We’ve been out on Christmas Eve with toys for families who wouldn’t have had anything for their children the next day,' said regional SVP president Mary Waide.

All the ambient noise is about Omicron, and whether the R rate does this or the infection rate does that or the fatality rate does the other thing. But it is a capital mistake to theorise without data, as Conan Doyle once forced his imaginary detective Sherlock Holmes to acknowledge. “One begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts,” said the sleuth of Baker Street in A Scandal in Bohemia.

Given that Omicron is a developing story and the evidence about the severity of the danger it poses remains unvalidated, we should spare some valuable time to consider those of our fellow citizens who face tangible problems, here and now.