Level 5

This is going to be very very tough on people. Workers, businesses, and people in general. This, the restoration of the PUP to €350 for those earning over €400 a week, was the very least that could be done. There’s a lot of people out there who are facing unemployment or have already lost their jobs. Every day that passes is another day lost for them. I’ve a neighbour who learned only last month that their job in an entertainment sector was gone due to the pre-Level 5 restrictions and the reality of the pandemic.

That incenses me on their behalf – because we went through lock-down in March through to the Summer and now in October all that seems to have been wasted. They were and remain cautious, sensible, and yet through no fault of their own have no job, at least until matters resume something closer to normality. And that experience is played out across this state (and island).

There’s many places to apportion blame and many areas where mistakes have been made. Reopening too quickly – and in effect shredding their own plan to do so. Not reopening on a sectoral basis and trialing same in order to see where and how flare ups should or could be dealt with. Not having a strategy as to where we would be by now. Look at the Level’s plan and marvel at how it doesn’t come close to ‘normality’ even at Level 1, and how we haven’t been close to Level 1 either. Ignoring or wishing away numbers as they increased from mid-Summer. There’s simply no way any rational examination of matters could have led anyone to a conclusion other than that we would wind up here given the manner in which those figures were increasing since the original ‘reopening’. The nonsense of a fortnight ago was particularly pitiful in that regard. Small wonder there’s incomprehension on the part of the Pat Leahy’s of this world at the government’s supposed U-turn. Only by willfully not facing up to this could one have expected it to have played out differently. And only by the narrowest of framings could one seriously argue the government had ‘weakened its own authority’ given that had predated this government with the too rapid reopening earlier in the year – and even then that is to ignore the actual health reasons for what is now taking place.

Amazing to read Leahy say the following:

There are two reasons for the U-turn.The first is that the Government was genuinely spooked by the spread of the virus – fears that were stoked by warnings from Holohan and Nphet, who told Ministers over the weekend that the “rapid deterioration” would continue to worsen. The public health warnings were that it was only a matter of time before the hospitals and ICU units began to fill up again.

And then;

The second reason is that politically the Government was in a corner. If the Government turned out to be wrong about resisting the lockdown, and was forced into it in the coming weeks, perhaps over Christmas, it would face a heavy political price. Holding out in the face of Nphet’s advice was always a risky political position. But folding now is not without risk either.

And;

The opposition within Government will be amplified outside it. The economic costs could be extremely damaging. There must now be a question of whether the schools remain open – a key test of the administration’s ability to manage the country.

Those paragraphs cannot be written unless the underlying viewpoint is one that doesn’t appreciate or wish to appreciate the gravity of the situation. How could any government of this state not be ‘spooked’ by the spread of the virus? The administration in the North has been ‘spooked’ and elsewhere…well Wales just went into a two-week lockdown.

Speaking of which perhaps most the most conspicuous failure of government was an inability to speak hard truth to people about the nature of where we and the rest of Europe and the world are. As noted in comments yesterday there’s a very strange sort of aversion to reality in all the stuff about Ireland being an outlier in terms of restrictions, or in Leahy’s comments above, when even the most cursory examination of the papers demonstrates the situation in Paris, Madrid, Germany, the UK (whole cities under lockdowns and somehow the penny hasn’t dropped here?)…and on and on. Even, as noted last night, with significant restrictions introduced in Belgium:

It comes as governments across Europe impose new restrictions to try to rein in the rate of infections, with Sweden allowing local authorities to introduce additional rules to cope with regional outbreaks, in a departure from its policy so far.Though a resurgence has not yet taken hold in Sweden to the same extent as other European countries, the number of people in intensive care is rising and authorities have conceded that there is little sign of the population-level acquired immunity some had hoped for.

But none of this latter is news, in the sense that it has been clearly coming for weeks and months (here’s another example from the IT from someone who has been very quiet on the issue and even now doesn’t begin to tackle the actual spread of the virus and the implications of that as the country goes to Level 5). The tussle between central and local government in Madrid played out over the last three weeks. Who was looking at that in the Dublin or Cork media? You’d have to wonder. How could anyone think Ireland would be immune in any sense to all of these dynamics given the approach we have taken has been similar to those other places.

Forget the outright denialists and chancers who peddle misinformation. They’re not the worst of this as it happens. Indeed it seems to me that it is those who shout loudest about others being ‘panicked’ and ‘fearful’ about all this who themselves seem to exhibit those two emotions most clearly. And in a way who can blame them. This is a dismal place to be. We’ve seen societal change on a scale and in a time period undreamt of even a short twelve months ago. And it hasn’t been for the better. I don’t care about wearing a mask, but for some I can well imagine it is a terrifying reminder of how matters have changed from normality. Easier in a way to think that there is no problem than to face up to the scale of what the problem is.

But is those who should, and one suspects do on some level, know better who are most at fault. Parts of a media elite, some in politics who appear credulous in the extreme, and some though not all in lobbying and business. Their efforts to push soft denialism, to offer ‘living with the virus’ lines, to big up marginal voices whose own words show them up for being at best deluded, to almost seem to pretend that the virus is a nothing, that if only “we” all could through some force of will ignore it all would be well and “we” could go back to “our” international holidays and “our” nice dinners out and drinks and our… well, you name it… and all this with some people, but with luck not them, catching it and getting new chronic conditions that they didn’t have before or a number actually dying from it. Because that’s the reality of their line, when one scrubs away all the rhetoric.

And the IT editorial on that today is a perfect example of same – offering no approach, no definition of how it is possible to ‘live’ with a viral pandemic in any meaningful way.

The entire premise of the “Living with Covid” framework was co-existence. After a quiet summer, during which test-and-trace was stepped down and even pubs were allowed to reopen, the country began rapidly to move through those levels. Where we find ourselves now, facing into a six-week closure, is the opposite of living with Covid.

And not a word about how so much of what has happened was the result of pressures from lobbyists.

The current iteration of Level 5 is odd. And perhaps the following:

Many non-essential retail outlets and hairdressers will have to close, while a reduction in off-licence opening hours is also under consideration. The possibility of a click-and-collect service for some non-essential stores is being examined though as the Government aims to maintain as much economic activity as possible.

One would think that hairdressers were – at current levels of PPE – fairly safe. Similarly with click and collect outlets, and in truth some retail. Indeed it’s socialising, gatherings, those sort of areas where problems would seem to be most likely to arise. But where has the concerted push by the state to underscore that message been? The effort to convince sufficient people that sacrifices need to be made in order to get us through and out of this? Conspicuous by their absence from administrations that seem to have been speaking markedly different lines from one minute to the next (and this piece here also from the IT from Simon Carswell at least has a sense that it understands the actual problems and how it is likely going to be necessary to enforce restrictions).

So what is next? Well, the least, the very least, should be clarity about where the state goes after Level 5. Keep in mind it’s only four or so weeks since the ‘Living with Covid-19’ plan issued by the government. That wasn’t a great success. The latest is:

The aim among ministers is to try to ensure businesses are back up and running before Christmas, amid hopes the country could return to Level 3 by the end of November, and Level 2 in the days before 25 December.

This seems a return to the past, doesn’t it? And all too easy to imagine the potential for matters to flare up again over December. But what is the longer term objective?

To get people up and about, the economy up and about, the society up and about (and note how little the term society is used in all this in discussions at any level) the need to quash the virus and/or control and contain it requires much the same approaches. Are there efficient track and trace systems in place? I’ve never thought a zero-Covid approach was unattainable, even in the context of the border. The international travel angle is tricky, but not impossible to manage, the reality of more extensive restrictions in the North something that should have been seized on by the administration in this state as an opportunity – and of course the need for an all-island response has never been clearer.

So does the state try to suppress this to the greatest possible extent, the better to allow something much closer to normality to emerge the far side of it? Or will matters return to the limbo of the past number of months where things are somewhat open but mostly closed? That stuff about Level 2 seems all too like it.

And that’s no progress at all for all those – all of us – mentioned in the first paragraph.