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Lá Fhéile Pádraig shona daoibh! This is a St. Patrick’s Day like no other. A day that none of us will ever forget.
It may seem like a lifetime ago, but it’s been a month since Taoiseach Leo Varadkar told us in a St. Patrick’s Day speech to “unite as a nation by being separated from one another.”
The largest social experiment ever attempted in this country was, as everyone anticipated, turning around after a two-week period. After a certain delay, the instructions graciously offered by the Taoiseach succeeded through the enactment of draconian laws requiring citizens to have a “reasonable excuse” to be outside.
In his March 17 address to television cameras, Varadkar warned: “We cannot stop this virus, but working together we can slow it down and make it go backwards.”
A month later, this central objective has been largely achieved. There have been obstacles along the way, and performance in different areas has varied, but much of the health service has been well prepared, while the blow to the economy and to our individual livelihoods has been muffled for now.
At the time the Taoiseach spoke, Ireland had 292 cases of Covid-19 and two deaths; we have now diagnosed the disease to some 13,000 people and more than 450 have died.
Despite this upward trajectory, luck was already cast at the time of Varadkar’s speech to the nation. The virus circulated and infected people quickly, and the challenge would always be to limit their growth first.
Massive social distancing
This has been largely accomplished; A daily growth rate of over 33 percent has slowed to around 6 percent. Over the course of a month, the number of people contracting the disease from an infected person has dropped from an average of 20 to about three, as massive social distancing has taken effect.
However, beyond the numbers, we have endured those “difficult days” foreseen by the Taoiseach as thousands have fallen ill and hundreds have died.
The expected front line of the battle with the coronavirus has also changed. Despite difficulties with personal protective equipment, hospitals have coped with the expected increase in patients by eliminating other issues more effectively than expected and by increasing capacity. The number of infected people in intensive care units (ICUs) is stable and is even decreasing slightly this week.
Unfortunately, nursing homes and other residential centers have been less successful. Warning signs were there from an early stage, including lack of specific guidelines, lack of engagement with the sector, and lack of transparency.
Brittle exposed
Today, the virus is present in hundreds of nursing homes, accounting for more than half of all deaths. An investigation into how so many mostly elderly and frail residents, as well as poorly protected staff, were exposed is inevitable at some point in the future.
May 5 is the new date for the restrictions to end, but only a wild optimist believes that a general deviation from the measures is likely.
Ireland is at least near the top of the chart, probably. Having endured the Taoiseach “calm before the storm” and faced the surf, we can soon expect cases and deaths to begin to fall.
The problem is that there is no clear way out of this. While everything in our lives has changed, in terms of the challenge we still face, nothing has changed.
Other countries may be easing their restrictions today, but these moves are tentative.
Science tells us that the virus can and will return if the social distancing ends. And if the distancing remains, our lives will remain immeasurably altered, at least until a vaccine is developed.
In another demonstration of the challenge posed by this disease, a study published Thursday in Nature found that people were more infectious in the days leading up to symptoms.
The only way to deal with it for now will be to build the test and contact tracking system that until now we have not been able to develop properly.
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