Coronavirus pandemic reveals an uncomfortable truth
It has loomed on the horizon for months and now it feels like it was always here.
Coronavirus arrived on these shores on February 27 and at the time of writing there are 221 confirmed cases in Ireland, north and south.
When I wrote the first draft of this piece last Tuesday, that figure was 50.
The reaction has evolved like the onset of the illness. Gallows humour has given way to muted concern and eventually to the barely supressed panic you can now feel on the streets.
But the intricacies of COVID-19 have brought a callous edge.
While the majority — 80.9% — of those affected will experience only mild symptoms, the elderly and those with underlying health conditions are at the most severe risk.
26.4% of all deaths from the virus have been among the over-60s.
A cavalier ‘I’m alright, Jack’ approach has spread as contagiously as the virus itself. The young, fit and healthy are ploughing on regardless.
A footballer in the Mid Ulster Football League played a match while awaiting test results. His positive diagnosis spread panic across the north.
This blatant disregard for others has further manifested itself repeatedly over the last week.
Shoppers elbowed their way through crowds to strip supermarket shelves, leaving only blank spaces and blank looks on the faces of the vulnerable elderly who tried to do their weekly shop.
Crowds thronged the pubs in Dublin’s Temple Bar over the weekend, making a mockery of the social distancing policies pursued by both Irish and UK governments.
They spewed the ‘touching me, touching you’ line from Sweet Caroline while in nearby hospitals, exhausted medical staff prepared for another night on the front line of a global pandemic.
One financial columnist in the Daily Telegraph even attempted to put a positive spin on the virus within the last week.
“From an entirely disinterested economic perspective, the COVID-19 might even prove mildly beneficial in the long term by disproportionately culling elderly dependents,” he wrote.
He later apologised for using the term ‘culling’. How very contrite.
Those ‘elderly dependents’ are your fathers, your mothers, your grannies and your grandads. Culled to sustain the herd.
‘Take it on the chin’ said British PM Boris Johnson in an early TV interview.
Maybe it’s all just bravado. A case of combating fear with denial as you cower in hope of surviving the Blitz.
What cannot be attributed to fear is the disaster capitalism that has arrived with the coronavirus.
Face masks, antibacterial hand wash and, bizarrely, toilet roll, are now premium items. More unscrupulous vendors are inflating prices.
One Irish pharmacy reportedly had 90ml of hand sanitizer on sale at €9.95 and a pack of face masks at an eye-watering €150.
Two brothers in Tennessee took it to obscene extremes, travelling state-to-state buying up 18,000 bottles of hand sanitizer to sell on at a profit.
The last few days appears to have marked a sea change in attitude at government level and perhaps a realisation that scoffing bravado and a Dunkirk spirit aren’t quite going to cut it.
Italy and Spain have locked down their nations and flights across Europe are swiftly being cancelled in bulk.
Ireland has closed all schools, while a lack of continuity in the NI Executive’s response has led to many schools shutting of their own accord to make preparations for an eventual closure.
Bars and restaurants cling on, trying desperately to balance the needs of their staff with the pressure to assist social distancing and implement self-imposed shutdown.
We have moved from containment to delay with alarming speed, but the stark warning last week from the Irish Association of Funeral Directors (IAFD) should focus minds.
They recommended that anyone who dies from coronavirus should be immediately cremated or buried — without a funeral service.
“The thinking is to cut out the contact between the deceased and the living,” an IAFD spokesperson has said.
In a country that values and preserves contact between the living and the dead, the thought of losing that link is the most jarring of all.
The dearth of empathy, cooperation and community that this crisis has revealed is a stain on humanity’s soul.
Pressure from coronavirus has revealed the uncomfortable truth that too many are happy to bury their heads in the sand and allow nature to take its course.
As long as they’re fine, the vulnerable are collateral damage.
Don’t tell Jack you’re alright.
Do what you’re told and keep Covid-19 from darkening his doorstep.
