Covid won’t hit zero until we have full ban on travel

It’s clear that the approach of some people in Ireland to Covid-19 is they follow the rules at all times except when they don’t follow the rules. It reminds me of that great line from a Leonard Cohen song. Addressing his partner he says: “You know I have always been faithful… give or take a night or two.”

Sure, part of the reason the number of Covid-19 cases skyrocketed around Christmas was the arrival of the UK variant, which is up to 70 per cent more transmissible and is now the dominant strain.

But it did not come in on the winds of the Sahara, as Social Democrats co-leader Catherine Murphy put it. It was brought in by people returning home from Britain for Christmas, and people coming in across the border who had obviously been in England at some stage.

That new strain arrived into Ireland just as restrictions were being relaxed and people were allowed to have a ‘meaningful Christmas’. Unfortunately some translated that as a mindless Christmas. People socialised, mixed with other families, and let their guards down at evening time at weddings and funerals.

A minority of those coming in from abroad, especially from the UK, did not bother to self-isolate.

Within a week we went from having one of the lowest Covid levels in Europe to having the highest.

And still the thing that was most shocking for me is that, in the midst of that hell, there was a small minority of people who thought the rules did not apply to them. While most of us stayed indoors and only went out for exercise or to do shopping or to do essential work, they went off to Spain or to Tenerife or to Portugal, on holidays or to their foreign ‘bolt-hole’.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.

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