The afterlife was invented because we need to imagine that suffering has a meaning, that it will be rewarded in the end. In a more secular era, we accept collective pain if we are convinced there will be an equal and opposite collective gain. The great problem of public policy right now is that this faith is being tested to destruction.
If we lose the belief that the things we are enduring have meaning, there is only absurdity. This is the danger of the moment we are in. A sense of futility hangs over everything. The Government has to think radically and urgently about how to restore a conviction that all the harsh measures we must again endure are worth it.
There is an apparent imbalance in the management of the pandemic: the pain persists but the gains quickly evaporate. As the virus runs out of control again, we seem to be back where we were in March. It was bad enough when time seemed to stand still; now it is looping backwards.
This perception is not – or at least not entirely – accurate. The pain damn well is worth it, because the lockdowns have saved thousands of lives. We can’t know how many, but it is probably more than were killed during the entire 30 years of the Troubles in Northern Ireland.
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Our systems have never been light enough on their feet. Almost all the steps have been slow and laboured. We can't Come Dancing, so we end up Strictly locked down
But we’re just not very good at taking account of what didn’t happen. The non-events, the grief forgone, the anguish held at bay, are abstract. What weighs much more heavily on the collective consciousness are the things that actually happened to us, the physical and psychological diminution of our own lives.
Those lives have become a cruel parody of breathing. We exhale every few months and then inhale again the virus-tainted air.
Fancy footwork
Back in March and April, the big idea was, in the phrase coined by Tomas Pueyo, the hammer and the dance. Hammer the virus with strict lockdown until the R number drops close to zero. Then use fast and fancy footwork with rapid and flexible responses to outbreaks to keep the R number below one.
We’ve done the hammering reasonably successfully, twice. The problem is that the dancing has been less Bolshoi Ballet, more Lanigan’s Ball – in again, out again. Our systems, for all the brilliance and dedication of so many people, have never been light enough on their feet.
Almost all the steps have been slow and laboured. We can’t Come Dancing, so we end up Strictly locked down.
A word we’ve heard a lot over the last 10 months is sacrifice. But when people keep sacrificing, they expect the gods to relent and lift their curse. When the gods decline, the people turn on the high priests.
But this would only make the disaster worse. A large-scale loss of confidence in the Government and its public health advisers would leave the way open to malignant liars and conspiracy theorists.
Remember when you were getting an injection as a kid and the doctor said, this isn't going to hurt? And the outrage you felt when you felt the sharp sting?
It is crucial that the Government gets its act together. Three things have to be done at the same time.
First, dispel the air of panic. Over the last week, the sense of shock emanating from those who are supposed to be in charge has been increasingly discomfiting. There is no excuse for it – everybody knew that the decision to loosen restrictions in December was going to create a third wave in January. The wave may be bigger than expected, but it was always coming.
Basic data
Second, get control of the flow of information. It is unacceptable that the State has been unable to keep up to date with the basic data on new cases and unable to present a transparent progress report of how the vaccination programme is working and will work. It is even more inexcusable that Micheál Martin (even in good faith) gave false information when announcing the new lockdown, implying inaccurately that the main reason for it is the new strain of the virus. (It isn’t.)
Third, and most important, make the gain equal to the pain. In its overall response since March, the Government has practised a false economy of pain. The urge to downplay the grimness of what we have to endure has lessened the rewards of lockdown.
The natural political instinct to soften the blow is counterproductive. Remember when you were getting an injection as a kid and the doctor said, this isn’t going to hurt? And the outrage you felt when you felt the sharp sting?
It is going to hurt and we all know it. The tracking surveys conducted for the State have consistently shown the public way ahead of the Government in the pain game. Most of us, for example, didn’t want restrictions lifted for Christmas if it meant a worse lockdown in January.
Since it’s going to be awful anyway, make it awfully effective. Enforce real quarantine for everyone coming into the country. And stop people moving from county to county – including across the Border.
Since we have to use the hammer again, at least hit the Covid nail smack on the head. Weak enforcement has succeeded only in inflicting costs on the compliant majority without giving them the payback. We can take one more battering, provided we know it will be the last.