Resilience isn’t something that arrives, it’s something that’s built. Now, instead of turning away from the worry of the current context, we will have to draw on our reserves, on what we have learned over the past year and the new tools we have acquired, to traverse this darkest month. We aren’t less able to deal with harsh times having already experienced them, we are better able, even if the accumulation of stress and difficulty feels ever more grinding.
If your head is spinning right now, I don’t blame you. Among mixed messages, information vacuums, unclear figures and muted politicians, a crisis is escalating. There is a sense of a scramble in the background, that things are spiralling out of control, that systems are overwhelmed and that people are numbed by confusion, unable to properly engage with the situation.
We were experiencing the kind of whiplash in messaging and warnings that we previously pitied Britons for having to put up with
Hospital Report
In the immediate run-up to Christmas, and over the period, the urgency of the situation was lost on a detached public who were playing out decisions already made and plans already under way. People switched off, distracted by their personal and family lives. The engagement battle was lost.
Within this period, we had two lockdowns, rising cases, a travel ban, a situation spiralling out of control in Northern Ireland, and a pointless retroactive warning about people travelling from Britain isolating from December 8th onwards, even though it was two weeks after that deadline. We were experiencing the kind of whiplash in messaging and warnings that we previously pitied Britons for having to put up with. Perhaps the Irish Government did not want to plunge people into a state of panic in December, but carrying on regardless now looks to have been a very bad idea.
Now that people have hunkered down, what becomes more confusing is why we didn’t heed the warnings we knew were there – even if political messaging was diffusing them – and pay attention to the outcome that we knew would occur: dramatically rising cases and a Level 5 lockdown.
Humans are good at denial. We take information in more successfully through narratives than facts. The narrative was: the vaccine is coming, take December off from the pandemic. No matter how brutal the intervening facts became, they did not connect. Things are now much worse than anticipated, and we are going to have to face and process that or risk becoming more detached, and more numbed to the frightening reality.
This is a public health crisis but it is also a leadership issue. Two moments of populism have got us here. The first was Leo Varadkar undermining the National Public Health Emergency Team (Nphet) on Prime Time. This undercut the authority of Nphet, and positioned the Government as that which knows how to “deal with” the virus best. This played well with Fine Gaelers, rigid thinkers, and people who believe that acting the big man, pulling rank, and magically deciding that the economy can outplay public health, are somehow helpful stances in this context, which they aren’t. It also asserted the Government over public health advisers and officials, and laid out the new phase of pandemic messaging: listen to us, not them.
With the danger music now blaring, we must tune into that, focus on the fundamental guidelines, and choose personal and community resilience over political populism
The second was Micheál Martin’s populist insistence that people could be “given” a Christmas reprieve, on a wing and a prayer. This led to actions that people previously would have avoided – having house parties, going for dinner in each other’s houses, gathering in bars and restaurants, seeing multiple different social and family groups in a short period of time – unfolding over December, which is what is behind the current devastating surge in cases and hospitalisations. Once the basic public health guidelines – crucially, distancing, mask-wearing, indoor activity – were superseded by new looser restrictions, with little communication to the public about choosing from a menu of risk, everything we had worked to contain fell apart.
Yes, there is a massive degree of personal responsibility involved. People who should know better broke guidelines. But the messaging comes from the top, and how it filtered down and was framed is the responsibility of Government, and specifically the Taoiseach. He was the one making the speeches and talking about a “meaningful” Christmas, which was a stupidly ambiguous term completely open to personal interpretation. Anyone paying attention to the front pages of the tabloids in the aftermath of Martin’s speech on Christmas, would have noticed the rhetoric about freedom and craic. A large chunk of the public was more than happy to take their cues from this change in messaging, and have as good a time as they could within more lax restrictions; visiting different households, intergenerational gatherings, travelling around the country, eating in restaurants, drinking in bars.
In order to shift culpability from political decisions, the variant strain has been centred as something to blame. But coronavirus is coronavirus, and it still spreads the same way, even if a variant quickens the pace. The canary in the mine was screaming in the North. Blaming people’s personal behaviour – while somewhat valid – is an echo of Brian Lenihan’s “we all partied”. These actions occurred in a context where Government conditioned the public to believe they could gather and celebrate. With the danger music now blaring, we must tune into that, focus on the fundamental guidelines, and choose personal and community resilience over political populism.