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Ireland, I'm wrecked. Like, completely knackered. There's another round left in Covid, but is there any gas in the tanks of the healthcare workers, home carers, and cocooners? I will not 'go to war' against covid again, or don my 'hero scrubs' because guess what? 1/
#COVID19
#COVID19
This is not a battle, or a war. Covid-19 is not an 'enemy', it is a virus that causes an illness. We don't 'battle' the flu. We try to avoid it, through hand washing, cough etiquette, and, thankfully, vaccination 2/
The 'frontline hero' narrative of those going 'into battle' with Covid19 sits uneasily with me. It implies death and injury of those 'fighting' the virus is somehow to be expected 3/
But Covid is not a foe that can we can bring the 'battle' to, or somehow defeat. The key to beating Covid is CAUTION not combat. It is not a sentient being. All it cares about is finding more hosts, to replicate itself. It is EASY to deny Covid this chance 4/
You've heard it all before.
1. Limited social contacts
2. Social distancing
3. Hand hygeine and cough etiquette
4. Masks
5. Self isolating if symptomatic 5/
1. Limited social contacts
2. Social distancing
3. Hand hygeine and cough etiquette
4. Masks
5. Self isolating if symptomatic 5/
These are not the actions of soldiers or frontliners or heroes. These are the actions of a society working together, pulling hard together, caring for the group, not the individual. #InThisTogether and all that 6/
But recently, as a society, we have slipped. Some of that slippage is through indifference. Did you ever think about how your pack of sliced ham came to be?It is easy to blame those who are 'other' or 'foreign', but the price of our cheap food is the wellbeing of those workers 7/
The other slip is more jarring. House parties, hedonic scenes from bars, even sedate social gatherings that move indoors when the rain starts, because, well 'these are my friends, they'd never give me Covid' 8/
Well, the numbers state otherwise. There is PLENTY of community transmission. Immediately we move to apportion blame. It seems we are no longer #InThisTogether 9/
And so my colleagues and I face into a miserable winter. Not as heroes, because we didn't win or lose any 'battle'. We just got lazy as a society 10/
Drop the hero rhetoric Ireland, because those who look after Covid patients are your sisters, daughters, fathers, brothers, partners, mothers. And we are already exhausted. Just distance, mask and isolate. It's not a big ask.
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@DonnellyStephen @SimonHarrisTD @paulreiddublin
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@DonnellyStephen @SimonHarrisTD @paulreiddublin