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Ireland's #Level5 lockdown is almost a month-old now, and incidence of Covid is decreasing. But have we made productive use of this time, or are we doomed to merely cycle through different lockdown flavours while we await sudden rescue from a vaccine?
Have we used the time gained to solve the crisis in public health medicine? No
Have we used the time to roll out rapid testing in hospitals and other high-risk environments? I'm not sure that we have, and outbreaks in healthcare settings are proving to be an issue (which a national lockdown is unlikely to solve)
Have we used the time to introduce an effective system of border control and quarantine to minimise the re-importation of Covid? No, not even a little bit.
Have we set up a system for effective distribution of a coronavirus vaccine (if one is approved)? We have only just set up a taskforce for this, and I'm worried this may be prove to be a problem
Have we sought to examine which measures are most cost-effective at reducing the incidence of Covid? I'm not sure we have, with a lot of focus on blanket restrictions that society is not going to accept for prolonged periods
So while it is easy to be satisfied with our immediate success at again reducing the incidence of Covid with our national restrictions, I am concerned that we are currently making the exact same mistakes we made after the first national lockdown.
Focusing on Christmas is missing the point - anything other than mandatory hotel-based quarantine for incoming travellers will likely just lead to a further wave of cases (given our creaking public health infrastructure) and another national lockdown
In summary, it's clear that Ireland's Covid plan is simply tactics without strategy: the noise before defeat
