Thread by @ohanloncmr

I am worried about the message @LeoVaradkar @MichealMartinTD @DonnellyStephen @CMOIreland @SamuelMcConkey1 @NewstalkFM

1/ There’s no doubting this lockdown has been the hardest. But people complied. Yes there was perhaps more traffic than April last year, but nothing is open. There are no gatherings.

2/ No construction, no schools, no retail, nothing. If people are out then it’s for a break from the four walls at home or for some food shopping. And cases are coming down impressively, perhaps not as low as I’d have though they’d be since nothing is open.

3/ There are so few places that people can gather together now. We know our ageing hospitals aren’t not designed for optimal patient and staff spacing. We’ve known this for decades. And decade after decade, there are campaigns to try and make things better, more fit for purpose.

4/ Yet little has changed. So staff get sick and patients get sick. But hopefully we have turned a corner in our healthcare Covid cases and ICU burden. The people have done their bit. But they are suffering. I fear people and children are reaching breaking point.

5/ And it’s ok to say this, and it’s ok to say that this is a problem, and it’s ok to suggest we need a plan for this. To say this does not suggest Covid isn’t important or that all lives don’t matter.

6/ But I’m seeing patients everyday and their spirit and their will to go on is gone. And perhaps we are getting to a point of some breathing space given the dropping case numbers and vaccine roll out. And isn’t this what we all had our hopes pinned on.

7/ Wasn’t this the final lockdown to protect our healthcare system and people. So that we could maybe have even the smallest of life’s basics permitted again. Maybe the hard cold truth is ugly and we can’t get away from it.

8/ But my genuine feeling is that our leaders should be giving people some sort of hope, some goal, something to hold on to. Maybe we have to be vigilant and fear the new variants, and maybe new vaccine boosters will need to be developed as time goes by.

9/ But we can’t only publicise the pessimism when the country is totally shut down for 4-5 months. Talk of no summer, possibly no Christmas. Talk of this lasting 4-5 years, of talk of the “next” pandemic. This is breaking people

10/ After 10-12 weeks of lockdown in the depths of winter, with constant anxiety seeing the sadness in our children’s faces, our anxieties that elderly loved ones won’t see their grandchildren again, or will die alone in a nursing home not having seen a family member in a year..

11/ This is when the message needs to change. Give some light, less fear. Maybe an optimistic prediction may end up wrong, but so many of the doomsday predictions have also been wrong too. So why not aim high and miss rather than aim low and hit.