They do say it is always darkest before the dawn – but you’d hope the sun gets a move on because these are tough days indeed.
You don’t need me to tell you it’s been (almost) a year like no other and these are times that test us all, in so many ways.
Sometimes it’s even hard to remember what life was like before the pandemic, as we try our best to get through the days and weeks of the toughest lockdown yet.
And it is like every second news bulletin or post on social media is only piling on the doom and gloom as Ireland faces the worst days yet of Covid-19.
There’s a lot of anger and confusion around at the moment and there will be questions to be asked and answered about how and why we have ended up with a massive surge in cases.
That brief window at the end of November and before Christmas, when the vaccines were coming out, we appeared to have it under control and all the talk about “saving” the festive season might have lulled many of us into a false sense of “well we’ve seen the worst of it”.
Well, we’re seeing that now – and how the Government and the Irish public respond today and tomorrow will determine just how long we have to wait for that blessed dawn.
You would hope our very best minds – in medicine, public health, logistics, organisation – are 100% focused on the vaccine rollout.
This is not a time for the traditional Official Ireland approach of “sure we’ll try this and if we make mistakes – we’ll work out something before it all goes completely banjaxed”.
Are we hopeful? From the same people who brought us the never-ending saga of the National Children’s Hospital or a housing
crisis that’s gone on a decade or more with no end in sight?
There are ongoing rumblings of a push against the Taoiseach from his own party – which is insane given where we are.
Leo Varadkar appears to have gone (unusually for him) quiet and you get the feeling our politicians are in great fear of a public backlash on the surge in cases.
People are angry, they are scared, they are – in many ways – exhausted. So what do we do? What can we do. We can look to our leaders now to get their act together and make the vaccine rollout an unqualified success, with all speed and no stupid mistakes.
We can keep doing what we need to do – not because it’s what we are told to do but because there’s no other option if we want to save lives and get out the other side of this.
We can be good to each other, dig in and tough it out.
But there’s no other way to say it – the people can do their bit – but the politicians and the public health experts can’t afford to make any mistakes now.
