All you need is Love, said The Beatles.
Well Ireland in 2020 has got it in bucketloads. The efforts of our people right across the country to protect the elderly against the coronavirus is heroic.
We are not the selfish bastards we’ve been made out to be. As a nation, we actually do care.
The last two weeks have been tough going, but our citizens have got on with it. There is no whingeing, no bitching, the people know what they have to do. The lives of our wives, husbands, partners, mothers and fathers are at stake.
Children with existing respiratory illnesses such as Cystic Fibrosis are also at risk. We wouldn’t want anything to happen to any of them.
We have learned a new phrase - social distancing - and we are living our lives by it. It really means physical distancing: to stay as far away as possible from the next human being you see.
It’s against everything we friendly Irish believe in, but people could die, so we have to do it. I am now getting used to chatting from six/seven feet away.
Waiting my turn in a food line is now part of everyday life.
We are in the middle of a war. Yet it doesn’t feel like it until you go and see what is happening in Italy and Spain, two countries we know and love so well.
The sight of hundreds of coffins laid out in morgues and on the streets.
Hospital emergency units full to the brim with patients battling for life. And yet only one in 20 surviving. Harsh but horrible. The rest dying.
The last time I saw morgues so full was in Kuwait and Iraq during the first Gulf war, and trust me, it ain’t pretty.
Then, everyone knew the enemy Saddam Hussein, this time it is invisible. A virus can be found anywhere, on your hands, your clothes, you face, your saliva. You can’t see it.
We are proud as a country the way we are fighting it. Taoiseach Leo Varadkar and his team have done a great job.
They are talking to the people, not at them. The “We know best” condescending attitude they displayed towards the housing and homeless crisis over the past few years, and which cost them the General Election, is now gone.
The Government is far more likeable.
I’d say if there is another election when this pandemic is all over, they might even return with a lot more seats.
They are telling the truth as it happens, no spin and no lies. The more they keep the public in the loop the better.
According to the 2016 census, there are 637,567 people over 65 in our country. They are the ones most at risk.
We are all staying at home as a sacrifice so as many of them will live, and because we love them.
