It’s been a very subtle change, but “lockdown” is almost a forgotten word now, for Ireland’s chattering classes. We don’t mention it anymore. It’s just one of those things that happened, far back in the mists of time, and – like all Irish tragedies – it’s more something that happened to us rather than something which we did to ourselves. “Ah, lockdown was terrible”, we say, wistfully, when we think or talk about it at all.
It’s important that lessons are learned. And, in truth, they have been learned, but very quietly. There is nobody working in public health policy in Ireland who expects that another covid wave (like the one they are having in the United States at the moment) will result in another lockdown. Quietly – so very quietly that the silence is the giveaway – our policymakers realise that locking down as hard as we did, for as long as we did, was an error. Quietly, they realise (and, in conversation, will ruefully admit) that some of the madder things like the 9 euro meal are mortifyingly embarrassing in retrospect. We got “caught up in it all”, as one sheepish TD said to me, not long ago.
The problem, basically, is that while we may have agreed to forget lockdown, it has not agreed to forget us. The chaos at the airport this weekend, for example, was a direct consequence of two years of policymaking which forced the airport to shed qualified staff by the boatload. Not unreasonably, many of those staff found other things to do. Now, when they are needed, the airport is chronically understaffed. These problems did not occur at Dublin Airport at any time before covid. Post covid, the airport is in crisis. You can draw a direct line between the policy, and the outcomes. Airport chaos is a direct result of two years of lockdown – a policy which will be remembered in time as amongst the most disastrous ever enacted in the west.
This, Ministers say, is embarrassing for the country. They are right about that. But Ministers are very good at assigning blame elsewhere and asking Dublin Airport Authority to “take responsibility”. It’s about time that they took some themselves.
It’s also, frankly, about time that the public took some responsibility themselves. Many of those stranded yesterday – not all, but many – will have contributed unknowingly to missing their own holiday, by doing things like lying to pollsters about their desire for more restrictions, even as they ignored many restrictions themselves because sure, they were personally “careful”.
All of this is one of the reasons that we need a full, proper, covid enquiry. The Taoiseach has said, not unreasonably, that he is unwilling to subject some officials to such an enquiry because he does not want, in a future crisis, people making decisions with one eye on what the enquiry might say about them later. Policymakers in NPHET and elsewhere, he says, acted in good faith. There is no reason to doubt that. It just misses the point.
That policymakers should act in good faith is, after all, the very least we should expect. Nor should we be especially concerned that from time to time, mistakes will have been made. What we should demand, though, is that those mistakes are acknowledged later, so that they might not be made again in the future.
A close look at Ireland’s covid death rates, for example, reveals that the total number of deaths in Ireland was only marginally higher in the pandemic than one might have expected in a normal year. Proponents of lockdown will argue, in their defence, that this proves that lockdown works. But that makes no sense, since a majority of adults ultimately became infected with covid despite those lockdowns. The low fatality rate points to a much simpler explanation: The fatality rate of covid was fairly overestimated to begin with, but unforgivably and systematically overestimated as the pandemic went on. The result was that a policy (lockdown) first introduced as a precaution against a deadly virus became entrenched because of a state policy of insisting that the virus was more deadly than it actually was.
Politicians, again, will admit this in private. But not in public. Perhaps they fear that the public will turn on them for it – though the risk of that is low, since the public were fully on board with what the politicians of all parties wanted.
The airport, in many ways, is the most trivial of long term consequences. In time, it will sort itself out. Politicians will be forced to act, because an airport that doesn’t work fatally undermines any sense that Government is competent. No, the bigger consequences will be quieter, and more deadly: The missed cancer screenings. The mental health deteriorations. The missed classes, and exams. The massive covid bill, which the public, as yet, haven’t really given any thought to.
We will adopt, as a country, the posture I mentioned in paragraph one: Because so many of us are guilty of having gone along with this, we will pretend that we had no choice, and that all of this was inflicted upon us from the outside. The truth, though, as the years progress, and the rotten legacy of lockdown emerges, will always be there: We did this to ourselves, and cheered it on.