Mother's day in isolation is doable, but Paddy's day in lockdown, In Ireland? That was tough

Ireland went into lockdown proper on Saturday. For the past 2 weeks, we were practicing - with semi-lockdown. The main difference is that, now, we can’t go further than 2K from our home to exercise. Fortunately, for us, we have two beaches within that distance, so it’s not exactly purgatory.

I used to tune in to the WHO daily updates, so I was ahead of events and the urgency, or lack thereof, in which they were reported here and the UK. Because of that, I didn’t wait for the government to shut schools, I took my youngfella out before then. When the country belatedly went into semi-lockdown, I stopped tuning in to the WHO daily updates & I don’t listen to the news anymore. All that matters now, is staying safe - & sane. I never underestimated how lethal Covid-19 was, so I don’t need daily reminders. The constant background noise, a bit like house music on acid, just feeds free floating anxiety that takes all of my energy to subdue.

That said, we managed to celebrate Paddy’s day, albeit in a fairly sedate manner. Windows in the towns & villages were adorned with homemade posters wishing passers by a “Happy St Patrick's day”! But, the kids needed/deserved something more, & Paddy’s day can’t go by without getting dressed up & parading about in sch-tyle. So, some clever clogs organised doing a couple of circuits of the village in our cars, with posters & shamrocks & leprechauns dangling out of the windows!

My yougfella spent over an hour sketching & painting this to go on display in our window 👆👏👏

We have a tradition in our house, when it comes to celebrating Paddy’s day, & we kept to as much of it as possible. We wore green & I dug out my Aran cardi from hibernation. My youngfella filled all the vases in the house with Daffodils from the garden, lit a candle, helped me bake a green cake & we danced a jig around the table. We also normally have a Paddy’s day party, inviting the youngfella’s friends.

This is our first year back in Ireland and the youngfella’s first time to celebrate the sacred day of all things green and vaguely Irish. A couple of years ago, in the UK, one of my yougfella’s friends said he couldn’t go to a Paddy’s day party in an Irish person’s house because, according to his mam, we’ll probably all get drunk, sing rebel songs and watch IRA films! I laughed & invited the mammy to come & help. By the end, I had her dancing a jig with me around the kitchen table. As God is my witness (as my mam would say), not a drop of drink was taken!

This year, there was no party & the cake was only vaguely green (there was only a dreg of green food colouring left 🙄. Other than that, it was wall to wall rebel songs & IRA films! Well, more jigs & reels, followed by a few episodes of Father Ted.

We also managed to celebrate Mother’s day, which was no different to other years, except that I’m in Ireland, in the midst of a savage pandemic.

More daffs & a beautiful hand crafted card by my youngfella, brought to me in bed. He slunk in beside me & I drew his head to mine & breathed in the distinct and increasingly, unwashed, essence of my child. Being his mammy is my best achievement. Even-though, 70% of the time I'm rubbish at it, the other 30%, I smash it & I'll take that, thank you very much...

I wonder: how much longer can I steal away these childhood moments, before the mother/son bond we share morphs into something else. The intense inter-dependency of a mother and child relationship is at once the most grindingly head messing and yet heart burstingly joyous thing ever. I know I only have him on loan and that one day I’ll have to hand him over to the world but, I don’t want to think about that now, so I don't.

As a daughter who has lost her mother, this day will always be laden by that loss. The candle on the table is lit in my mam’s memory & I remember her by telling my youngfella stories about his brave, determined, grafter of a granny.

T’was a lovely day, spent walking in the Burren, where we didn’t meet a soul, followed by a solo swim in the sea as the sun set over a Mother’s day that none of us will ever forget.

This was done, totally freehand in a matter of minutes. Job at the Beano beckons! 💖⭐

An "outbreak" of Coronavirus in my Irish village exposed how the containment phase was squandered. But, the community is rallying & there's nowhere else in the world I'd rather be

As a human rights journalist I’ve been in a few tight spots, so I’m not easily fazed. Finding myself living in a village with at least five cases of Coronavirus, several others in self-isolation and an asthmatic child, I don’t mind admitting that I’m mild to moderately unsettled.

It’s not so much the outbreak itself, but the realisation that the regional infrastructure isn’t in place to deal with it. Government advises against travelling to affected areas overseas, but they clearly didn’t plan for “affected areas” being here in Ireland. So, for the past week, they just pretended it wasn’t happening. The more the community cried out for advice, the deeper into lockdown the agencies went.

The measures announced by the Taoiseach on Thursday, whilst welcome, amount to shutting the stable door after the horse has bolted. On Wednesday, while the WHO urged aggressive action in order to avoid Italy’s mistakes, the Chief Medical Officer, Dr Tony Holohan, reprimanded hospitals and care homes for restricting visitors, undermining their attempts to keep our vulnerable safe.  

Last week, the WHO warned that the window of opportunity to prevent a Coronavirus pandemic was rapidly closing and urged governments to take drastic and immediate action. At the same time, 20,000 people travelled from Ireland to Cheltenham and were not tested nor isolated on their return.

On Wednesday, the pandemic was official. Containment had failed and a conversation I had with the regional Public Health Team, on Tuesday, left me in no doubt how this crucial phase was botched.

In a community where there are at least 5 confirmed cases of Coronavirus, the actual number is likely to be significantly higher. Analysis of Wuhan’s retrospective trajectory, shows that on a day when 444 cases were recorded, it had 27 times that number and, in the UK, where there are officially 1,140 cases, Boris Johnson admitted the true figure could be around 10,000.

I asked the public health official why they hadn’t closed the local schools as a precaution?

No need. A risk assessment had been done and there’s no evidence that closures need to take place.

But, I reasoned, one week ago, there was only one confirmed case in the country, today there are 24, 18% of which appear to be in my community. Surely that’s evidence that the schools should be closed to prevent further contagion within the community – as a precaution? Isn’t that what containment means?

No, there’s nothing to see here, move along please and wash your hands on the way out.

That was last Tuesday, one week later, there are 292 confirmed cases and two deaths from Coronavirus in Ireland.

I raised concerns too about the robustness of the contact tracing system locally. People who think they should have been contacted, haven’t. This issue was raised in the British medical journal, The Lancet, recently. The system relies on infected people remembering all of their interactions for up to two weeks when they were asymptomatic but contagious.

Even when people presented with symptoms, up until Friday, GPs were prevented from testing for community transmission. If it’s not tested, there’s no official record and if there’s no official record, Dr Holohan can continue boasting about the low number of community transmissions.

When dealing with a virulent disease with high mortality rates and no cure, prevention is the only effective weapon in our armoury. If we don’t stem the spread of contagion now, our already fragile health infrastructure will collapse.

All schools and universities are now closed but it’s not enough. Our case exposed the lack of regional capacity to act rapidly in response to community outbreaks, enforcing lockdown where high incidences occur. Instead, the contagion was allowed to spread.

Our community is rallying. Weaving a patchwork quilt of kindness and compassion. Social media is awash with offers of support, the local shop is providing free, confidential deliveries to people self-isolating, Extinction Rebellion are running errands and walking dogs and my son forages for kindling to leave at elderly neighbours’ doors. Every single act of kindness is another square in the collective quilt and, for everyone that falls ill in this community, there is comfort in the knowledge that there’s someone there to catch them.