Scribbles in 500 words or less

The scribbles will be word count limited to 500 words. That is so that  I can manage to get some meaningful content down without getting carried away.

Setting up a blog was not my first thought in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic however it is something that has now happened and I am going to try embrace it. I was particularly impressed by the Irish WHO Director Michael J Ryan who said of emergency management and in his experience dealing with ebola outbreaks that:

“Perfection is the enemy of the good when it comes to emergency management. Speed trumps perfection … The greatest error is not to move. The greatest error is to be paralysed by the fear of failure. If you need to be right before you move, you will never win.”

The accompanying video is here to provide context.

We are living in very strange times. The State is in emergency mode, lives are at stake. Choices made by people may mean life or death to others. Queues at takeaways, crowds gathering at beauty spots and failing to obey a 2 metre distance is similar to Russian roulette.

This is not a dress rehearsal. What we do now individually, can make a big difference to others. Park the 99s, curried chips and spice burgers. If your actions saved one life, it would be enough. Gratification and consumerism could kill a cancer patient, a CF sufferer, a person with a relatively mild underlying respiratory condition. Nobody wants that.

If this continues, Ireland is going to have to deploy measures similar to France and Spain. Full lockdown with declared essential services permitted to operate only. Separately, measures to automate contact tracing will have to be deployed. It is likely that in any event those measures would flow in any event.

Cultural shebeenism lives on. The Irish lust for the lock-in. People are dying, it could be you.

It was deeply saddening to learn of 48 deaths in the UK yesterday alone. Herd immunity. It makes the whole Brexit charade shrink into literal obscurity the mendacious nonsense that it is. Boris Johnson is not the man to lead at this time, and the World War Two spirit was not deployed to deal with an insidious virus.

Having not moved quickly enough, regrettably the UK is now possibly only going to be able to statistically measure the mortality rate. That is particularly sad for a modern economy and society. It is quite clear political choices have left us with a rudderless Blighty run by pronouncements from unelected and arguably unelectable types.

Speaking of unelectable types, Donald Trump is making an even more ham fisted effort at leading America through this crisis, than usual. It is not the time for politics, yet he continues to chide the media and relentlessly cut at opponents. It does not make for good governance. Learning of the wall being constructed around the White House makes you think, be careful what you wish for.