Viewpoint: Addressing the Nation
It might be a good time for the Government to call a snap election. They won't win it. But it would offer everyone else doing the criticism game a chance to prove whether they are up to working in the real world instead of the easy parallel of opposition.
And it would give everyone in the current crowd a break after the hardships of the last fifteen months. They might as well get out and enjoy the rest of the summer. Because the likelihood is that the winter isn't going to be great. Especially if NPHET's modelling is only halfway towards the button, September and onwards could well be another wave of serious sickness and also a crucible of discontent. Whatever level of good humour the sunshine might bring will quickly dissipate. Time to let Sinn Fein et al take the heat.
On balance the Coalition has done reasonably well in managing the pandemic. They spent money on supports, our money, and they borrowed more in our name to help keep the whole ship from foundering in the Covid waves. And while it was spotty in places — there will always be anomalies that are the stuff of front page journalistic hammering — the supports have largely worked, and the health service wasn't overwhelmed.
The HSE also came in for ritual bashing, but in general have done, and are doing, a very decent job on the vaccinations. Despite the cyberattack, despite issues with vaccine supply, and despite the snipering from a barrage of interests scrummaging to show that their groups are more important than any other.
As for NPHET, well, they're in a similar situation as are the politicians ... you love them when they say what you want to hear, you hate 'em when they say what you don't. They have a straight down the line job, though, to try and second-guess a virus that is highly adaptable and can rapidly morph into new strains to most efficiently do its thing: infect and reproduce, repeat as necessary. Coronavirus demonstrates evolution at warp speed, and trying to predict its progress for that much-demanded 'clarity' is simply impossible, no matter what level of data analysis is available.
But impossible is not something politicians in opposition, or lobbying practitioners, will allow for. Because they don't have to deal with the impossible, only demand it. That's why, no matter how well the Coalition and the public health entities may have done in what have been quite impossible circumstances, they're on for a hiding to nothing when it comes to the next elections. It's in the runes. It's spluttering all over social media. Voters aren't going to remember the achievement, if Government manages it, of getting the country past this. They'll only remember the hardships.
So they might as well go to the country now and get it over with. If only because we really can't go on much more with the funereality of Michael Martin, God bless his sincerity, addressing the nation again, and again, and again.
Though we should be careful what we wish for in that context. Mary Lou?
I think I'd better think it out again ...
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