Here we are again. As the strapline said for Jaws, “just when you thought it was safe to go back into the water,” it looks like we’re all going to need a bigger boat. Next week was assumed for some time now to be the date when another ton of normality would be heaped back into the mix, but alas, this is not the case.
For a place such as Galway, hospitality is the bread and butter of our economy, because tourism creates the sort of memories and perceptions of the place that later convert themselves into foreign direct investment, student applications and a general desire for people to want to work and live here. As such, next week promised so much for the thousands of employees who would have been getting back their shifts and their confidence. It would have been the time when the hostelries would be permitted to do what they do best.
However, in a further blow to the hospitality trade, the emergence of the Delta variant and its possible repercussions have dashed the plans and so we have to wait a while longer until we can dine indoors and even at that stage, it might be just those who are vaccinated to get their heads in the trough first.
I know we live in unprecedented times, but there are many of those times when the solutions seem somewhat comical. In years to come, there will be ballads written about the substantial nine euro meal, the 105-minute dinner and the starving unvaccinated workers who are permitted to serve food to diners, but who if they are to have a bite themselves, must do it outside on the street.
However, public health is the priority and the dangers of the Delta variant seem obvious to many. As we enter a time when schollchildren are not vaccinated or even scheduled for the jab at this stage, it is concerning that in Europe the Delta variant is predominantly spreading among schoolchildren. We have been looking with encouragement at the hospitalisation and death rates as a guide to how the virus is evolving, but nevertheless the number of cases is still going in the wrong direction, and may escalate further if it manages to take hold.
NEPHET has warned that modelling scenarios indicate that any relaxation of measures that were in place in June in the EU could lead to a rapid and significant increase in daily cases across all age groups. The letter to Government outlined several scenarios with the optimistic one predicting 250 deaths between now and the end of September, and the pessimistic vuiew predicting more than tho thousand deaths.
We hope they are wrong and that we do not have to find out the hard way. Until then, we have to enjoy the rest of summer, the start of the hurling, camogie and football championships, the league of Ireland, the Galway Races, and to do so with an increasing path back to normality, so that we can start to plan for things again come the autumn, which we hope will be a normal and meaningful one for the first time in two years.
