Letters from the Irish Lockdown- Letter Five

Hello again world from Ireland.

Well thing are moving forward in relation to the reopening of businesses and society not just here but around the world. With the gradual reopening come the questions about whether we are being too cautious , whether face masks should be worn or not and in what context should they be worn. Later on in the week also more guidelines were issued on the wearing of masks. . Also the question of what happened to the 1,000 people who were stranded abroad when this all started resurfaced . One of the questions though that I would be asking is, what will be the effects of opening up the country will be. Yes, at the moment, infection rates are low but what if that were to change. That is the fear. We shall see as it was in fact announced on Friday that the government were going to fast track the reopening of the country . Instead of the five stages to reopening the country, that has now being reduced to four.  However there had been a warning from a British scientist about a second wave of the virus during the week, so we shall see whether this step was a wise move. In fact, just as I'm finishing this blog, I became aware of a worrying resurgence in local transmission as well as the fact that despite warning, house parties in Cork are still continuing much to the dismay of locals worried about social distancing. It isn't all doom and gloom though, it would seem that in his speech on Friday, the Taoiseach quoted Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers . Much to the amusement of us all, he quoted Terminator also a few weeks back. A move that sparked countless memes to surface.