Letters from the Irish Lockdown- Letter Two:
Hello again world from Ireland
Well there have been some changes since I last blogged. Some that I have been aware of when I published the last post. Yet I decided to hold back on the news until now.
Ireland is slowly reopening.
It was announced the Friday of the May bank holiday that the country will be slowly reopening in a phased capacity as of May 18th.
It is going to be really strange I think when this happens. I have gotten used as an essential worker during the lockdown to quiet streets and less people about. Not to mention the novelty of nearly empty car parks. The real strange thing happened when I went down the town after work. What hits you is the silence. Bear in mind, this is a silence in a city which is usually buzzing with life and only experiences this sort of silence in the dead of night after the pubs and the clubs have all closed up. However that being said, the one thing that I will not miss is the anxiety over whether or not I am staying within the 2km rule, the distance being bunked up to 5km. Which has really helped me. Working like this is not easy, on the rare occasions that I venture down the town, I always wear a mask. I know it might be unnecessary to do so but it gives me piece of mind. The worrying thing that I'm beginning to see is people choosing to ignore the social distancing rule in some places. It is worse I grant you in Dublin than where I am, but it is still cause for concern when I see it happening.
In fact, the importance of masks seem to be the case more than ever. It was confirmed during the week that there were new cases popping up in places where lockdown measures had been eased such as in Germany and China.This is a worry as now there are even questions as to how will hospitals cope is there is indeed a resurgence in cases. The WHO have also expressed this worry.
I expressed my fears about this in the previous post when I mentioned about the different waves of Covid-19. This fear is not borne out of thin air. It was found that Covid-19 might have been with us sooner than we thought. With a sample from France that was frozen testing positive for the virus. which had been taken in December from a patient admitted to hospital. This means that we may well be in the second wave of Covid-19 without even knowing this. Even our own Taoiseach admitted as such.
Another worrying thing is that an industry that might have helped to spread Covid-19 in Ireland is allowed to reopen again. However that being said, there are still travel restrictions for people coming into Ireland and this is also applicable to our nearest neighbours. Which is no harm whatsoever in my eyes.
What is fantastic though to see is that some of my favourite places to eat have decided to reopen in town. These were businesses that I was genuinely worried about because there had been no social media updates from them for weeks. So on the last two Fridays, I treated myself to something from one of the places and on Monday and Friday of last week and Thursday of this week got baked goods from one of my favourite bakeries in town which had decided to resume business. This is one of the things that I have tried to do more of during this lockdown, support more Irish businesses. It also highlighted more than ever what we have known for all too well living in a rural area: the importance of the local post office. And I would secretly love to see a local garda in my location too. Who knows, maybe with social distancing this might become a reality (fingers crossed). We desperately need that presence more than ever now.
Amidst all of this, there have been some positive outcomes out of this. For example, the RTE Late Late Show has finally cracked what made the Gay Byrne Late Late show great (the Gay Byrne Late Late only put cameras on the audience during a debate and focused solely on the people on the set. There have been several videos celebrating the creativity and kindness of Irish people during this time. Including the 'Closer Together' video done by Commercial Producers Ireland.
Anyways
Until again, stay safe everyone.
Well there have been some changes since I last blogged. Some that I have been aware of when I published the last post. Yet I decided to hold back on the news until now.
Ireland is slowly reopening.
It was announced the Friday of the May bank holiday that the country will be slowly reopening in a phased capacity as of May 18th.
It is going to be really strange I think when this happens. I have gotten used as an essential worker during the lockdown to quiet streets and less people about. Not to mention the novelty of nearly empty car parks. The real strange thing happened when I went down the town after work. What hits you is the silence. Bear in mind, this is a silence in a city which is usually buzzing with life and only experiences this sort of silence in the dead of night after the pubs and the clubs have all closed up. However that being said, the one thing that I will not miss is the anxiety over whether or not I am staying within the 2km rule, the distance being bunked up to 5km. Which has really helped me. Working like this is not easy, on the rare occasions that I venture down the town, I always wear a mask. I know it might be unnecessary to do so but it gives me piece of mind. The worrying thing that I'm beginning to see is people choosing to ignore the social distancing rule in some places. It is worse I grant you in Dublin than where I am, but it is still cause for concern when I see it happening.
In fact, the importance of masks seem to be the case more than ever. It was confirmed during the week that there were new cases popping up in places where lockdown measures had been eased such as in Germany and China.This is a worry as now there are even questions as to how will hospitals cope is there is indeed a resurgence in cases. The WHO have also expressed this worry.
I expressed my fears about this in the previous post when I mentioned about the different waves of Covid-19. This fear is not borne out of thin air. It was found that Covid-19 might have been with us sooner than we thought. With a sample from France that was frozen testing positive for the virus. which had been taken in December from a patient admitted to hospital. This means that we may well be in the second wave of Covid-19 without even knowing this. Even our own Taoiseach admitted as such.
Another worrying thing is that an industry that might have helped to spread Covid-19 in Ireland is allowed to reopen again. However that being said, there are still travel restrictions for people coming into Ireland and this is also applicable to our nearest neighbours. Which is no harm whatsoever in my eyes.
What is fantastic though to see is that some of my favourite places to eat have decided to reopen in town. These were businesses that I was genuinely worried about because there had been no social media updates from them for weeks. So on the last two Fridays, I treated myself to something from one of the places and on Monday and Friday of last week and Thursday of this week got baked goods from one of my favourite bakeries in town which had decided to resume business. This is one of the things that I have tried to do more of during this lockdown, support more Irish businesses. It also highlighted more than ever what we have known for all too well living in a rural area: the importance of the local post office. And I would secretly love to see a local garda in my location too. Who knows, maybe with social distancing this might become a reality (fingers crossed). We desperately need that presence more than ever now.
Amidst all of this, there have been some positive outcomes out of this. For example, the RTE Late Late Show has finally cracked what made the Gay Byrne Late Late show great (the Gay Byrne Late Late only put cameras on the audience during a debate and focused solely on the people on the set. There have been several videos celebrating the creativity and kindness of Irish people during this time. Including the 'Closer Together' video done by Commercial Producers Ireland.
Anyways
Until again, stay safe everyone.
Comments