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Isn’t it so very 2020, that each day we open a window on the covid advent calendar, there is a new restriction behind it?
For many islanders, and businesses, that is exactly how this week has felt.
From last week’s general perception that the virus was under control, to this week’s absolute certainty that it isn’t - the terrible maths of covid has finally, relentlessly, shredded the festive period, and left it lying like discarded wrapping on the lounge floor.
If there is one certainty about covid, it is the rate it will spread. We know all this. We have the data from other countries, all who have already been on the wrong end of the virus – twice - this year. Now, it is our turn.
The medics can predict, accurately, the case numbers, the levels in hospital, the amount of people who are not likely to survive - and the far, far, far greater numbers who will feel no symptoms at all, or who will just recover quickly from no more than a mildly irritating bug.
Once you focus right in on what this year has all been about, it is simply this: giving our health service the time to make their plans; purchase, test and install the equipment they need; get the right people in the right places; gain the knowledge of how to treat it.
Pictured: it may soon be time to use the Nightingale Ward
That is precisely why we had Lockdown 1 – the truth is that we simply weren’t ready for this pandemic, and we were not alone in that.
We are now.
The health service has now had that time. They now have the equipment. They have the Nightingale. They have the knowledge, and the drugs, on how to treat covid. They have a vaccine.
So, it is for those reasons that at the end of this most difficult of years, we need to keep our nerve.
It was clear at last night’s media briefing that tempers – amongst both the senior politicians, and some in the media – are badly fraying, and the pressure is evident for all to see. It was a deeply uncomfortable watch, with the wafer-thin veneer of calm control lasting no longer than the opening remarks.
Pictured: the media briefing was a tough watch, with tempers fraying.
We shouldn’t forget that when the island is firmly in the grip of what has been termed the biggest threat to it since the Occupation, and livelihoods are actually being lost as I write this, our politicians came to that briefing having been tied up for three days discussing the myriad of intricacies in voting reform. It's surprising they could even stand-up straight, let alone lead one of the most important media briefings of modern times.
If ever there was a case to park that interminable issue, and free up our senior ministers and officials to return to their ‘covid posts’, it is now.
It is a prime example of the need for the community to move on - just for now - from the deep divisions of past weeks, from Votes of No Confidence, from hotel parties, from the perception that despite the utter mathematical predictability of covid spread, we have somehow been caught unaware.
We often talk proudly about the strength of community in Jersey. Now is the time to prove it.
To show that we can focus on the very tough task in hand; we can temper our words until the immediate crisis is passed; we will not waste the time we have created this year to prepare for what lies before us; we will hold our nerve.
In that, we all have a role to play.
