THERE is time, and there is Covid Time. Because time has dragged so painfully for so many it feels surprising as well as distressing that this is now the second pandemic winter.
And yet looking back turns up events of various kinds that seem much farther in the past than they were in reality. In calendar time, that is, time as marked by a diary. Though what’s a diary to many people these days.
Barely a year ago, but it seems much longer, a Stormont executive at least notionally headed by the duo of Arlene Foster and Michelle O’Neill was struggling with whether or not to increase restrictions or loosen up.
Northern infection rates frightened Donegal and Dundalk. The former Irish soldier turned Independent TD in Louth wanted his army to stop northerners with their higher rate of infection coming south. Bad stuff, but distanced or at least blurred by what’s come since.
The DUP pushed last November for opening up hospitality, declaring unprecedented concern for the sector’s low-paid workers. There was stalemate in the Executive, then a ragged settlement.
And Robin Swann made a remarkable public statement, as dramatic in its way as his earlier prophecy of biblical numbers of deaths. He was "embarrassed and ashamed", he said. "I backed the eventual compromise because for me that was better than everything falling." He knew, he said, that if he brought any further proposal the DUP would block it again.
Only medical voices were more outspoken. GP representative Tom Black in Derry called the decision a betrayal of overwhelmed health workers. Public health specialist Gabriel Scally, having argued repeatedly in vain for all-Ireland lockdowns, said the DUP had paid more attention to business than health. They had entirely disregarded their Chief Medical Officer and Chief Scientist, he said.
Rates of infection fall and rise, vaccines make a difference as does limiting socialising, mask-wearing; disciplined public behaviour. The course of the pandemic has defied patterns and thrown experts across the world into spins.
Anti-vaxxers and preachers against regulation of individual freedom have more than enough to throw back when chided, because they appeal to passion not reason. Prove to us, they say, show us proof, in the knowledge that studies in the midst of epidemics cannot be definitive.
But the DUP know what happened last November when they stymied Robin Swann. The opening up they barrelled through was followed by a surge in hospitalisation.
It will never be admitted. Their behaviour now is confirmation enough that they got feedback, much as they have on Brexit and the protocol, that was critical, blowback.
Tiny crowds carrying banners, pitiful young guys playing at being rioters and a few semi-retired paramilitaries/drug-dealers burning buses are un-spinnable as grassroots fury about an Irish Sea border.
Sinn Féin got themselves into line just early enough to hygienically distance from the DUP, whose performance last week took some scripting, and coordination.
The Paul Frew contribution, heady soundbites about standing against discrimination, was presumably meant to reach the ears of people who hear any regulation involving Stormont’s other parties as ‘infringement’.
The delicate Sir Jeffrey said before he would make a substantial comment he was waiting for Paul Givan, who was waiting for ‘the evidence’ from the health minister and officials.
All this for a measure used in Scotland, Wales, a string of EU states including the Republic this past four months, hardly revolutionary. In the end the DUP did not use the veto they have so revelled in to get their way. Instead they pointedly voted against the Covid passport originally talked up by the SDLP and Alliance.
Then Edwin Poots flexes muscle by putting a DUP councillor, and David Campbell, originally known as chairman of the Ulster Unionists but more recently as spokesman for the Loyalist Communities Council, on the board of the ‘Agri-food and Biosciences Institute’. Which will surely soothe passions on the Shankill.
It’s been a long 20 months.
