Paddy Murray: Fear now tinged with paranoia as people play it safe over Christmas

I am still virtually a prisoner to this damned virus. I might have taken a risk or two last year, but this year there’s no chance.

In a way, I think most of us have changed that way.

Isolated I may be, but in recent days, I have heard the following things said:
"The lunch is cancelled. Too many have cried off already, there's no point . . . "
"I won't be with you for drinks on Friday. I told my kids I was going and they told me, firmly, that I wasn't. They're in their thirties. I'm taking their advice."
"We've cancelled the carol service. It was singing with masks or the risk of singing without them. Hobson's choice."

In addition to those sad cancellations, my own brother and his wife have cancelled a short pre-Christmas trip home from the States. The uncertainty around the new variant and, in particular, worry about how the US authorities would react, forced a cancellation. They’ll be here in the new year. We hope.

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It seems to me that more events and gatherings are being cancelled now than were cancelled months ago when it was medical and scientific advice which forced the decisions.

Now, it’s caution or, if you like, fear.

Yes, I know that from the very start of this thing I have suggested that a little bit of fear is necessary to bring about safe behaviour.

Now, though, it has all but turned into paranoia. And you probably won’t forgive me for suggesting that might not be entirely a bad thing.

I hear parents on radio programmes complaining about their rights being infringed by rules forcing them to put masks on primary school children. Yet again I will ask about the rights of those in the same classroom who are wearing masks but who are vulnerable to any infection the unmasked might bring in.

Masks, as a general rule, protect not the wearer, but those who come close to them.

No zoom

My own Christmas will be quiet.

I may get to see my 81-year-old brother. A younger (mid 70s!) sibling has offered to bring him around to my home for a quick, socially distanced visit. So I’ll get to see them both. I may get to see my sister who is a little older than I (mid 70s too). She has offered to call around for a similar short socially distanced visit. As for my brother in the States, it will be Zoom or WhatsApp. Thank God they exist.

When I use them, I think of my poor father who, as a 12-year-old in 1925 or so, spent most of the year in digs in Dublin so that he could attend Synge Street.

No Zoom then. No ‘phones either. Nothing but the odd letter.

I’ve had a lifetime of Christmases, of huge family gatherings, of carol singing for the scouts and knocking on doors to collect a few bob, of hawking Christmas trees around for the same scouts, of parties in friends’ houses – not just as an adult, but as a teenager.

My heart breaks for teenagers who are missing all of that social activity which was so normal for us.

Yes, I’m sick and I’m sure that if I get to look back on Christmas 2021 I will say that I’ve had better. Livelier, certainly.

But if I’m honest, I’m a very, very lucky man.

All going well, I’ll spend Christmas in our warm home with my wife Connie and daughter Charlotte. We will have a Christmas tree in the corner and we’ll exchange presents and watch a soppy festive movie one evening.

After I’ve taken my tablets of course.

P.S. Listening to the radio a few days ago, I heard a few mothers complaining about their young children being urged to wear masks to school. They went on about the rights of the children and suggested that wearing masks would somehow interfere with their education.

The idea of the masks is to protect children. Wearing masks protects others rather than ourselves. So the children without masks are, the experts tell us, posing a risk to other children.

If there is a comparison, it is this.

During six years of World War II, more than two million children were taken from London to the safety of the countryside as German bombing of the English capital continued to take lives.

The evacuated children returned safely to their homes when the war ended.

More than five million people worldwide have died from Covid. More than 200 million have become ill having caught the disease.

Asking a seven-year-old to wear a mask seems like a small price to pay . . .