Going anywhere nice this year? Just back to the 1970s, thanks

If there were any taxi drivers or hairdressers around to make small talk, they would be enduring a lot of very short, very dull conversations. None of us are going anywhere nice this year.

The only place we're headed is back to the 1970s, a time before package holidays or Ryanair flights, when ham sandwiches, a flask of tea and a 99 on Tramore beach is as exotic as it gets.

The curtains are twitching again, just like they did in the 1970s – only now, instead of bishops as guardians of public morality, we have an army of self-appointed social-distancing shamers.

Emboldened by the Government’s frequent warnings about complacency, and armed with a smartphone and a heady rush of virtue-signalling, they’re ready to pounce at the hint of a barbecue kicking off in a neighbour’s garden.

The Johnny Ronan coronavirus videos show an Ireland that never went away

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Jennifer O’Connell: Endless dithering on children and education is unconscionable

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What are working parents supposed to do between now and September?

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These are still early days in a crisis that now looks certain to drag on for months, possibly years

Governments around the world are starting to worry about how to keep the public onside during the long, divisive, fretful months ahead. New Zealand's Jacinda Ardern has mooted a four-day week, ostensibly as a boon to domestic tourism, but also as a carrot to the public, who have endured one of the most draconian and effective lockdowns anywhere.

She didn’t get to be most popular party leader in 100 years without understanding a thing or two about motivation.

The French premier Édouard Philippe has told the public they may go on holidays, so long as they do it in France. The Guardian reported that British government ministers have begun to worry about sustaining public morale over the long summer months.

These are still early days in a crisis that now looks certain to drag on for months, possibly years. As we embark on what may be the most cautious unlocking in Europe, sections of the public are getting ahead of the roadmap and casting about for loopholes.

Pubs are reinventing themselves as restaurants; an underground market in childcare is thriving; hordes are gathering on beaches in Sandycove and Sutton; hairdressers and mass-goers are clamouring for a faster unlocking. Tragically, incomprehensibly, road deaths have increased during the lockdown.

So far, the strategy of Government and public health experts has been founded on paternalism, fear and chidings about a complacency that hadn't been particularly evident, but they frequently seemed determined to talk into existence. Largely absent from the nightly briefings was the rationale and evidence for the decisions made by the National Public Health Emergency Team (NPHET), such as why horse racing can restart from June 8th, while childcare is the subject of only vague soundings by Minister for Children Katherine Zappone.

Or why Minister for Health Simon Harris said on April 19th that schools might reopen one day a week, an idea that was abandoned by May 1st, was revived by Taoiseach Leo Varadkar on May 14th, only to be shot down by chief medical officer Tony Holohan the same day, before the WHO suggested last week that maybe they should reopen, then the unions said, again, they couldn't. Keeping up? No, there's a sense that they aren't either.

Meanwhile, the public has a few questions. Who is ultimately responsible for decision-making on how to unlock? What is the balance of risks being weighed up?

The idea that 10 weeks of unreasonable abnormality might turn into a year or two is intolerable

How are the short-term dangers of the virus being measured against other long-term impacts: heart attacks or strokes or cancer going undiagnosed; screening programmes interrupted; loneliness; poverty; mental health issues; vulnerable children kept away from their support networks; other children falling behind educationally; over-70s infantilised; the future of Leaving Cert students tossed about like a football?

Every other country is watching Sweden, which weighed up the same set of risks and arrived at a different answer. Last week, amidst reports that only 7.3 per cent of the population have developed antibodies and there were 6.08 deaths per million inhabitants in the week up to May 20th – more than the UK, Italy or the USA – it looked as though its gamble on not locking down might be a colossal failure.

In reality, it's far too soon to say. Raw comparisons between countries are subject to the vagaries of data collation. Sweden's excess mortality rate for March and April – the number of deaths above the average for the time of the year – suggests that overall it is doing a little better than a lot of other countries, including the Netherlands, Belgium, Italy or Spain, and worse than a few, including its neighbour Denmark.

We won't know for a year or more the price it will pay for not going for a more stringent lockdown. But Sweden is right about one thing. It is playing a long game, maintaining public trust with "a lot of explaining why things should be done", as state epidemiologist Anders Tegnell puts it, while giving people "a reasonably normal life".

Here, life is unreasonably abnormal. Our worlds have shrunk to a 5km radius. The days crawl by in a toll of things that didn’t happen: hugs, school, work, funerals and weddings, holidays, parties, sporting events, trips to the shops or the hair salon or the theatre, medical appointments, raucous nights out, quiet walks on the beach.

The idea that 10 weeks of unreasonable abnormality might turn into a year or two is intolerable. A lot could happen between now and the other side of the back-to-the-future summer ahead. But unless it involves a record-speed vaccine or treatment, a second wave is coming in the autumn. We need to find a more sustainable way to navigate it.

That means weighing up all of the risks to public health. It means moving on from chiding the public towards consulting them, and offering clear evidence for decisions.

It means providing answers that go beyond “because we say so”, or even “because Tony Holohan says so”.

It means accepting that although it feels like the 1970s again, this is very different country. A belt of the crozier is no longer enough to keep us in line.