Fairy tales
When I was a kid, I loved fairy tales. I learned a lot from them and what was really interesting was that the heroes didn’t always win, either! One of my favourites was Red Riding Hood. In it, the beast appears as a friend until it’s too late… Fascinating!
The message of that tale is not to be naïve. If someone appears to be friendly because they tell you what you want to hear, that doesn’t mean you’re safe from danger. I thought about this recently when I read an article about groups saying something like ‘relax the corona rules more, just for young people’.
Now, you can dress the idea of relaxing the corona rules for young people however you like, but as I see it, all you do is hand the beast a disguise to hide in to attack the vulnerable. Back home in Ireland, my countryfolk learned this the hard way. They opened up the country and relaxed the corona rules for a ‘meaningful Christmas’.
This ‘meaningful Christmas’ sounded great! Who wouldn’t want that? Everyone had worked hard sticking to restrictions to keep the virus at bay and a break was welcome. The virus was almost gone anyway, and sure even soldiers in World War I stopped fighting to play football together at Christmas. The virus was almost gone anyway; didn’t we deserve a break too?
In it the beast appears as a friend until it’s too late… Fascinating!
Of course, opening up the pubs and restaurants meant we were only hearing what we wanted to and ignoring obvious signs of danger, just like Red Riding Hood. That ‘meaningful Christmas’ was all the better for the virus to see us with. Then, once my countryfolk were in its sights, it wore them as a disguise and that was all the better to eat us with.
In the end, a lot of people died and many, young and old, remain very sick. There was no Woodsman to save my countryfolk either. What the virus ate stayed eaten. It continues to bite, too: since January, the virus has been spreading so hard, people can’t even go five kilometers from their homes.
What’s the moral of my tale of modern Irish woe? It’s that you shouldn’t hear what you want to hear about relaxing corona rules just for the young. What happened in Ireland could happen here, too. Don’t be naïve, we’re not immune from harm or from spreading the virus wherever we are. The break will come, but it’s not time yet.
Stay strong. We’re in this together.