Why this shutdown gives us a chance to focus on what is real - Mark Casci

A story which just a few weeks ago was perhaps worth a few words towards the back of a newspaper or a few seconds at the end of the bulletin is now challenging our very way of life in a profound way.

Indeed, our society has not been tested this much since the Second World War, a trauma that so few of our population remembers.

Shops are either closing or working around the clock just to deal with the demand.

Flights in and out of the country are virtually grounded.

Our trains, for years the source of complaint regarding their being late and cramped, are now increasingly empty.

And even on Mothering Sunday, the advice from our top medical experts and the head of our national Government was to give paying a visit to the person who gave birth to us a miss.

Cracks are already showing as our economy moved in the space of just a few days from being business as usual to virtually closed down.

I have had more than one of my contacts in tears on the phone this past week. These are people for whom difficult decisions, strategic leadership and stressful predicaments are just a normal part of their existence.

This crisis will impact us all, no-one is immune from its effects nor its consequence.

I must confess that I too have struggled to hold it together on more than one occasion.

It is important for us all to recognise how natural a response this is.

When you are explaining to your six-year-old daughter that we cannot visit her local playground because doing so may result in someone, dying you know things are quite simply unrecognisable.

It is tough, I would not patronise you by suggesting otherwise. The isolation will invariably take its toll on our collective mental health. The impact of the crisis on our businesses and livelihoods definitely will.

Many of us are now working at home for the foreseeable future.

Many like myself are doing this while simultaneously caring for young children whose schools have been closed.

But let’s face it guys, we are the lucky ones. All we need to do is stay inside.

Many do not have such a luxury.

Staff on our National Health Service, emergency services, delivery drivers, cleaners, supermarket floor staff – people who until recently society gave little thought or respect – are now the bedrock on which our nation’s very existence rests.

When we defeat this crisis, and defeat it we will, we will forever be in debt to these heroes.

It is just one step we must take post-corona to recognise that our whole societal model needs to change.

If this crisis has shown anything it has provided a stark realisation that much of the matters which have dominated our discourse in recent years was utterly trivial.

Additional taxation on the cost of a takeaway pasty, how the leader of the opposition chooses to consume a bacon sandwich, the technology used to adjudicate on contentious decisions in sports fixtures and the colour of our passport.

All of the above have been the subject of heated and interminable debate but are now shown very clearly to be of little consequence.

What we have now is an opportunity to focus on what is real.

Between Covid-19 and climate change, we need to make sure that humanity prevails and does so in a compassionate and sustainable manner that does not pit household against household, business against business or country against country.

But for here and now, let us show our unflinching and deep-rooted gratitude to those on the front lines of this battle.

Let us use our time at home to connect with our loved ones in the most profound of manners.

And let us show consideration and humanity to those around us at all times.

There is quite simply no other option before us. We will not get a second chance.

And frankly, if we do not seize this opportunity and realise its potential we do not deserve one.