THE difficulty is in striking the balance. The dichotomy between safeguarding the health of a nation and preserving the economy of a nation. They said a long time ago that it would be more difficult to plan the route out of the Covid-19 crisis than it had been to put down the road blocks on the way into it, and they weren’t joking.

To an extent, they are interdependent, health and economy. All over the world, in normal time, there is generally a direct positive correlation between the two. These days though, they are diametrically opposed: measures taken to protect one are strangling the life out of the other.

Fundamentally, of course, this is a health crisis, and it is global. Four million people around the world have been infected with Covid-19, and it is reported that almost 300,000 people have died from it. And they are just the reported cases. The figure is probably higher than that.

According to a report in the Financial Times at the end of last month, mortality statistics across 14 selected countries around the world were running at a level that was far in excess of the number of Covid-19 deaths reported in those jurisdictions. Almost 60% higher. Accordingly, it is possible that the total number of Covid-19 deaths worldwide is closer to half a million.

We know the figures in Ireland very well. Every evening, at some time between five o’clock and six o’clock, your phone pings and you read the figures. You don’t read the words any more, you know what the words say, you just look for the numbers, and you hope that they are smaller numbers than the numbers that appeared on your screen the previous day.

In that respect, the trend is positive. New cases in the 700s and 800s and 900s three and four weeks ago have been reduced to 200s and 300s. There were just 137 new cases reported on Thursday, and that’s the lowest number of new cases in a day since the 121 that was reported on March 22nd.

It is important not to get sucked in by the fact that you are reading and analysing mere figures. Every 1 on the board is a person. A person and his or her family. Twenty-nine Covid-19-related deaths on Thursday brought the total number of deaths in Ireland to 1,403.

Collective

You remind yourself that that is why we are doing this: to slow the spread, to stop the deaths. To ease the burden on the health system so that it can cope. This is why we are not going into the office or seeing our parents or having a pint or going racing. And it’s a collective. It is important that everybody does it. The more people who do it, the more easily the virus can be restrained and ultimately contained.

There are other positive figures. The number of ICU beds being occupied by Covid-19 patients has been below 100 for over a week now. It was down to 82 on Thursday, down from 160 four weeks ago. Down almost 50%. The reproduction rate is now estimated to be down to around 0.5, which means that, for every two people who contract the virus, on average, just one other person will be infected. That’s the lockdown measures working. That’s flattening the curve. And of the 22,385 reported Covid-19 cases in Ireland, over 17,000 have recovered.

Second wave

Progress continues, but we are still a long way off containment. Health experts around the world are fearful of a second wave. True, there were just 137 new reported cases in Ireland on Thursday, but there were only 20 reported new cases on March 13th when the schools were closed, and there were only 39 reported new cases on March 14th when the pubs were closed.

Complacency is an enemy. The danger of thinking, you haven’t contracted the virus yet, so you probably won’t. Conversely, you are on your guard now. Covid-19 forms part of your psychological make up. You resist the urge to shake hands with your neighbour when you meet him out walking his dog.

You stand at a two-metre remove and you ask how the kids are doing. You wince when you see people hugging on television, and you wonder when you will be able to shake hands with your neighbour or hug your dad again.

From a health perspective, on a macro level, nationwide, there is significant progress. From an economic perspective, however, entire industries have been devastated. The CSO said yesterday that unemployment for April was 28.2%, up from 4.8% earlier this year, almost full employment. And, while some sectors are suffering more than others, just about every sector has been hit.

And the economic issue isn’t just an economic issue. It’s a health issue too, psychological as well as physical. We’re back to the two being interdependent.

There’s the macro as well as the micro. The worry that you go back too early. That you place the cards on the third floor too quickly when you don’t have the second floor secure, and that it all comes tumbling down. The fear that you have to go back to the start and begin building the house of cards again.

It is difficult to countenance the magnitude of the damage to the economy that that would cause, as well as the magnitude of the obvious harm that it would have on the health of the nation.

Perhaps the two are not diametrically opposed after all.