TUAIRIM
December 01 2020
The pandemic that stole Christmas By Rachael Garvey Christmas time is beginning to slowly descend upon the world, but fast approaching at the same time. It’s that magical time of year when we prepare to put up the Christmas décor, battle our way through the crowds in town to purchase presents and the city also prepares to welcome back the Annual Christmas Market. But this year a thief is in town. We’ve all heard of the story of the Grinch who stole Christmas, but we never imagined a virus to take the Grinch’s place; a virus that has no heart. People are still decorating their houses, people are still buying presents, but there have been numerous major alterations to how we are going to do things this year. There will sadly be no Christmas Market, no Santa’s
Grotto and no having a drink in the pub as we toast to 2020. None of us expected 2020 to be turned upside down like this. Christmas is a time of year where everyone comes together, both friends and family. But coming together is simply extracted from the equation due to social distancing guidelines and Government rules on house visits and social gatherings. Personally, I do believe that Christmas is essential and must be celebrated and I could argue with anyone until I am purple in the face, but Covid-19 has already taken away enough from us. It will never take away the fact that we can still buy our loved ones gifts. The majority of us have been spending hours browsing and shopping online, but we know that this virus will not take away the happiness from people as they unwrap their presents on December 25th.
This virus will not take away the joy from families sitting around their kitchen tables as they surround ham, turkey, brussel sprouts and roast potatoes. We may not be able to visit the pubs for a friendly Christmas drink or admire the Ferris Wheel in Eyre Square, but I think it’s up to us to find happiness in the little things, no matter how small it may be. Here’s some food for thought; wrap some presents with your siblings or parents or housemates. Personally, my wrapping skills are atrocious, but it’s always nice to be made fun of by my mam, who is pretty skilled with wrapping paper. Blast some Christmas songs in your house while you put up some Christmas décor and I don’t care what anyone says, but as I write this on November 19th, I have no problem saying out loud how it is never too early to put up your Christmas tree. People are being told to stay indoors, some even in quarantine or isolation and maybe they are running out of things to do in order to keep sane, so why not add some festive cheer to the household? There’s zero harm in it. Sit down with a cup of tea and Danish biscuits with Christmas music in the background and write out your Christmas cards for this year. We live in a time where some of us spend our day to day lives alone because of this virus and there is no better or heart-warming feeling than receiving a Christmas card out of the blue as it reads “Merry Christmas, just wanted to let you know that I was thinking of you, stay safe”. Covid-19 will only steal Christmas if we allow it, so let’s take a stand and show this virus how Christmas will still be celebrated this year. It may not be the same celebration as years previous, but as the Irish say, “It’ll be grand!”.
Should we be pulling the plug on online learning all together when we don’t need it anymore? By Eoin Gallagher. Imagine it’s 8:10am, the a stiff Atlantic breeze is beating the outside of your window, carrying with it the heavy pelting wind of winter, your alarm sounds waking you from the sweet embrace of your sleep and you realise you need to get moving if you want to make it to campus for your 9am. What are your options? Pull your blanket up firmly around your face and return to sleep, missing your class or get up and haul off the embrace of your sheets, plunging yourself into the cold day. Of course, that is not the situation now. Now, when that alarm sounds you can just roll over, fire up your laptop and log in. I can’t be the only one enjoying this feature of online learning, am I? There were many complaints about it before the year began, and many more are being made by students as the year is progressing, the lack of contact, expanding workloads and unclear assignments to name a few. But there are positives to this style of learning. It would be a shame that if, when NUIG is formulating a post Covid-19 strategy, inescapable 9am lectures are in the mix. Personally, I’m enjoying the blended learning approach, no I am not a dangerous maniac, and I don’t think I have gone isolation crazy, just yet. There are benefits to this year’s college formatting, missing a lecture in the past meant and hour deciphering notes to catch up; now you can just listen back to the recording and for the information. Of course we have all made friends and contracts when asking a friendly stranger
for notes on a class that we have missed and this can still could be done, but it would also be nice to have the option of listening back to the lecture, just in case you happen on a less than studious classmate. The assess ability that virtual and recorded classes present to students who may be busy with other things is a massive, not that this was nowhere to be seen last year, certain lectures were already recording their lectures for the sake of the absentee students and these were an indispensable studying tool for tests and assignments. But this was not the norm. And we are unlikely to see it become common place, any longer than it has to be, after this year. A student body that will want to put this experience of 2020 well in the rear-view mirror are unlikely to keep around the things that pained them during the pandemic, even the parts that brought them pleasure.
Moreover, it was a hard enough sell for NUIG to pitch this form of learning this year, when there was a genuine need for it, any suggestion of its inclusion in the aftermath, may seem like more trouble then the tired board of management is willing to shoulder, despite the benefits it could bring. Also, it would certainly be a poor tactical move for NUIG to try offer online components to their course if they don’t need to , it would surely hark back questions posed to them this year about tuition fees , with the average student paying thousands of euro per year in the college. And not to mention the damage it would surely inflict to the college financially, potentially taking footfall away from on campus businesses, cafes and the like. Despite the flexibility, some aspects of online learning give to students, there is nothing in it for NUIG, so, it is hard to imagine it being a big part of our post Covid-19 learning experience.
It will be a while before we see an end to Covid-19 regulations such as social distancing. Photo: Joe.ie
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Pfizer vaccine optimism to be taken with a healthy dose of perspective and a grain of salt. By Eoin Gallagher. The German Pharma company Pfizer announced recently that it has produced the first viable vaccine for Covid-19 after their data sets indicated an efficacy of over 95% across demographics. By the time April Fool’s Day rolls around in five months’ time the Covid-19 pandemic will be a long-forgotten memory, and life should be pretty much back to normal. The vaccine will be distributed to whoever needs it, we can start getting back to the way things were. We could even be sitting on a bar stool sinking pints by Paddy’s day, not a care in the world; after all the pandemic will be done and dusted. Did that sound a little unrealistic to you? Possibly a fraction too clean? Or dare you say a bit naive? If so, you are correct. Any notions that a vaccine will deal a single deadening blow to the beast that is Covid-19 are deluded, to say the least. That’s not to say that it won’t shorten our collective struggle, it certainly will. However, anyone who believes that we won’t be stepping over the entrails of our vanquished problem for months or years to come is deeply mistaken. Our optimism may edge us towards the edge of the new year, expectantly looking to see a new ‘new normal’ that will be just like our old normal, where we can glance back at today’s normal as an unnatural memory. Unfortunately, it is unlikely to occur just like that. I don’t mean to sound too pessimistic, after all any news on a vaccine is good news, wonderful news even. But with Pfizer only projecting to produce 25 million doses this year it is important for people to understand what that and does not mean for Ireland. It does not mean, that we will all see our loved ones at Christmas time, that we will be sitting in stadiums enjoying sports events soon or that we can dispense with public safety guidelines. In fact, these realities may be still firmly posted in the future, until late next year maybe. It is important that we refresh this notion in our private and public psyche, we are not done with this thing yet
To put it bluntly we will never live in a time where coronavirus did not happen. and with over 1000 new positive Covid19 cases this week clearly it is not done with us either. A hard pill to swallow and maybe one that some people are reluctant to take. The instances of street drinking in Dublin earlier this month could indicate an area where growing frustration in the public boiled over during this second lockdown. With the current lockdown elapsing recently, time people could be excused for feeling, even quietly to themselves, that we are into the home stretch and that our tremendous effort has yielded victory. But remember when the vaccine is distributed across the globe people will still be getting sick and we will likely be exiting this crisis into a recession that no medicine will cure. To put it bluntly we will never live in a time where coronavirus did not happen. In the aftermath of this 21st century plague we may see greater germaphobes, tighter boarders, more Doomsday Preppers and a far greater technologically reliant world. It is hard to say precisely what it will all look like, but just that it will not be the same as before. The normal we have right now is just a stop on the way to the real ‘new normal’ that’ll come sometime late next summer, though we would all like to look forwards and see the place we came from, we won’t. So, to those who believe the vaccine will bring a swift return of the prepandemic status quo or that we can take our foot off the gas, think again.
