Dr Michelle O'Driscoll: Some covid lessons are worth digging out of the memory vault

Five years ago this month, our lives were turned upside down and changed in an instant.

Fear and worry about a new virus that was making its way across Europe, and had just recently reached our shores, had been escalating. Then came the most surreal of announcements from then Taoiseach Leo Varadkar on the steps of the White House to stay at home, for the safety of ourselves and our loved ones.

What began as a two-week containment measure for covid-19 became a two-year marathon in resilience, endurance and grit.

The announcement happened on the week that I published my first weekly column with WoW - ironically, covering the topic of stress and burnout, which the World Health Organisation had named as being the health epidemic of the 21st century- little had they realised what had been just around the corner!

Covid became a repeated feature of my weekly submissions during that time. I documented key updates in hygiene measures, mask-wearing and testing. I covered the progress made in covid treatments and vaccinations, and advised on how to tell covid and other respiratory illnesses apart.

In the height of it all, I talked about how we were grieving connection and security, and acknowledged how much life was being put into perspective in this higher-stress but lower-speed environment.

Being pregnant, I reflected on the experience of navigating antenatal appointments with masks and partner restrictions.

As a parent, I discussed the impact of losing your village, and on how we could reach out for support, for ourselves and our kids in the lockdown landscape.

In the aftermath of the pandemic, I examined ways to create new routines and get back out into society in what felt like a safe and acceptable way. The phrase “our new normal” now gives me the shivers!

This past week, on the news both here and abroad, the five-year anniversary of that first famous lockdown was marked by chatting to people about their covid experience.

There were people who lost jobs and loved ones, teenagers who were just young primary school children at the time, and parents of babies who were born into lockdown and spent their earliest developmental years in it.

The sacrifices that were made to save others, particularly by our front-line workers, were recognised, and the long-term physical, financial and psychological impact of the whole ordeal was considered.

What really came through from these ‘Reeling in the Covid years’ chats to camera, that has kept me thinking since, was what we learnt from the pandemic, and how we’ve quite quickly unlearnt it again (almost).

The importance of family and connection, the perspective of what’s really important in life when all the noise and clamouring requests have been stripped away, the benefit of space and a slower pace, and gratitude for what we had in the face of such precariousness.

These were all things that, despite the incredible challenge of that time, and the unnaturalness of the social distancing, cancelled family gatherings, and isolation, stood us in good stead in terms of life lessons and important take-aways.

While these weekly articles feature covid very little if at all anymore, I’d like to hope that we could recall some of our important learnings. It’s challenging though. Back then, we passed our days on the small things because we had to, and began to realise that the little things really were the big things.

Now, back to the all-consuming rat race that seems to be even better at just swallowing us up, clarity can be much harder to maintain.

It really is quite stark how the global political landscape has changed in that time too. As traumatic as the pandemic was, there was a sense of international solidarity – the world standing shoulder to shoulder for the most part to fight this unknown threat, rallying in our quest to overcome it, and grieving one another’s loss of life.

Today, it feels like unity is being abandoned, and chaos reigns on the international stage. The currencies of life and humanity hold much less value on the global stock markets these days, a very sad thing to consider.

Five years on, while we’ve gladly bade good riddance to the pandemic, I do think there are learnings that are worth digging back up from the memory vault – for our own personal health and wellbeing, but also for wider benefit. They really are more applicable today than ever.