the earth dies talking bollocks

Driving.
The shock jock Niall Boylan is on the radio.
He's saying to a woman: "Your father is 91. Sure he's only a young lad."
Niall Boylan is being nice.
We're all doomed.
Niall Boylan also makes the point that it's not too pleasant for the elderly to be hearing some of us saying that the virus only kills old people.
But that's not what we're saying Niall.
We're saying that every year some of us die in old age, and some of us die with flu germs in our systems, but that's not an epidemic or a reason to shut down the country and the economy and put the army on the streets.
If it was, you could do it once a year during flu season in perpetuity.
Peronally I'm also trying to point out that so far there is a rather disappointing death toll in Ireland with a grand total of just two people's demises being attributed to the Corona Virus.
I mean it's disappointing considering that Prime Minister Leo Varadkar says up to seventy thousand may die.
Both of the supposed victims were ancient.
Both had serious underlying illnesses that had nothing to do with the Corona Virus.
And both the deaths of these two Corona Virus victims were not in any meaningful sense caused by the Corona Virus.
It sounds like I'm saying something callous about the elderly when I say the flu virus is not fatal only if you deliberately misinterpret what I'm saying or if you consider our shenenigans mongering Prime Minister Leo Varadkar to be elderly at the age of 40.
Because I am certainly saying anything callous that I can think of about him and his attempts to reinvent himself through an orchestrated public health panic based on a flu virus.
Ho hum.
All the radio stations are engaged in the same Corona Virus kabookie.
A Limerick station styled LMFM is broadcasting this gem without any apparent awareness of the internal contradictions: "Don't listen to social media fake news. We'll give you the facts about the Corona Virus live from the government and Health Service Executive as they come in. You'll find everything you need to know here."
Hilarious.
The irony is screaming.
As was I for a few minutes after I heard the above.
I park at the Domincian church in Tallaght a suburban village outside Dublin.
As I stroll down Main Street I see little queues of people at the doors of disparate premises.
The banks and some other businesses are allowing customers to enter only one at a time.
The people queueing in the street will probably catch their death of cold, I think with a wry smile.
Near a pharmacy a drug addict waiting not so patiently to pick up his methadone prescription (It's meant to wean them off drugs.) is getting a bit ansty.
"Oi've been waitin heeyar in deh streeh for twenty minutes," he tells me in a traditional Dublin accent. "It's a bih mad. Whar are dey tinkin of?"
There is an aura of gentle panic in the cafes and supermarkets that have remained open.
It's as though staff members are torn between being genuinely afraid and savouring the drama.
Truth be told, there are people who love a good panic.
Later that day I visit the town of Naas.
Smilar scenes.
Notices on shut up businesses apologising that they have closed for the duration of the Corona Virus pandemic.
Some cafes open but not allowing you to sit in the cafe.
You can buy a cup of coffee and leave.
What is the point of that?
I find a cafe that is willing to dice with death by letting you sit in it, and I get a big breakfast in late afternoon.
Most of the tables have been removed to facilitate social distancing.
I and two other customers eye each other warily, wondering to all intents and purposes which of us is the Scanner.
I am too embarassed to wipe my nose.
Back at the chateau Aunty Teresa accosts me.
"Did you hear Leo Varadkar's speech?"
"I must have missed it."
"He was brilliant. He cited Churchill. He was a bit like Churchill himself."
For long moments I am too moved to talk.