This is how discrediting a killer pandemic starts: you go on live television and when asked about a second wave, you laugh and say that waves are in the sea. You then proceed to tell your party’s television station (why do those still exist?) that you plan to open things up as soon as possible. You let people stew as rumours fly around, further frustrating an already fraught people and then, finally, you go on national television and say that a virus which had to date killed 329,925 globally (and this is the recorded amount not the actual one) is something that we shouldn’t be afraid of.

You basically announce the whole thing to be done and dusted, congratulate your people for a job well done and to further compound all this, you release a cringey advert that has more cheese in it than a raclette in a Swiss chalet. All is apparently dandy and rosy, only it isn’t.

I don’t think I was the only one who sat in front of the television slack-jawed on Monday night. As the minutes trickled by and people were told not to be negative, our numbers were rising. Both the doctors’ and the nurses’ unions came out against this move in full force. Now, those noisy, recorded claps for healthcare workers on social media have quickly turned into middle fingers against the same people who will probably have to man the wards in two weeks’ time if our numbers keep climbing at the alarming rate they are.

We need to learn to live with the virus but it shouldn’t be at the expense of dying with it- Anna Marie Galea

It feels like the ship is sinking and the rats are fleeing. We started out strong, but as ever with our people, the pull of instant gratification was too strong: not even our Catholic faith, which with each generation seems to be taking ever shallower roots, was enough to motivate us to care about the possibility of hurting, even killing, others.

Our short-sightedness is as much part of us as the flags we like to wave at any given opportunity. It doesn’t take much for us to remember that our obeying our political party unto possible death is what we are here for. What was it that was written in George Orwell’s 1984? “Until they become conscious they will never rebel, and until after they have rebelled they cannot become conscious.” Sounds about right to me.

My friends and I speak and speak again about how we should move forward in a comforting echo chamber that reminds me that I am not mad for wanting to put my family’s safety first. Maybe the saddest part of all this has been the realisation that not even when lives mattered could we come together.

The minute the sun came out and our leader spoke, it was every man for himself with people even going so far as saying that doctors were acting in their own interests. Indeed, what match could the person sworn to save your life be for your prime minister?

I said before that this virus is going to hold up a mirror to what we really are but I wasn’t ready for what it has shown. We are not, in fact, all in this together: it is going to fall upon you and your choices to protect yourself and your families as best you can. Yes, we need to learn to live with the virus but it shouldn’t be at the expense of dying with it. Business cannot go on as usual when usual no longer exists. You don’t outrun an illness by ignoring it.

May the best immune system win.