We Chat To The Team Behind The Government’s New ‘Living With Covid’ Plan

TÁNAISTE Leo Varadkar stated yesterday the government is hoping to adopt a ‘Living With Covid’ plan mark II after the runaway success of the first iteration.

WWN was afforded access to the Living With Covid brains trust and their morning pow wow, debrief, 360-degree-fully-orbital idea orgy. As we entered their meeting we noticed a sign on the door listing a series of banned phrases which included ‘listening to NPHET’, ‘mandatory quarantine’, ‘cross border cooperation’ and ‘Zero Covid’.

“Hey, isn’t it time we listened to the real experts in all this; private consultancy firms we spend millions on to tell us what we want to here,” shared Bozo, getting things off to a start.

There are no ‘yes men or women’ here, such a suggestion is met with intense debate.

“Should we get the crowd that signed off on the FAI’s dodgy accounts year after year, or the crowd that was asleep on the job when auditing Anglo Irish Bank?” Squeaky said, strongly countering any ‘groupthink’ while burying his face in a pie in theatrical fashion.

“We could get both and to save on arguing over fees just pay them double what they were going to ask for?” added Sparkles while folding a balloon into the shape of some PPE.

The only thing going viral in this room were solid suggestions.

“Remember our last ‘Living With Covid’ plan; we ignored warnings and then we had 100,000 plus cases in 6 weeks and basically collapsed the health service? Guys, call me crazy but what if we did the same thing with a few ‘tweaks’,” Bruiser said to gasps of approval.

“We’re not thinking big here guys, can we somehow get a dig in at people on welfare somewhere?” countered Sparkles once more, cycling around the conference table on a miniature tricycle.

“Look, we can’t escape the fact this has had an incredible toll on health workers so we need to hear from the sort of people most impacted by the last wave. Does anyone have the number for the head of the construction industry?” Bozo enthused.

And then, a challenge to the status quo.

“We could pretend that people’s mental health is the reason we’re opening back up? But once this is all over we can just ignore that whole issue?” Crumpet added, “and is it just me or are we making too few announcement about how everyone will be vaccinated by X date, even though we know how unpredictable and changeable these targets are?”

“Communication is essential, we should issue at least one statement a day criticising workers for being on the roads in their cars going to work instead of working from home even though its their employers forcing them in by dangling P45s over their heads,” chimed Squeaky.

Revelatory idea after idea, game changers one and all.

“Lads, let’s not forget the importance of rushing out all the token PR stuff incredibly fast but move at a snail’s pace when trying to introduce any measure that could actually make a difference,” concluded Bozo before organising the taskforce into a line to practice a dance they’d hope would go viral on social media.