Everyone’s a winner over final furlong in Ballybrit!

A Different View with Dave O’Connell

I have to confess that I have renewed fears for the health of the nation – and not for the reasons you might think.

Because in the last few weeks, I’ve never met so many people of a certain vintage, reluctantly admitting to living life with underlying health problems.

They’re all getting the vaccine – but not, heaven forbid, because they’re over fifty or sixty; not by a long shot.

Not at all; it’s because – and whisper it quietly – they have this underlying health condition that has seen them shoot up the Ballybrit leaderboard, when their actual ages wouldn’t entitle them to the jab before the end of the summer at the earliest.

But such is this worrying trend that it seems a touch of asthma and a brush with diabetes is now nothing short of another national pandemic.

That’s not to belittle those who have either of those illnesses – or anyone who carries any health burden at all – but ironically the people that I do know with those manageable levels of either affliction have made no effort to move themselves up the queue at all.

Still, the desire to hasten the end of this nightmare and the return to more predictable times is all-pervading – although, it seems, not at the expense of disclosing your real age.

For the rest of us, however, in years to come, historians will be able to tell the age of the current population in the same way as arborists can tell the age of a tree.

In the latter case, it’s by the rings on the bark; in the former, it’s the day you got the Covid jab.

Because Ballybrit Racecourse has been turned into a mass gathering of people born in or around the same year.

From the moment that the first 64-year-olds signed up on April 24, the bar (the metaphorical one, not the ‘longest one in Europe’ at the racecourse) has gone down by a year every day.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.

Connacht Tribune Digital Edition App

Download the Connacht Tribune Digital Edition App to access to Galway’s best-selling newspaper.

Click HERE to download it for iPhone and iPad from Apple’s App Store, or HERE to get the Android Version from Google Play.

Or purchase the Digital Edition for PC, Mac or Laptop from Pagesuite  HERE.

Get the Connacht Tribune Live app
The Connacht Tribune Live app is the home of everything that is happening in Galway City and county. It’s completely FREE and features all the latest news, sport and information on what’s on in your area. Click HERE to download it for iPhone and iPad from Apple’s App Store, or HERE to get the Android Version from Google Play.