But we were never all in it together, not really. 

Frontline workers, retail staff, and those for whom economic shocks usually reverberate the loudest were always more in it than others.

Those of us who could work from home, who weren't worried about being evicted, who didn't have to fret about a €350-a-week allowance lasting longer than a global pandemic, weren't struggling as much.

But we were in it, certainly. We cancelled our weddings, we couldn't hug our loved ones, we missed funerals.

The unifying strands of this pandemic mean that nobody has gone untouched — all of our lives are less full because of it.

But, when over 80 members of "Official Ireland" decided to go ahead with a golf society dinner on Wednesday, what was exposed were the fault lines. The ways in which we aren't in it together came into sharp focus.

We have had the resignations and the apologies, but what we haven't had is a proper explanation. Not one attendee at the event — in a room filled with previous members of cabinet, a Supreme Court judge, and one of the highest-ranking politicians in Europe — stopped for a moment to ask "should I be doing this?". 

Dara Calleary is a smart and decent man, but character matters only as much as judgement in public life. In this case, his judgement was way off.

We have all been asked to manage our risk, to stay away from crowded events, and limit our social contacts. People have split up communion days to ensure everyone can see their children in a safe manner, weddings have been cancelled, and many people still feel anxious about going into public areas because of the threat of the virus.

The danger of Wednesday's event is not just the risk that it ran of spreading the illness — that will be a concern, especially given the number of people over 70 who attended — the real danger is the risk it poses to public confidence.

There is no question that managing the message of the initial stages of the pandemic were easier for the last government. It ceded control, in the public's eyes, to a chief medical officer who felt like a safe pair of hands. They quoted Heaney and called for a show of unprecedented national resilience and communality.

But that well of resilience is beginning to run dry. The "couple of weeks" we all thought we'd be indoors, away from normality, has dragged on for nearly half a year and there is an irritation in the public as the sense that we're all in this together gets punctured by the reality that some are more in it than others.

So, as the economy reopened in some parts but not others, as outbreaks were detected in the settings that people warned they would be detected in, and as three counties found themselves set further back, there has never been a greater need for public buy-in.

But this week the Government, and a group of politicians, have risked the public's adherence to very necessary restrictions through bluster and poor communications.

The truth is that the restrictions announced on Tuesday are not, in and of themselves, overly confusing for the most part. They are clearly worded and easy to follow. But confusion over the wording of something and how or why it will be implemented are two drastically divergent things.

When questioned about the inconsistencies in the restrictions, both Health Minister Stephen Donnelly and Taoiseach Micheál Martin simply disagreed with the premise that there is any inconsistency with allowing 50 people attend a wedding but banning people from the sidelines of sporting events or of telling people to avoid public transport unless they're children.

In a situation as unknown and as fluid as a global pandemic, there will be inconsistencies. There will be anomalies in support schemes. And there will be no-win scenarios such as that with schools.

The Government is faced with hundreds of decisions in this pandemic that will have a negative impact on some but not others. Certain groups will lose either way and some won't be affected at all. Pretending that each outcome is the same only serves to frustrate the public and reduce buy-in to ongoing and revised restrictions.

Then on Wednesday, at the same time as the soup was presumably making its way to the table in Clifden, Mr Donnelly gave an interview to Virgin Media News presenter Zara King. Questioned as to how people could feel comfortable sending their children to school, his response has echoed around social media since.

💬“There's things we do in life that inherently carry a risk & we’ve got to manage that risk… that’s what the measures are about”

Health Minister Stephen Donnelly has defended the new COVID-19 restrictions & the decision to reopen schools@ZaraKing | #VMNews | @DonnellyStephen pic.twitter.com/IHTeepkPGM

— Virgin Media News (@VirginMediaNews) August 19, 2020

"We manage risk in our lives. Every time we get into a car, driving a car is an inherently risky thing to do. So we have seat belts, and we have rules of the road," he said.

"Playing sports in an inherently risky thing to do. Our children being on trampolines is an inherently risky thing to do."

In trying to make a point that Ireland must live alongside the Covid-19 virus in order to return to some level of normal, Mr Donnelly compared a global pandemic, which has claimed the lives of 790,000 people, with driving your car. But there are no asymptomatic car crashes, you can't catch a car crash, there is no risk of bringing a car crash into a nursing home and killing an elderly resident.

When multiple government departments can't agree on how many people can be in a theatre, causing events to be cancelled and the health minister proves to have been completely incorrect on the issue, it drains confidence from people who just want life to go back to normal. How can we trust their restrictions if we can't get a straight answer on a cinema?

There is a very real chance that Ireland returns to lockdown before this pandemic is over. At that time, people will be asked to give up scraps of a normal life, salvaged from the madness of 2020. They may be asked to spend their Christmas apart from loved ones or to sacrifice next year's foreign holiday, too.

At that point, the public will be asked to tap a well of resolve that may this week have finally been sucked dry.