Week two of the coronavirus lockdown is seeing the country, and the continent, trying to adjust to the new realities.

True to form, the Irish are doing their best to make light of the situation across social media. Apartment bingo and funny Facebook or Twitter videos are helping us all to get through these difficult days, but they don’t change the grim reality of the battle we are in to protect ourselves and each other.

It is worth highlighting the contrast between country and city lockdown. A person or family with a detached house and a standalone garden can wander in and out to enjoy the spring sunshine.

Compare this to a parent with small children on the seventh floor of an apartment complex. Merely going outside for some fresh air involves stepping into a lift, where you could be joined, without warning, by one of hundreds of your fellow residents.

Ireland’s relative lack of such buildings has to improve our chances of flattening the curve, a phrase which now has entered the lexicon.

Farmers have, in many ways, seen less disruption to the rhythm of their lives than most others.

We can still move freely from yard to field, deliveries and collections to and from farms are continuing, with quick response times to requests for meal and fertiliser still being recorded. So we should count our blessings.

Apart from the worries around the health of family members and cocooning the most vulnerable, the other big worries are financial.

For the majority of farmers with an off-farm income, the Government’s support will be welcome. While it doesn’t fill the gap, discretionary spending on all bar groceries and perhaps Netflix has shrunk, cutting outgoings a bit.

Meanwhile, farmers with no other income who are trading semi-normally need assistance.

Not neccesarily support from the Government, although there are now real worries about the beef and dairy trade – we will have to wait and see if home consumption will replace the lost demand from the closure of the hospitality sector.

What farmers need is support from the banks. The same banks the people bailed out 11 years ago.

Banks were saved because it was deemed essential to have domestic, personal and small business lenders. We are about to see that theory fully tested.

The Irish banks say they will support farmers at this difficult moment, but in practice, that means extending finance to people with a bit less of the hoo-haa than we have been experiencing recently.

If the banks do the right thing, people won’t forget. If they fail us, that too will be remembered.