A creaking health system, a call not to socialise very much and big political hopes pinned on a vaccine. There is an eerie sense of déjá vu about it all.
And there's more: the Dáil spent some time this evening extending the laws to allow people eat and drink outside bars and restaurants just as winter rain fell on Kildare Street.
Yes, it's a familiar story, but Covid's sour, ferocious return to centre stage was still unexpected by many. After all the sky had softened and political days were, until recently, dominated by more orthodox, if no less intractable, challenges.
Yet recent weeks have in the words of the Taoiseach severed as a "dramatic reminder" of what the virus can do. That reminder was set out in the starkest terms when Micheál