Random Ramblings and not-quite-a-rant - Masks

                                     

I pondered this earlier today as I hauled gravel and rocks and pulled out weeds in the cat palace - garden work provides wonderful opportunities for contemplation - did learning to wear underpants cause as much complaint as being asked to wear a mask? People happily keep their sweaty bits entrapped in undies without whingeing. When we had the bushfires and could SEE the enemy (smoke) we couldn't get enough of those tight, hot and heavy masks. People wear a dust mask when weed-spraying/installing insulation. Surgeons wear them when they cut people open. Why the widespread whingeing over this precautionary measure against the spread of a deadly and invisible enemy? (And don't get me started on the politicisation of masks!)

Here’s another thought – people appear to be quite happy to follow the dictates of fashion (those heels are SO last year, dahling!) or interior design (remember Mission Brown trim?) or the way your food appears on your plate at a restaurant – who can forget the deconstructed cheesecakes of 2019, piles of ingredients served on breadboards or in slippers or some such bullshit?)  As long as a vapid, vacuous celebrity tells you to do it, it’s ok. And yet – and yet – when epidemiologists and public health experts outline measures that should be taken for your own safety and the safety of those around you – people want to whinge and bleat and sook about rights and freedom and sovereignty. Why is that? It's been something I've pondered for months now. 

This awful pandemic has exposed a lot of ugliness and inconsistency in the people we share the world with. I haven't forgotten the callous calls, early in the pandemic, to lock down oldies because "only oldies die from this" (and then the irony, in the Victorian experience, at least, of those oldies in aged care being sitting ducks because of the casual workers who unwittingly took Covid to several workplaces where those vulnerable oldies were living.)  I wonder whether the mask-refusers are the same “lock down the oldies” people, or whether they’re a whole different group of selfish jerks?

It’d be nice to be able to rely on people to do the sensible thing – but we apparently all have different definitions of “sensible”. Unfortunately, this means the government has had to make a bunch of rules to try and stop the spread of Covid, and to keep us as safe as possible – and it’s using the “one size fits all rule”.

Is there anything wrong with that, when you’re talking about a public health emergency? I don’t think so. Here in this far-flung outpost of regional Victoria, we are expected to observe the mask rule, despite having had zero cases of Covid since the pandemic began. Fair enough. Making exceptions for every self-interested group is fiddly – and also leaves the government open to charges of unfairness.

Think about this: one rule for all means people don't (or shouldn't, at least!) moan about being left out or singled out. Yay, we’re all equal! Rich, poor, young, old blah blah blah blah. Isn’t that a good thing?

I'm having a lovely time, as I weed the garden, thinking about "what-ifs"... What if the government had said that everyone over (insert arbitrary age here) must wear a mask and everyone under that age had to take their chances? What if only those in "essential occupations" were allowed to wear masks? (Remember the early shortage of PPE, when the general public was advised that health care workers needed the masks more than we did? Bit of ill-feeling erupted over that.) What if only the employed were issued masks? What if only casual workers were allowed them, because they couldn't afford to take time off work? I'm still thinking of the loophole-seeking by some of those so-called journalists at Dan Andrews press conferences. (Everybody's special. Everybody has a compelling reason to argue and be non-compliant. Oh. please!)

If people were denied masks, I suspect they would suddenly all insist on having them! Perhaps a bit of reverse psychology could’ve been employed, tee hee - humans are such contrarians. We want what we can't have. We want what other people have (in fact, we want MORE – and we’re prepared to fight people in the toilet paper aisle to ensure we get it!) When we're told we must all have masks, we don't want them because we won't be told what to do. Our first response to so many problems in society is "The government should ___" but on this very important matter of public health and the common good, we want to ignore the government and make our own rules, because theirs make us uncomfortable. Boo hoo. (Personally, I’d rather wear a mask than a ventilator, but anyway…)

As we in this part of the world talk about opening up, easing restrictions and so on, those in other countries are starting to mask up, lock down – and far too many are dying.

Humans. Endlessly fascinating and so so frustrating, don't you reckon?

Behind the Barricades - Stay at Home, Day#??

My Isolation Hair is a fright and I don't even care!

My daughter says I look like a mad scientist - I'll take that as a compliment!

I actually forgot it was the Easter Weekend this weekend. By the Thursday before Good Friday there's usually excitement and activity building over the big Easter market and the influx of Easter visitors from all over. The place is usually hopping. Not this year.

We saw our tourists depart, almost in convoy, about 2 weeks ago, after government orders to close caravan parks. While part of me was very glad to see them go, I also felt terribly sad for them as I watched the caravans roll past. They were heading back into an uncertain and fragile situation in their own home towns and cities, and it must've been frightening.

Mallacoota is a ghost town, coming into what would be our second-busiest time of a " normal" year. This entire year has been anything but normal! Most of the shops are closed. The library is closed. COVID-19 sanitiser stations have been mounted outside our supermarkets, where valiant staff continue to keep the shelves stocked. The Post Office arcade has 1.5m lines painted on the ground.  The volunteer-run community radio station, which is also the local emergency broadcaster, has seen some changes as a few of our older or more vulnerable presenters go into self-isolation.

My April calendar image seems strangely appropriate as we are all "confined to barracks" and isolated from our normal lives. Many people don't meet your eye when you pass them in the street, as if they think infection might be spread at a glance.

The District Health Service is overseeing deliveries of medication, groceries and newspapers to those in isolation. Dr Sara from the Medical Centre keeps the community up to date with a weekly radio interview.

I don't know whether the school will re-open next week (must find out). The Sanctuary - a youth centre set up during the fires, is operating in a virtual world, making the most of ZOOM for its activities.

Anxiety over the threat of pestilence and a sense of impending doom underlie the gentler rhythm that life currently thrums along to. Everything has slowed to a dreamy snail's pace. It's like mid-winter, only warmer.

Whopper fungus!

The quietude at home is punctuated by the rumble of supply trucks rolling past. The bushfire clean-up continues. As far as we know, we are COVID-19 free, but we are cautious.

Personally - I'm loving the serenity, and as an almost-hermit anyway, things haven't changed all that much for me. I haven't succumbed to any crazy urges to clean the house, although I'm attempting to get out and weed the garden a bit more. Unfortunately the mosquito population is as healthy as ever. Mini "nature walks" at home have yielded some interesting things, and the armchair birding has been fruitful.

A good deal of my usual "spare" time is being gobbled up by an imaginary dog called Elvis, whose adventures in Lockdown Land have been airing on the local radio once a week. A twenty minute program takes me a full day to write, although I hope I'll get quicker as the pandemic rolls along.

Elvis the Lockdown Dog

I've realised how often I touch my face without even thinking, I'm sure my hands have actually changed colour and I don't think the end of my nose has ever been so itchy.

We live in weird times. Come for a walk in the garden.

Common Bronzewing, looking anything but common.

Red-browed finch

King Parrots

 

Rainbow Lorikeet

Crimson Rosella

 

Brown Thornbills

Satin Bowerbirds

Australian Wood ducks

Welcome Swallows

Emu - yes, really!

Boredom? Not a chance! Well, not so far, anyway. 

WTF is happening to the human race? A rant

I haven't had a good rant for a while. Today's the day.

WTF is happening to the human race? Where did the love go? Why, all of a sudden, is an "I'm all right Jack" attitude pervading every aspect of life, from shopping to travelling to working and touching?

During the recent bushfire catastrophe there was such an outpouring of love from those who hadn't burned, to those who had. What happened to that?

Millions upon millions of dollars were donated by people around the world. People cared. Food, clothing, bedding, all sorts of goodies poured into fire-affected towns, burying us in mountains of love and "Licorice Bullets" (it's true - those chocolate treats turned up in Mallacoota by the pallet load) ... We saw the birth of the Empty Esky movement and the roads reopened and people who hadn't burned visited towns that had, to spend money there and help boost the devastated economies of fire-ravaged towns.

Ah - my furiously-turning cogs are seeing the common denominator. I think I get it now.

During the catastrophic fires there were 2 very distinct groups of humans: those who hadn't burned and those who had. A Helper group and a Helpee group. An "Us" and "Them" (this is something we humans do a lot). Or, pardon my cynicism, a group that could feel virtuous about their "altruism", and a group that should be grateful to be the beneficiaries of that "altruism". (Here's a hint, people - that's not real altruism.)

With the advent of COVID-19 that division has disappeared, my friends, and that is what has changed:

All of a sudden we've all been dropped into this toilet together and some people believe they have more right to the toilet paper than everybody else.

News footage of Aussies returning home last night - the final flights before the closing of our borders - showed people arriving from overseas destinations and being hugged and kissed by those meeting them at the airport. I'm hoping their next destination was wherever the traveller had to go for their 14 days of self-isolation - and I hope their happy huggy greeters went with them to isolate themselves as well, rather than dropping them off and heading out to the shops to pick up extra supplies.

These overwhelmingly younger people so easily and thoughtlessly abandoned current social-distancing principles - making an exception for people returning from overseas, FFS. Oh, that's right - there's this belief that young people will only get a mild dose of COVID-19, if they get it, so they're not afraid of catching it. Has it not occurred to them that they are very capable of SPREADING it to those who may not be as young or healthy as they are? Evidently not.

Don't get me started (oops, too late!) on those alleged busloads of city-folk who have been raiding the supermarkets of small country towns - because evidently, once they have stripped everything from their own city shelves, they have some sense that they are entitled to strip ours as well. Not only are they leaving remote places without supplies - they risk bringing whatever germs they may have to remote places.

Especially insidious are those who are trying to justify their selfishness by clothing it in Empty Esky virtuousness and self-congratulation. "I just spent $426 at your supermarket. Yeah, I'm helping you recover from the bushfires by buying up all your supplies - aren't I great?"

As for those who have hooked up their caravans and headed en masse to places like Lakes Entrance and Mallacoota - because we have had, as yet, no cases of COVID-19 in East Gippsland - their stupidity and selfishness know no bounds. A single case of COVID-19 in the holiday park here will spread like the fire we had at New Year. I shudder to think of the shared amenities blocks and the soup of pestilence that could be cultivated in them - or the way our already stretched health services will collapse under the increased burden of a COVID-19 outbreak here. Or the way that our high number of vulnerable, elderly or immune-suppressed local people will be affected.

Nationally, of course, teachers, once again, are losers - from comments made by our sloganising PM that suggest they are still viewed largely as babysitters, they are being expected to keep the streets safe from allegedly COVID-carrying children. Fuck what happens to teachers in the classrooms or playgrounds of the nation - as long as the rest of the country doesn't have to be responsible for keeping the young occupied and at bay for 6 or so hours a day. As an ex-teacher, I'm disgusted. Once again, the government fails to support teachers. (On the plus side, I have seen comments from parents who are sensibly schooling their kids from home, that "teachers should be paid a billion dollars! This is harder than I thought." Imagine doing that with thirty of the little darlings all day every day, love, not just your own tiny tribe...)

Last weekend I developed a foul headache, and by Monday afternoon I had a scratchy sore throat and a cough. I imagine it's something I caught from local children, who've had some kind of unidentified lurgy go through the kinder and school like a dose of Epsom Salts. As far as I'm concerned, just now, any bug is suspect - and a large number of our library patrons are elderly - so I put myself into isolation. Since then I've realised, after observinging the behaviour of so many human beings in the media & social media that we are clearly approaching this pandemic from very different places.

What a lot of people seem to be forgetting is that we are ALL in this together. Every single one of us has a responsibility to OUR COMMUNITY as well as ourselves. It's really what we should be thinking at any time we get a communicable illness, not just at a time where so many lives are at risk from something virulent that we have no immunity to and no cure or vaccine for.

In these COVID-19 times:
Don't think to yourself "I'm young, so it won't affect me. It doesn't matter. Business as usual."
Don't think to yourself "by running to a remote town I can outrun the virus and keep myself safe"
Don't think to yourself "the government will save us".

Don't behave only as if you don't want to catch COVID-19 - behave as if you don't want to spread it.

Repeat after me:

 It's not all about me. 

I am a part of the universe, not the centre of it. 

Oh - and keep your distance. Stay well, friends.

2020: the year of catastrophe

What a shit-storm 2020 is turning out to be!

We saw in the New Year in smoke and ashes, flames having licked away the landscape. Catastrophic fires, the likes of which Australia has never seen, gobbled and howled their way down the east coast of Australia, spitting out broken houses and towns as they went, turning livelihoods and economies to charcoal, incinerating wildlife in unimaginable numbers.

For week after week after choking week, major Australian cities were cloaked in thick smoke that stung the eyes, seared the lungs and set off smoke alarms inside office blocks. The pall circumnavigated the globe. It turned NZ glaciers a dirty brown and the blood-red ball that was the sun, rising and setting over a black and grey landscape, drove some people to the brink.

And then, hard on its heels, flooding rain that washed ash into the waterways, poisoning and choking life that had survived the fires, and storms that took off roofs, and hail the size of tennis balls that smashed windscreens.

And then – simmering away in the background while we dealt with all the shit that Nature could dish out – from a country far away came The Pandemic - COVID 19. At first it crept in, on planes and cruise ships, while governments prevaricated, pointed fingers, sat on their hands, told everyone to calm down, nothing to see here. Then they screened, isolated and quarantined, and finally legislated, and one by one the lights went out.

Lockdown in Italy. European borders closed. Extreme measures. Sadly, too late to halt the exponential spread of the sickness in places where the health of the economy was deemed to be more important than the health of citizens. One anonymous PM, whom I shall call the Evil Overlord, decided on Friday that mass gatherings of more than 500 people would be banned from Monday – when his happy clappy Hillsong conference (3000 attendees in Sydney, Australia) would be over. On Friday he had vowed to go “to the footy” on the weekend, to show there was no need to worry about the virus. The Friday afternoon diagnosis of COVID 19 in one of his close cabinet colleagues dashed his footy plans, but the Evil Overlord did not put himself into quarantine, the way he required the contacts of other COVID 19 victims to do. Another example, in glorious living hypocritical colour, of the two sets of rules he has - one for us and one for himself and his ilk…

Image source: Twitter

For several years now, scientists have been warning that the world is ripe for a pandemic. Just more science for governments to under-react to.  Sure, they’ve developed Pandemic Response plans – but they’ve waited rather a long time, during this pandemic, to enact anything that seems like a serious response.

Our particular evil overlord, who ignores Science (and common sense, many would agree), is one of the villains of the disaster movie that is 2020. There are others like him in some other powerful  nations – those who will always choose the interests of the rich over the rationality and common sense of science and the evidence of their own eyes. 

There’s a photo that’s been doing the rounds of the internet for quite some time – a young woman is holding up a placard that says “at the start of every disaster movie, there’s a scientist being ignored”.

That’s the disaster movie we’re living in the middle of right now – there’s no end in sight, and no sign of Bruce Willis. Fuck.

Women Who Run With Swine

Forget running with wolves – I have run with the swine, and I'm here to tell you about it.

Boomerang Boy came home from work a week ago, looking and feeling dreadful. He took himself off to bed and stayed there.

I drove him to his doctor's appointment the following afternoon because he was too dizzy and sick to drive himself. After that I took him to have a 'deep nasal swab' (which is where they get this giant cotton-bud and poke it right up your nose and into your throat - eeeeeew!) to test for the dreaded swine flu. Then we drove to the chemist for Tamiflu, and back home again. It was pretty much the last I saw of Boomerang Boy, who, after the horrors of the deep nasal swab, took to his bed with great eagerness and did not emerge from his cave for days. Off his food, and coughing up both lungs, day and night, he sounded scarily unwell.

I did something I thought I had outgrown – I turned back into 'Mum', calling through the door to remind him to drink lots of fluids. I tempted him with soups and crumpets, orange juice and gallons of water, and became the Queen of Glen20 & Hand-washing. I fretted and listened at the door to check that he was still breathing. I called him through the day to see how he was feeling.

I also assumed that as he was so unwell, he had a regular influenza – swine flu being, by all accounts, a mild bug for most generally healthy people (apart from those poor Mexicans back at the beginning of this pandemic biz).

Imagine my surprise when BB phoned me at work yesterday to say that he'd had a call from the ACT Dept of Health and Communicable Diseases to say that he had turned into a statistic – one of 11 new cases in the ACT, and just one of the 266 confirmed ACT cases so far.

From the beginning I had been determined not to catch it, whatever it was that he had. I used the Betty Mind Control Strategy, ha ha - (“Betty Says NO to Germs!”) It worked when the kids were tiny babies – I didn't get sick for almost two years, out of sheer terror that I would be unable to look after them – so I know that mind over matter can work. Against swiney, the combination of Betty Mind Control, BB's self-imposed home-quarantine, judicious Glen20 assaults and OCD-style handwashing worked a treat. I have washed and sanitised my hands so often that they have shrunk two sizes...

I felt pretty smug, I don't mind telling you. No swiney for Betty! This morning, though, I woke up feeling a bit ordinary and with a sore throat. Uh-oh... So - I did as every responsible worker should do – made a doctor's appointment and chucked a sickie.

The doctor's appointment was hilarious. When I arrived, I was given a mask and hidden away in an isolation room. When BB (who had been parking the car) came in, he was treated similarly. We sat in the isolation room cracking silly jokes. When the doctor was ready to see me, the receptionist came to the door of the isolation room and gave me directions to find the right consultation room.

BB & I ventured out into the packed waiting room.

“This way, this way!” hissed the nurse, beckoning frantically from stage left. BB and I followed as she skirted the waiting room and took us through a warren of corridors, keeping her distance. I heard the words 'swine flu' muttered more than once as we made our way to see the doctor.

I was fine. A coincidental cold. All that worry for nothing. Betty Mind Control rocks! But now I know how a leper feels!

By the way - BB the piglet is no longer infectious. I am. I have a bit of a cold. Be afraid!