Good morning Alex,
Well, will you look at us?
Fourteen days straight in Victoria with no new coronavirus infections. By comparison, NSW yesterday recorded its sixth straight day of no new locally acquired cases.
It's not a competition, of course.
What am I saying? You bet it is.
Yesterday the Prime Minister declared all internal borders would unconditionally open by Christmas (except WA — honestly, are you guys ok? Are you going to start wearing tissue boxes next?) and that's a phenomenal achievement for every state and territory. But especially for us.
Just before sitting down to write this, I went back through all the columns I have written on this subject in the year of our Pandemic Lord, 2020.
I've written more than 30, and that's about 28 more times than is generally acceptable to keep returning to the same subject. (Unless you're writing for a particularly well-known news group about political correctness gone mad, in which case you're just getting started.)
I'm kind of amazed looking back at the pieces — on community spirit and teacher dedication; on pivoting businesses and driveway Anzac services; on the loneliness and hardship of lockdown and job losses — at how optimistic and sure I seemed that this community would get through this.
My professional scepticism saw me return more than once to question the systems and structures that were supposed to support our path out — testing, tracing and isolating and proper protection for health care workers — and I'm glad I kept asking those questions. But my faith in this community? Barely a tremble. It feels incredibly powerful to realise that we know each other this well.
I can tell you that throughout the waves of our various lockdowns here, I've been hammered with complaint and outrage by people who didn't like the strategy one bit — in particular, by people from the hospitality industry, the tourism sector, sometimes even the education sector and also by a lot of accountants, oddly enough.
The accountants have been very cross at not being able to go back to work in their offices, particularly to meet the needs of older clients. And I get it. Every time I had one of those conversations, I could see the argument and a reason to allow a variation for their industry, just theirs, because they, I was assured, could return to normality safely and with zero risk of infection.
The problem was, and always will be, that an effective public health strategy is never just about science: it's not just about the transmission of the virus itself and how you prevent that. An effective policy is really all about people and behaviour: what we say we will do and then what we really end up doing, and for a control strategy to work it has to take account of the varying percentage of us who will not or feel we cannot abide by the rules. There will always be a degree of allowance built in for the fact that we are merely human: flawed.
And as I also wrote here — such a policy also has to take account of the holes in the social fabric through which the unsupported fall, and I'm not sure that any such policy can do that when disadvantage is so entrenched.
Not all of the exchanges I had were that polite, mind you. I've been yelled at and flat-out abused for not "stopping this dictatorship" single-handedly. I'm working on achieving that super power, believe me.
Intriguingly, however, despite strong connections to and many friends within the performing arts and creative industries that are worth $111 billion to our national economy and are key drivers and catalysts of economic activity in Victoria, I've barely heard a word of complaint or lament from them.
They were the first locked out, and will be the stone, motherless-last back in; they were denied much of the federal assistance, with many sole workers unable to access JobKeeper, but this industry's stoicism and, frankly, dignified response to an utterly crap situation, should stand as a rebuke to others who, unlike these performers, were still able to get on with their paid work in some form.
It will probably take distance and time to realise what we did here, and how we could do it better should that time come again — and it probably will.
I hope creative Victorians haven't lost faith in us. I hope those who fell through the cracks are helped back up — I'm watching state and federal spending very closely.
I don't judge or condemn those who doubted the strategy — what experience did they or any of us have to compare? And I hope like hell we don't find ourselves back here.
This weekend you can dip back into the still-contested US election result with a look at just how far Donald Trump can push his argument, and as NAIDOC week ends meet the brilliant rapper Barkaa and read of her painful and complex battle to raise her voice.
Have a safe and happy weekend — please bear in mind that you stand this weekend on the same kind of sunny shores that a happy complacent Europe did just three months ago, casting distance and caution to their Mediterranean sea, just before the tsunami of their third wave rolled over them. They are in a shocking state right now, UK hospitals now at total capacity and Sweden — hey, remember Sweden — at levels almost beyond the reach of the chartists.
As Sgt Phil Esterhaus always told us, let's be careful out there.
I'm fairly sure your crowded beach wont mind you pumping up ACDC's first album in six years, Power Up — they've released a new single, and it feels as familiar as sticky carpet under Dunlop Volleys.
But if you worry that this much thumping might get you kicked off the foreshore, try this — just the right kind of mood for that sunset-time, dear-god-let-this-year-end vibe …
Lights out. Go well.
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