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sidewaysIt's interesting trying to think back along the progression of social changes relating to a pandemic that has moved in such wild leaps and bounds that a week ago might as well be months.
I visited family for three weeks over Christmas in 2019, and during my stay we ruefully reflected that easily three-quarters of our conversation kept cycling around to The Crisis - only at that point The Crisis meant the worst bushfires in a long time and the accompanying terror of climate change. 2020 really has been a back-to-back rotten start to the year in some respects.
By the time I returned home in mid-January, the fear of natural disaster had been put into me sufficiently that I assembled a crisis kit for cyclones and bushfires - enough food and water for three days without electricity, plus the other recommended bits and pieces that would see me through in either evacuation or hunkering down. I don't remember exactly when covid-19 entered the picture; I remember being exasperated by the early wild Twitter theories and feeling relatively confident this would blow over soon. Thousands of people died from the flu every year, it was not a sign of the apocalypse that some people were dying of something new now; no, China was probably not covering up millions dead in Wuhan; why on earth would this be a bioweapon, please stop reading The Stand.
Well, I suppose the important thing is that the Twitter weirdos and myself were both wrong. The seriousness kicked in once it became clear it was leaking out across other countries at gathering speed, and that those who were marked as possibly exposed would need to go into self-isolation for two weeks, at which point I looked at my pantry - now with a reasonable supply of non-perishables, but otherwise still stocked like the pantry of someone who ate out an awful lot - and decided that it would probably be good if I didn't die of scurvy should this be required of me. Thus went in a packet of frozen veggies on one shop, some dried fruit on another, a few litres of long-life milk. I don't know that I'd have gotten the jump on this if the fires hadn't already left me with a nervous desire to be prepared though, to be honest. Or, maybe even more than the fires - if October 2018's IPCC report hadn't put the reality of the climate change threat in front of me so groundshakingly. Disaster could absolutely happen, would inevitably happen, and it was worth getting into the habit of being ready for it.
By March 2 we were finalising preparations for a fortnight-long bus tour at work. By March 6 I was anxiously grinding my teeth over the fact they still hadn't cancelled the bus tour, and privately deciding I would be quitting it when it passed through my town regardless and suggesting repeatedly that it would be better if we all did the same. (Urge to be complicit in headline titled, "Bus Full of Morons Spreads Coronavirus Up And Down Coast": not high.) March 10, they scrapped it and sent us all home. March 12, WHO announced the new pandemic.
March 25, I sit daily in an office down to 1/3rd of its staff (the rest at home, not fired), paddling my feet and trying to make paperwork last forever because it's all there is to do for the foreseeable future. I'm very fortunate in my location: it's a sprawling regional city vastly smaller than the capital, wedged up north, so currently there are only a few cases associated with here and no reported community spread. Up until that point, I'm continuing to work in the office; once I start working from home I'm condemned to life in a one-bedroom apartment and have been feeling surprisingly claustrophobic about the idea. I've generally liked my little apartment (so easy to clean!) and living alone (no sharing the TV!), but that's been in the context of working a fairly social job that sometimes requires very long hours. Being here All Of The Time, in exactly two rooms, all alone but for some pot-plants and the birds I can see from my balcony feels... less appealing. I'm sure it'll happen in a week or two, but for now it's nice having other people to talk to and other rooms to be in, and feverishly wiping down every doorknob is a small price to pay.
My parents in the capital are taking it seriously, and are both able to work from home. My greatest worry is for my paternal grandmother, who lost her husband a year ago and has been struggling with loneliness ever since; she's also in the capital, and actually ended up in hospital in Feb with Influenza A! Luckily it sounds like things are going okay so far, and in fact the collective family has been calling her so often she's had to ask us to back off a bit.
I have family in Sydney where the outbreak is worst (worrying, but they're young at least); and family in Bulgaria (he's fine, but it'll be interesting to see what happens when he graduates in August); and many friends in the USA (I Am Having A Concern). And I have friends and acquaintances and local businesses who have been put out of work all over (heart-breaking). I've been trying to figure out how best to use my cash flow privileges.
Perhaps the worst thing about this so far has been having to finally admit that, no, my wealthy and wonderful country is not prepped to handle even an immediate crisis with great competence. I can't get particularly cross at people for behaving in panicked, 'selfish' ways, outside of a few truly appalling cases - people are confused and insecure and the government isn't doing a stellar job at leading everyone through it. The decision to play it softball at first and then try to ramp up restrictions according to the new information that comes in has been... a choice. How can you plan for anything when you don't know what the next day will bring, let alone the next week? They put a million out of work overnight and weren't prepared for the flood of applicants to Centrelink; two weeks ago the prime minister was saying it was okay to go to a football match, today you're publicly shamed for having a family BBQ. It's exhausting. It's scary. Of course people are behaving in ways defensive or resentful.
I hope there are some good things that come out of this. I hope divisive partisan political warring finally dies. I hope people recognise the Centrelink and MyGov are THE WORST and direly in need of a revamp that doesn't aggress its users for having the gall to be vulnerable. I hope we consider that life with a little less travel and shopping, and more flexibility for workers, is liveable actually; that "essential services" come down to many of the jobs we've scorned. I don't know that I believe it will, but I certainly hope.
I visited family for three weeks over Christmas in 2019, and during my stay we ruefully reflected that easily three-quarters of our conversation kept cycling around to The Crisis - only at that point The Crisis meant the worst bushfires in a long time and the accompanying terror of climate change. 2020 really has been a back-to-back rotten start to the year in some respects.
By the time I returned home in mid-January, the fear of natural disaster had been put into me sufficiently that I assembled a crisis kit for cyclones and bushfires - enough food and water for three days without electricity, plus the other recommended bits and pieces that would see me through in either evacuation or hunkering down. I don't remember exactly when covid-19 entered the picture; I remember being exasperated by the early wild Twitter theories and feeling relatively confident this would blow over soon. Thousands of people died from the flu every year, it was not a sign of the apocalypse that some people were dying of something new now; no, China was probably not covering up millions dead in Wuhan; why on earth would this be a bioweapon, please stop reading The Stand.
Well, I suppose the important thing is that the Twitter weirdos and myself were both wrong. The seriousness kicked in once it became clear it was leaking out across other countries at gathering speed, and that those who were marked as possibly exposed would need to go into self-isolation for two weeks, at which point I looked at my pantry - now with a reasonable supply of non-perishables, but otherwise still stocked like the pantry of someone who ate out an awful lot - and decided that it would probably be good if I didn't die of scurvy should this be required of me. Thus went in a packet of frozen veggies on one shop, some dried fruit on another, a few litres of long-life milk. I don't know that I'd have gotten the jump on this if the fires hadn't already left me with a nervous desire to be prepared though, to be honest. Or, maybe even more than the fires - if October 2018's IPCC report hadn't put the reality of the climate change threat in front of me so groundshakingly. Disaster could absolutely happen, would inevitably happen, and it was worth getting into the habit of being ready for it.
By March 2 we were finalising preparations for a fortnight-long bus tour at work. By March 6 I was anxiously grinding my teeth over the fact they still hadn't cancelled the bus tour, and privately deciding I would be quitting it when it passed through my town regardless and suggesting repeatedly that it would be better if we all did the same. (Urge to be complicit in headline titled, "Bus Full of Morons Spreads Coronavirus Up And Down Coast": not high.) March 10, they scrapped it and sent us all home. March 12, WHO announced the new pandemic.
March 25, I sit daily in an office down to 1/3rd of its staff (the rest at home, not fired), paddling my feet and trying to make paperwork last forever because it's all there is to do for the foreseeable future. I'm very fortunate in my location: it's a sprawling regional city vastly smaller than the capital, wedged up north, so currently there are only a few cases associated with here and no reported community spread. Up until that point, I'm continuing to work in the office; once I start working from home I'm condemned to life in a one-bedroom apartment and have been feeling surprisingly claustrophobic about the idea. I've generally liked my little apartment (so easy to clean!) and living alone (no sharing the TV!), but that's been in the context of working a fairly social job that sometimes requires very long hours. Being here All Of The Time, in exactly two rooms, all alone but for some pot-plants and the birds I can see from my balcony feels... less appealing. I'm sure it'll happen in a week or two, but for now it's nice having other people to talk to and other rooms to be in, and feverishly wiping down every doorknob is a small price to pay.
My parents in the capital are taking it seriously, and are both able to work from home. My greatest worry is for my paternal grandmother, who lost her husband a year ago and has been struggling with loneliness ever since; she's also in the capital, and actually ended up in hospital in Feb with Influenza A! Luckily it sounds like things are going okay so far, and in fact the collective family has been calling her so often she's had to ask us to back off a bit.
I have family in Sydney where the outbreak is worst (worrying, but they're young at least); and family in Bulgaria (he's fine, but it'll be interesting to see what happens when he graduates in August); and many friends in the USA (I Am Having A Concern). And I have friends and acquaintances and local businesses who have been put out of work all over (heart-breaking). I've been trying to figure out how best to use my cash flow privileges.
Perhaps the worst thing about this so far has been having to finally admit that, no, my wealthy and wonderful country is not prepped to handle even an immediate crisis with great competence. I can't get particularly cross at people for behaving in panicked, 'selfish' ways, outside of a few truly appalling cases - people are confused and insecure and the government isn't doing a stellar job at leading everyone through it. The decision to play it softball at first and then try to ramp up restrictions according to the new information that comes in has been... a choice. How can you plan for anything when you don't know what the next day will bring, let alone the next week? They put a million out of work overnight and weren't prepared for the flood of applicants to Centrelink; two weeks ago the prime minister was saying it was okay to go to a football match, today you're publicly shamed for having a family BBQ. It's exhausting. It's scary. Of course people are behaving in ways defensive or resentful.
I hope there are some good things that come out of this. I hope divisive partisan political warring finally dies. I hope people recognise the Centrelink and MyGov are THE WORST and direly in need of a revamp that doesn't aggress its users for having the gall to be vulnerable. I hope we consider that life with a little less travel and shopping, and more flexibility for workers, is liveable actually; that "essential services" come down to many of the jobs we've scorned. I don't know that I believe it will, but I certainly hope.
