Today is the 18th of March, 2021. It’s roughly a year since the craziness of COVID started. This time last year, I’d promised my daughter she could still have her birthday party if schools stayed open. They stayed open for another week; she got her birthday party. School closed a week later and stayed that way for eight weeks.
To date,
there have been just over 29 000 cases of COVID-19 in Australia. 909 people have died from the virus. Today, there are 2012 active cases, none of
which are serious or critical. In
Queensland at least, all of those cases are in hospital quarantine. The majority of these cases are returning travelers
whose cases were detected while in the mandatory two weeks of hotel quarantine.
Vaccinations
have started in Australia, focusing on health workers. My sister (a hospital pharmacist) and her
husband (a doctor) both got their first shots in the last two weeks. Rollout for older Australians starts on
Monday. That will take care of my
parents and my in-laws. The rest of us
will be waiting until Phase 2b, probably September or October.
Things are
getting pretty close to “normal” here. Well, COVID-normal. It’s still virtually
impossible to leave the country, and there are tens of thousands of Australian
citizens and residents still trying to get back into Australia from overseas. There are caps on the number of arrivals per
week, because there are limits on the number of hotel rooms that can be used
for hotel quarantine. I don’t imagine
that there will be significant overseas travel for at least another year or so.
In our
local area, everything is operating – shops, restaurants, cafes, schools,
churches, events. There are still limits
on numbers at events, with hand sanitizer everywhere and online check ins at various
locations to aid any required contact tracing.
Parents are allowed back into schools – assemblies can be attended, classroom
volunteers are welcomed and school fetes are being planned (albeit on a smaller
scale and with COVID-safe plans in place).
However,
there is still that jumpiness, that sense of danger lurking in the background. A doctor at a local hospital tested positive
last Friday, having been exposed to a COVID-positive patient two days
earlier. As a precaution, access to all
hospitals was limited, and nursing homes and care facilities were shut to
visitors. Masks were required in
hospitals immediately. Following a
previous community transmission, greater Brisbane had a three-day shutdown,
with a mask mandate for two weeks. When Western
Australia had a similar case, they shut down the southern part of the state for
five days, including starting Term 1 a week later than scheduled.
In all of
this, however, we’ve been lucky because we’ve had a lot of advantages that
other places don’t have. Firstly, we’re
an island. A very, very big island, mind
you, but an island all the same. We can
stop people getting in very easily – all that was required was to stop
international flights and ships arriving. And while we are a big island with
lots of generally unmonitored coastline, we’re also a long way from mostly
everywhere, so trying to arrive in your own little boat and sneak on in is not
particularly easy. Our population is relatively
low for the size of our country – roughly 25.5 million people in a country that’s only 22% smaller than the US (population 328 million). People tend to live in houses, not apartments,
and not all of our homes have good insulation and central heating and
cooling. The average Australian had
their doors and windows open much of the time. COVID-19 also started in Summer here. Australians live their lives outdoors in Summer. While some of us might go to crowded beaches
(I’m looking at you, Bondi), just as many (if not more) head off camping or fishing
someplace more remote (and there are a lot of remote places in a country the
size of Australia). And all of these
things made for less potential exposure to the virus that in other places, where
people may live and work in smaller areas in locations with a much larger population.
And then
there is that other helpful aspect about Australians – in general, if we’re asked
to do something reasonable, we do as we’re asked. Yes, there are some people who’ve protested
mask-wearing or standing on the distance markers or whatever, but most Australians
just follow the instructions. As an
example, when greater Brisbane was locked down for three days, we were asked to
wear masks when we left our home. At all
times. Which meant while exercising
outdoors, while driving your car, while waiting in a queue. If you weren’t standing within the property
lines of your home, you were wearing a mask.
I went out for a walk on the afternoon of the second day. I wore a mask. Every single person I saw (over the age of
12) was also wearing a mask. Every
person in a car, whether alone or with others, was wearing a mask. I heard a fair amount of complaining about
masks being annoying, mind you, but everybody followed the instructions.
So, Dear
Australia, a year into Living With A Pandemic, thank you to everyone who did what
they were asked. It means that we’ll get
back to “normal” levels of interstate travel sooner (and maybe even be allowed
to leave the country and return one day in the not-too-distant future!). It means that we’ll be able to keep our
elderly, our infirm and our people with other illnesses safe and well. And it
means that we can keep going about our lives, enjoying our families and our
communities and the activities that unite us.
Thank you, Australia.
No comments:
Post a Comment