It began with one limo driver who transported some flight crew to their hotel in mid June. He was not vaccinated nor was he required to wear a mask. This is an older article that details some of the happenings after that.
Should we even talk about the failings of our federal government to organise some facilities for flight crew to quarantine and safe ways for them to get to and from those facilities, not to mention travellers coming into our country?
Should we then talk about the failings of our state governments to say no, we will not allow people in unless you build these purpose built facilities? Or say if you won’t build them we will?
Should we talk about the failings of a prime minister whose one job was to secure enough vaccinations for the country who epically failed at that one job?
No, we will not talk about those things, as angry as we might be about them. We will just talk about what is happening here right now.
I live in the Shoalhaven local government area. We presently have no cases in our area. We were locked down for 7 days on Saturday the 14th of August. The announcement came quietly via the ABC covid blog around 2:30pm on the Saturday and when it was officially announced at 3:45pm it was on Gladys’s twitter, FFS. Are we regionals not important enough for a proper press conference?
The first person I contacted at 2:30 was my nail lady – I had an appointment for the following Monday, and I wanted to see if she could fit me in before the lockdown began at 5pm. She could not, sadly.
The second thing I did was ring my parents to see if they needed anything which of course they did, so it was a very quick trip to the shops for me. Luckily I made it there before most people had even heard about this lockdown. I got in and got shopping – by the time I left there was a steady stream of people coming in and all the trolleys were gone.
In this house we are mostly prepared to go into lockdown at any moment. We didn’t really need much here. We’ve got enough toilet roll to last till 2022 and we keep stocked up on things like tissues and paper towel.
We have our local cafe who has been making all our lunches and some of our dinners for 64 weeks now since the first lockdown way back in 2020. Once a week they do a market day menu, we order on Sunday and collect on Thursday. It supports their business and I am not going to lie, there is no way I could do all the work I do without the work they do. I simply would not have the time to cook for us and run the business.
I work from home all the time and the other half normally does one day in the office but they switched back to completely from home once the latest outbreak began in June, so the only thing that tends to change for us with a lockdown is my business gets a lot more busy.
I banned the parents from taking the mail to the depot or going anywhere. They were to ask me if they needed anything – as I have had both my vaccinations. They had not had any vaccinations at all. Mother was very anti- Astra Zeneca and she wanted Pfizer. Understandably so, there was a lot of bad press about Astra Zeneca and a lot of mixed messaging. They have now had their first shot this past week.
Having rescheduled my nail appointment, of course the lockdown was extended for another 7 days.
I rescheduled a second time, in fact I should be having my nails done this afternoon. But of course the lockdown was then extended another two weeks. And we still have no cases here. We have not had one yet.
I feel terrible for all the businesses who are trying to get support from the government. A friend of mine is a hairdresser and it has taken the full two weeks of regional lockdown for her assistance package to be approved.
I feel even more terrible for the people who have been locked down endlessly in Sydney with no real end in sight yet. Their lockdown was extended to the end of September and we all know it will likely be even longer than that.
We’re ok here. However the anger and frustration I feel – we maybe all feel – towards the people in charge is growing. I can’t listen to another press conference because all I want to do is throw things at the TV. I can’t hear any more news right now. I’m just focusing in on the things I can control – my business and my work and making sure both our households have everything we need.
I think this tweet from Paul says it all.
We are the gold stranded.
I hope you are all doing great! :) Whether you are stranded or not.
We aren’t in lockdown but probably should be as our hospitals are at breaking point. Even masks and vaccines haven’t been effective since too large a percentage of the population are Fox News addicts and anti-science. It’s so very discouraging…and terrifying!
Not good for us here either at the moment with our lockdown being extended for another week, about eleven more days. I understand your frustration but in regional areas when an outbreak occurs, it is not picked up for days and by then many people are infected.
I feel sorry for ourselves i our gilded cage and I feel sorry for so many others. Meanwhile many people are doing quite well, the rich being among them.
My youngest son has written a fringe festival show that begins on Oct 1.
We’re keeping our fingers crossed we’ll be out of lockdown in Melbourne by then… but I’m not exactly holding my breath!
Australia really did seem to be the gold standard in the beginning of this thing. You kept your infection rate way down and kept the virus from spreading. I wondered how much that was due to the wildfires that disrupted so much of your lives. Then, according to another Australian friend things got lax. People started sneaking across borders, infection rates rose and things got way out of control – like in other places around the world. He is constantly whinging about the restrictions and how his favorite coffee shop is closed. He never did much to keep himself safe and didn’t wear a mask, but shopped at early hours when the store was mostly empty which he considered enough. I’m so sorry that your country and it’s people are paying for poor choices now.
I cannot in any way hold my country up as a standard of any sort. Where I live was late to get the virus spreading here because we are rural and comparatively isolated. Most of the country has foregone masks and other restrictions because vaccines (which the last I looked are grossly underutilized in my area) would solve everything, even though we’ve been told that we don’t really know whether the vaccines will work long term and what people may still get infected even when vaccinated. We now are suffering from a surge and our smaller city hospitals are stacking people in hallways, there isn’t enough room in ICU or enough vents. We have millions of n95 masks going unused because our hospitals agreed to buy from someone else who cannot fulfill that agreement and the companies that have them can’t sell to the public because those masks are made for the medical personnel who need them most. We can fly the flag of the most infections and deaths. Please learn from us.
Take care of yourself. Stay as safe as you can no matter what your government does. This probably isn’t the right place to vent and I’m sorry, delete it if you want. I’m frustrated that my state and local governments aren’t doing more to protect me and there’s only so much I can do for myself. And the feds say it’s a state and local decision to make.
Sigh.