It has long been an accepted saying that the world is getting smaller. And so it has seemed, as the speed of transport has increased so much and the ease of getting visas has been relaxed with the rise of international tourism and the promise of foreign currency flowing in. I traveled the world with ease in the 1970’s, with the occasional exception like Myanmar (then Burma), which had to be flown over and seemed such a drag and expense to an impoverished backpacker. I carried a British passport which imperiously demanded countries to let the bearer “Pass without let or hindrance”. And so I did through about 60 countries. Even places like Afghanistan where visas and customs for a busload of people seemed to require 8 hours and 3 pages of my solid passport but didn’t make anything difficult.
Now it seems the world has expanded again with the collapse of international transport. Just a few hours ago I was talking to guests whose friends were supposed to accompany them, but were locked down in Melbourne, and whose son was stranded in Poland. Suddenly, that seems a very long way away. For most of us in Australia our personal worlds are smaller being unable to travel interstate right down to not being able to leave the dwelling except for stated purposes. I can’t even imagine being banged up in an apartment block with 3 little kids. Indeed, I am fortunate to be amongst the least affected. Even ‘staying in’ on my own property lets me get outside and do what I usually do. My B&B business has been little affected also, or perhaps made even more in demand by C-19.
Nobody in authority it seems has any long term plan about what to do about the pandemic except local patchwork lockdowns and test and trace, and pray for an effective vaccine. I have already blogged why that might not be easy, or might not happen at all. So are we stuck with rolling lockdowns and some businesses opening and closing like a toilet door at a folk festival? Seems like it. With little international or even interstate travel to selected ‘safe’ destinations and then running the risk of the door home slamming shut behind you like England and Spain. People’s patience is already quite thin, which might be a large factor why the second surge is harder to control than the first wave, despite procedures, equipment, distancing habits, testing etc being already in place. The economic system is also creaking and groaning under the stress of disparity of incomes, massive unemployment, unpayable debts, etc.
So we seem to be stuck in a forky stick, between a rock and a hard place. Lockdown with mass unemployment and struggling to put food on the table, or ‘stuff it’ and business as usual and accept the deaths and illness on the way to ‘herd immunity’. The chief of WHO said today we may never find an effective vaccine, a depressing but realistic assessment I came to months ago. 30 years since AIDS and still no vaccine despite much money and effort. It does seem worth the effort to do what we can with basic pandemic precautions to limit the spread, such as hand washing, sanitising spray in public places, social distancing and especially masks. These thing are relatively easy to do. Shutting down whole industries might be too much. If we have to admit that we can’t control the beast and we can’t all be in prison, then a middle way has to be found. Reduced economic activity leaving us all poorer than we were before, but perhaps there is an upside to that. A concentration on what is really important to us and a simplification of our lives and our consumption. And an acceptance that C-19 sweeps through the population be delayed as much as it can be, to allow the health system and society generally to cope. Then there is hope at the other end of the carnage, when the fit, young, able and resistant are left, and the sick and elderly are culled. Nobody yet has used the word ‘culled’, but that is what it might come to. Not deliberate killing, but the realisation that old people like me shouldn’t command the resources of humanity to keep ourselves alive at the expense of a decent life for the younger generations.
I find a grim ironical satisfaction that the transfer of wealth and opportunity from the young to the old that has occurred in the last 30 years may be at last reversed as the virus clears the dead wood so new growth can spring green and fresh. It may be a purging of society that we need. I am still trying to think my way through this serious and complex problem and would welcome any thoughts you may have.
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