Sick and Tired
It’s a new year, and nothing has changed.
Back when the pandemic was new, we were told people weren’t taking it seriously enough, and this was why harsh restrictions were required with serious police enforcement. (Particularly, and most visibly, in areas associated most with brown, black, and poor peoples). We were told lockdowns would buy us precious time to get vaccinated—time we needed in large part because our government completely bungled both the supply and delivery of said vaccines—for our healthcare system to be able to handle the influx of patients, and for us to be better prepared for what came next.
We locked down so much we became the global face of that public health measure, home to “the most locked-down city on earth”. We managed it despite the government’s own MPs giving fuel to anti-vaccine and anti-lockdown hysteria, we managed it despite the constant cancer of the Murdoch media doing its utmost to undermine best practice. And despite the fact that due to our geographical position, we have been able to see each wave of this coronavirus sweep across the globe, we have found ourselves consistently unprepared for it when it arrives. There is incompetence, and then there is what we have, which is a government ideologically opposed to good governance, to public health measures, to every lie bound up in the idea of society—namely, equality, justice, fairness, etc.
We knew Omicron was coming, we knew it was considerably more contagious than Delta, yet we still had the conservative NSW Premier remove mask mandates on December 15th—as well as lifting restrictions on unvaccinated people—in an act of staggering and reckless stupidity. The science on masks preventing contagious spread is profoundly clear. It is not new information. Seeing medical staff wear masks is a routine part of life for this reason. Nothing illustrates more powerfully the warped and destructive nature of so-called “conservative” media than the speed with which it has been able to overturn this routine norm, folding it into an existing bullshit culture war about “freedom”. To the extent now where conservative politicians are pandering to the ever more extreme and lunatic fringe who disbelieve entirely the reality of the virus, disregarding expert public health advice. Like the Premier, Prime Minister Scott Morrison insists there’s no requirement for masks, saying only that it’s “recommended”.
On December 14th, there were 804 cases in NSW. On December 15th, masks were no longer required indoors or on public transport. Two weeks later, there were 11,201 cases—with the mask mandate hastily restored, albeit temporarily, but still far too late. By the third week, which we’re in now, there are over 20,000 cases a day, with projections we could see up to 200,000 a day by the end of January. Hospitalisations have climbed to over 1,000, with the ICU and death rate climbing slowly but surely alongside.
Maybe this would be fine if we had used the time gained through lockdowns to actually prepare, to scale up our pathology testing capability; to ensure Rapid Antigen Tests were freely available en masse; to upgrade ventilation wherever possible in places like schools; to install or provide temperature scanning capabilities everywhere. Instead, it seems nothing was done. Somehow, even testing congestion during the holiday period was unforeseen, at a time when negative results are a requirement for travel. In response to this runaway failure, we’ve heard that people should stop getting tested so much, that the “worried well” are the problem, that if you’re not too sick (whatever that means) you should stay home—as if dozens of people hadn’t already died at home from this exact kind of hesitancy.
The vaccines we have do not completely protect against infection, nor symptoms, though they do offer some for the former and for the most part are extremely effective at neutralising the development of severe disease requiring hospitalisation. From the outset, this pandemic has necessitated a number of safeguards—social distancing, masks/ventilation, and vaccination—to be used in concert, for one simple reason: our healthcare system is not equipped for mass illness. It just isn’t. There are a significant number of elderly people, of children, of disabled and immunocompromised people in society; there are a significant number of people who are reliant on continued care, who are giving birth, or need surgeries, and so on. Even a relatively small uptick in patient numbers can overwhelm the system—which, like all our systems, is actually just people, a small amount of skilled people who have been run ragged and can’t keep up.
At the beginning, they said we were too irresponsible. Now they’re saying we’re too responsible. Notice that they are never to blame. Their salaries and their healthcare have been unaffected throughout this devastating pandemic, which they have consistently made worse, and they have the gall to say that the public is still the problem. The public is not the problem. The problem is this conservative cancer corroding our entire media apparatus and the politicians who enable it, constantly attacking the institution of education, science and medicine, in service of nothing. I mean that literally. They do not serve the past, nor the present, and they care not at all for the future. Every step of the way they have exhibited nothing but contempt for us, they have dragged their feet toward every health measure, and we are dying because of it.
Today, Scott Morrison rubbished the idea that Rapid Antigen Tests should be free, despite their obvious essential utility in the face of our own inability to stay on top of PCR testing, saying “we can’t just make everything free”. Emphasis mine. This is the contempt I’m talking about. There is no serious attempt to address the issue, just a rhetorical move to an illogical extreme, an absurdity which is designed to become the talking point. What was asked for? That required testing should be free, as it has been from the start (and by “free” I mean paid for using our collective money, you know, the reason we pay taxes). Why do we even require it at this stage? Because the government has failed in its responsibilities, can’t keep on top of testing, and there aren’t even enough Rapid tests available commercially, leading to price gouging all over the place.
At the beginning of the pandemic, there was talk from conservatives of letting the elderly die, of which lives were “worth” saving financially, of the “economy” (by which they mean the sharemarket and not the millions of workers who keep society functioning) being the only thing that matters. That was abandoned quickly because of its obvious fucking ghoulishness, the disgusting eugenics at the heart of their selfish movement laid too bare for the mainstream, but it has returned. Now the talk is all about “living with the virus”, by which they mean dying with the virus, which not only kills but also seriously disables a signification portion of those it infects. And a lot of people agree with it now, largely out of a kind of helpless exhaustion. We are all so fucking tired. And hurting. Isolated, lonely, grieving, sick, and hurting.
But listen. None of this was inevitable, we are not helpless, or hopeless. It’s not that we’re dealing with the smartest and most pernicious virus in the world—it’s that we’re being led by deluded dickheads who aren’t listening to the scientists and public health experts, and who are instead pandering to an increasingly unhinged and racist base. More than that, their core ideology is against community, against public health, education, housing and equality in all its forms. It’s not easy to understand how fully half of the Western political system is set against the essential pillars of society, how this can be okay, an entire party set up to protect the robber barons of today, the corporations and billionaires ravishing the planet. However, it is easy to understand how civilisation is crumbling under their greedy, idiotic rule.
By all means, let’s “live with the virus”—by following health advice, wearing masks, ensuring ventilation is up to the required standard; by restructuring our workforce wherever possible to work-from-home, by upping our welfare support; by investing massively in education, particularly at the tertiary level, making it more accessible so we have more of the doctors, nurses, scientists we desperately need; by introducing essential integrity into our politics and media whereby the deliberate spread of misinformation is met with career-ending consequences.