Monday, 8 June 2020

First World Problems: COVID Blues

I don't know how others might feel, but the continuous whingeing I hear about the harshness of the (national) restrictions to our liberties is driving me a bit nuts.



Until recently, most Aussies have had to sit tight at home for anywhere between two to three months - while being asked not to interact with other people, including their families, while shopping, or to travel away from their usual environment.

For many this has been something of a challenge (I'm trying not to use the word 'unpredecented' here) but let's face it, for the majority of the population, having to stay at home for a few weeks is not the worst thing that could have happened.


Foreign Correspondent recently produced a compelling story on the COVID situation in India - a country where the government announced the complete lockdown for 1.3 billion people, with only a few hours notice before it began. A lot of workers, having lost their meagre labouring jobs, were interviewed by a (high caste) journalist who'd set out to see how others in her country were faring.

These people, with no job or savings to fall back on, could do nothing else but walk back to their homes and villages. Most interviewed had already walked for several days and even weeks, covering hundreds of kilometres. Some still had a long way to go. One family were faced with a walk of more than a thousand kilometres to get back to their home. An unbelievable hardship.


I'm so lucky because I can work from home. I'm totally sympathetic for all those poor people that have had their jobs disappear in a matter of days. Queuing for hours outside the local dole office must be a tedious, frightening not to mention demeaning experience.




But one thing that, I guess, I shouldn't be surprised about, has been the flood of people that immediately got into financial trouble once their employment had been suspended. This suggests  that a great proportion of the population have no savings whatsoever. Come to think of it, when I was younger, living and working in London meant that I rarely saved much for that 'rainy day' either. It came and went all too quickly. As I'm sure it does for many people these days.

In another time time: There was a poignant letter to the SMH a few months ago, published, I think, around the start of the official lockdown. The author quite eloquently pointed out that 80 years ago Australians were asked to take up arms and fight for their survival in a violent global conflict, whereas with the lockdown, the only thing the government asked was for us to stay at home...


I thought this would be a great opportunity for families to spend more time together, for people to relax away from work (aren't we always going on about '...needing a holiday..?'), plus an opportunity to finish all those things that we never have the time for when working: make a photo book, learn a new language, study online, dig the garden, bake sourdough bread or fix all those things around the house that need your attention! 



When I was a kid, if I needed, I knew I could always borrow money from my parents. But, before I got to see any cash, I was always asked the rather awkward question "...how are you going to pay this back?".  I usually came up with some muddled plan on getting a job, saving and paying the money back once I was able to. Some of the time this was exactly what happened, while on other occasions the loan repayment date got lost in the fog of familial attention.




Although Australia and New Zealand seem to be faring really well in the battle to contain COVID-19, not every country has been so lucky. 

What has been particularly galling is the attitude of some national leaders - the so-called 'ostrich leaders', who continue to ignore the bleeding obvious and do little or nothing, while their population, those that they are supposed to protect, die in their tens of thousands. One can only hope that survivors from these countries will not have to suffer their leaders' stupidity for much longer.

 

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