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The question remains, however, is there a straight binary trade-off between granting the state power (to organise lock-downs, track its populace and coerce the people) and keeping its people safe?
Reports of the rain are weak front, then strong. Sunshine headline news, or so it appears. I whisper the tune from a scratchy disc. Maybe Tuesday will be my good news day.
So rapidly have I adapted to this surreal existence in which we now find ourselves, the sound which was once an inseparable part of my morning routine — jets announcing the dawn as they droned overhead — has now become disturbingly anachronistic.
I can’t be the only one who has, in recent weeks, found myself reaching for my dog-eared copy of Daniel Defoe’s A Journal of the Plague Year, a fictional re-telling of the 1665 great plague of London.
In these troubled times of COVID-19, most news bulletins concentrate on the daunting figures from Italy, Spain, Britain and the USA. Little countries don’t get much of a mention. Greece is a little country.
She is sitting on the edge of a mountain in the Annapurna, her face, away from the camera, her gaze, focused on the Lamjung peak, experiencing a moment of peace like many before and many after. The seconds could be hours could be days, the weather could be challenging or kind, she could be alone or surrounded by trekkers. It has taken careful hoarding of time and money to be sitting there framed by sky and snow.
In Christian churches the celebration of Easter this year will look more like Lent or Passion week. All Australians, too, will be without football, concerts, interstate and international travel and family gatherings. The atmosphere, too, will be one of constraint, not freedom. Instead of celebrating the present, we may be weighed down by fear and anxiety about the future. We are all captive to COVID-19.
Even during this period of disruption (and, indeed, even because of it) it is so important that we pay attention to the bigger picture. So much of what we do now will lay the groundwork for the kind of future that we are able to build at end of this crisis.
After almost 14 years under an Israel imposed economic blockade, as well as coming under bombing, most recently on the 27th of March, Gaza is struggling. Medical and food supplies are rundown, many houses are in ruins, power is intermittent, and there are water quality and sanitation issues.
While I stay by my mother, I glean only the edges of the news; already the horror of the fires has been at full stretch. In the quiet room where my mother lies, I think of people trying to sleep in unfamiliar environments, refugees from the fires.
The world-wide chaos caused by the outbreak of the coronavirus has underlined a lesson that was only partly learned in the Global Financial Crisis of 2008. In a more interconnected world the understanding of system-wide risk needs to be much better than it is.
All this is pleasant and unremarkable, except that we were just briefly discussing which future events are likely cancelled in light of the announced pandemic. It’s an unexpected morning topic for conversation before coffee. But it’s appropriate with the increasing concerns on flattening the curve of contagion, illness, infections, acute complications and death.
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