epidemics Archives - thegoodwills.com

Queuing up for the Covid vaccination

Suddenly, getting your Covid vaccination is becoming a hot ticket item on social media. By that I mean ‘normal’ social media posts from people who actually believe in the science. I got my first shot last Thursday evening, 35 minutes later than the allotted time, but hey, I’m retired. I can watch Antique Roadshow later on catch-up.

I spent the time sitting in a packed waiting room with 50-60 other people in my age group (70+). I traded witticisms with a couple of people who seemed sceptical, but all the same sat and waited to be called.

Once I’d been injected (by my own doctor, no less), a nurse stuck a green sticker on my shirt and told me to ‘sit-stay’ for 15 minutes, to make sure I didn’t have any adverse reactions.

I came back out and sat next to a man who had previously been saying things about the government and their ‘jab campaign’.

“So is Bill Gates tracking us now?”

Apart from a slightly sore arm, it’s just another vaccination to add to the certificate from Medicare which lists them all from 2017. I didn’t even know they were doing that until I noticed an email when logged in to MyGov.

The Covid vaccination rollout may have been on the agenda for talks between Prime Minister Scott Morrison and NZ’s PM, Jacinda Ardern, but the media focused on other issues.

Morrison, who in April claimed Australia was ahead of NZ, has come in for trenchant criticism over the government’s handling of the vaccination rollout. The debate continues about the government’s decision to restrict the Pfizer vaccine to people aged under 50. The reasoning behind this decision is that the AstraZenica vaccine (for the over-50s), which has been linked to a rare clotting disorder, is too risky for younger people.

The online news source ‘The Conversation’ sent out a well-researched piece this week asking was it possible to ‘mix and match’ vaccines.

The premise of research out of Germany is that allowing people to have, say AstraZenica for the first shot and another brand for the second is to speed up the vaccination programme when it stalls due to a vaccine stock shortage

It makes sense to allow the general population to have whatever vaccine is available at the time. But talk of risks and side effects may only serve to increase what is known as ‘vaccine hesitancy’.

The government’s chief medical adviser Brendan Murphy told a Four Corners investigation last week that vaccine hesitancy was having an impact.

“We would have expected at this stage to have had a greater uptake because we’ve now got 5,000 points of primary care presence and we are supplying excess vaccine and we have seen a slight flattening, when we expected growth.”

But Professor Murphy said much of the blame lay with the media.

“I think the biggest impact on hesitancy is, frankly, sensationalist media reporting.”

“We want to be transparent, but we want people to understand that the risk of this blood clot is really tiny, and if you’re a vulnerable person, the risk of severe COVID is high.”

Apropos of which, perhaps, a few weeks ago we started binge-watching Season 17 of the long-running medical soap. Grey’s Anatomy. Despite cries of derision from the gallery (it’s a textbook, isn’t it?), Grey’s is the 8^th longest-running primetime TV series. A long way behind The Simpsons (32) and Law & Order – Special Victlms’ Unit (22), but not bad for a series labelled – ‘opera, melodrama and medical procedures’.

I’d best not reveal too many spoilers for fans of Grey’s who have not yet discovered it on the Disney Channel. I had to register for adult content to watch this series, so careful is Disney about protecting kids from M or R-rated content. There’s not too much spicy action in sex scenes which are more about the before and after. But the well-researched scripts are full of what censors call ‘adult themes’ including sex trafficking, drug addiction, psychiatric disorders and patients presenting with the most complex (and gruesome) medical emergencies.

What is illuminating about Season 17 is the setting (Seattle 2020) with all episodes so far completely immersed in the emergence of Covid and its effect on frontline medical staff.

Executive producer and chief writer Shonda Rhimes has a lot to say through the characters about the disproportionate affect of Covid on black people (poor black people specifically), often living in overcrowded conditions.

It’s no accident Rhimes is known for a social conscience – in 2019 she was involved in a campaign with Michele Obama and others to encourage people to vote in the 2020 presidential election.

Rhimes and her Grey’s Anatomy star, Ellen Pompeo, have been with the show from the start. Pompeo, now 51, shares credits in Season 17 as a producer, as well as remaining as the main actor/narrator.

Pompeo is also one of America’s highest paid actors, earning $19 million a year from syndication rights and her $550,000 per episode salary.

You might recall Grey’s Anatomy (which, BTW, is a famous textbook on human anatomy first published in 1858), getting a panning in this blog. We focused on the now-infamous opera episode, where the story was told in song, over operating tables and in hot sweaty linen cupboard clinches.

This is called ‘jumping the shark’ in TV series’ parlance and usually points to writers and producers running out of ideas.

We let some seasons go by and tuned in again about series 15 when you could watch it on catch-up.

Our bizarre attachment to medical soaps aside, I feel some degree of social responsibility to warn that we have some way to go with the goal of vaccinating all Australians against Covid-19 by October (which October?). Not the least of it is the constant presence on social media of anti-vaxxer scare campaigns, most of them debunked long ago.

It’s not just Australians who are hesitant.

Nature Magazine published a survey of 13,426 people in October 2020 indicating that 71.2% of respondents were willing to be vaccinated against Covid-19 if it were proven safe and effective.

“The far-from-universal willingness to accept a COVID-19 vaccine is a cause for concern. Countries where acceptance exceeded 80% tended to be Asian nations with strong trust in central governments (China, South Korea and Singapore)”.

In April, the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners (RACGP) published a survey of 1,090 people which found just 43% of Australians thought the rollout was being done efficiently (down from 63% in March). About 63% thought it was being done safely, down from 73%; and just over half (52%) were confident the vaccines will be effective at stopping COVID-19.

The slow rollout and changes to the plan also appear to have given rise to vaccine hesitancy. One in six people (16%) said they would never get vaccinated against COVID-19, up from 12% in March. It’s a small sample, but nonetheless a demonstration of how confidence in the administration has waned during the vaccine rollout.

Meanwhile the Covid vaccination tally is two for two in this household. Tip from a friend – ask for a lollypop afterwards!

Polio – an ever-present risk

polio-risk-covid — An iron lung, St. Bartholomew’s Hospital, London: a patient inside a Drinker respirator, attended to by a nurse and a doctor. Photograph, ca. 1930. Credit: Wellcome Collection. Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)

Polio is my counter-cyclical topic to kick of a new year that everyone hopes will see the Covid-19 global pandemic kicked in the arse. That’s Australian lingo for vanquished, eradicated, snuffed out. Despite hopes that the Covid-19 respiratory virus will be globally defeated through a programme of vaccinations, it is unlikely to cover everyone who needs it, this year or even next. So let’s be informed by history.

My generation will recall the arrival of the polio immunisation team at their local primary school in the 1950s. ‘The Jab’ was administered to all children as part of a mandatory scheme to eradicate poliomyelitis (polio) from New Zealand (where I grew up). NZ, like Australia, had virus outbreaks in the 1930s, 40s and 50s.

Polio is a viral disease that affects the spinal cord and nervous system, primarily in children and adolescents. Globally, the disease has been 99% eradicated, after an immunisation programme started in 1955. Yet, as health authorities warn, even though the disease has not been seen in the US since 1988, it would take just one live case to be imported to re-start the viral cycle.

I warmed to this as a FOMM topic after reading a few chapters of Alan Alda’s charming biography ‘Never have your dog stuffed’. Alda, who contracted polio as a child in the 1940s recalled, “The country was in the throes of an epidemic. People were afraid to go to public swimming pools or theatres for fear of contagion.”

His parents utilised a controversial treatment advocated by Australian nurse, Sister Elizabeth Kenny. The treatment involved application of heat packs and manual stretching of limbs. Though controversial at the time, the Kenny methods were absorbed into what we now know as rehabilitation medicine.

Despite Alda’s graphic description of the painful application of heat packs, he credits the Kenny treatment with not developing paralysis or the characteristic withered leg common in polio victims.

Even though his doctor had declared him no longer contagious, young Alda had few visitors. He related how one child came to visit for a short while, sitting across the room on a wooden chair.

“Over the next couple of weeks, I thought about this, how kind he was to visit me. I also noticed he didn’t come back.”

Serious polio cases were often subjected to lengthy periods in an ‘iron lung’. An iron lung was a bed inside a metal box with a cushioned opening where the patient’s head protruded. The machine helped patients breathe mechanically until such time as the virus subsided and they could breathe on their own.

Survivors who were left with a withered leg were fitted with a caliper to help them walk. Serious cases ended up in a wheelchair.

It is estimated that about 30% of those affected by paralytic polio could be vulnerable to Post-Polio Syndrome in later life. Occurring about 30 years after the initial infection, PPS causes progressively worsening muscle weakness in limbs affected by the disease.

To demonstrate that polio (like Covid-19) can affect anyone, many famous people were affected by the disease:

Actor and humorist Michael Flanders (of the duo Flanders and Swan) spent much of his life in a wheelchair after contracting polio in 1942. As you can tell by this splendid parody of Mozart’s horn concerto, Flanders did not let polio dominate his life, short as it was (he died in 1975 aged 53). Given the dire nature of this topic, I recommend this performance of “Ill Wind” as light relief.

My favourite songwriter, Joni Mitchell, developed polio and spent much of her childhood at home, where she discovered a talent for art and music. Joni developed her distinctive range of open tunings on guitar and dulcimer to compensate for an arm weakened by the disease. Polio might also explain her friendship with another Canadian songwriter, Neil Young, also a victim.

Australian songwriter Joy Mckean has worn a caliper since developing polio in childhood. In the documentary Slim and I, she tells the story of how she came to write Lights on the Hill, one of her husband Slim Dusty’s enduring songs. As Joy tells it, in the days when she and Slim criss-crossed the continent, the dip switch of most cars was located on the floor, to the left of the brake pedal. As her left leg was paralyzed, Joy had developed a method of moving her right leg across to dip the lights and back to the accelerator. It puts lines like these sharply into context:

These rough old hands are a-glued to the wheel
My eyes full of sand from the way they feel
And the lights comin’ over the hill are a-blindin’ me

Many other well-known Australians were struck down with polio as children, including the late media tycoon Kerry Packer, radio presenter John Laws and former Deputy PM Kim Beazley.

Packer was at boarding school in 1945, aged six, when, as he recalls, “one morning I got out of bed and just fell flat on my face.

“I had polio and rheumatic fever and was sent straight down to Sydney. They put me in hospital there for about nine months in an iron lung.”

Although there has not been a locally acquired case in Australia since 1972, the country has a polio response plan in place. The ever-present risk of the disease being imported could trigger the plan. Although wild poliovirus-associated paralytic poliomyelitis has not been reported in Australia since 1977, an imported case was reported in a man who had traveled from Pakistan to Australia in 2007.

British new wave rocker Ian Drury was a polio survivor. The disease left him with a withered leg and arm and other disabilities. That did not stop him forming a band (The Blockheads) and penning pithy songs like Sex’n Drugs’n Rock’n Roll, Hit me with Your Rhythm Stick and Reasons to be Cheerful.

Drury, a disabled man with a poor opinion of the International Year of Disabled Persons, wrote Spasticus Autisticus in 1981. The lyrics are directed at the campaign, which he saw as patronising and counter-productive.

“So place your hard-earned peanuts in my tin
    And thank the Creator you’re not in the state I’m in
    So long have I been languished on the shelf
    I must give all proceedings to myself.”

This could be loosely adapted to a post-Covid scenario; someone lamenting how Covid has left them with weird after effects, or how the world’s way of dealing with the pandemic has dealt them a bitter economic blow.

It’s not hard to imagine Australian health authorities developing a long-term Covid response plan, as they did with polio.

As we know, all it takes is one case, imported from somewhere else, and the contagion starts all over again.

Happy New Year, then!

Lyric extracts from www.lyrics.com

Note from the Editor- don’t blame me – I said: “Why don’t you write something fluffy for the start of the year?”

Why Human Beings Need a Hug

hug-isolation-love — The Hug Patrol. Photo contributed by Arcadia Love

Forgive me, dear readers, for I have sinned (giving a hug in the privacy of my own home). A friend I had not seen for six months came to visit and the impulse to hug was too strong. We did the right thing to a degree, our heads facing away from each other, so the droplets would disperse in the same room, (where other people freely mingle).

You may have seen examples of people not observing the 1.5m COVID-19 physical distancing rule. Sneaks have taken phone footage in Brisbane nightclubs which show people mingling in close quarters and not sitting down to dance, as the Queensland Premier suggested.

The universal advice to maintain a physical distance of 1.5m from another person outside your immediate family makes sense. But it is hard to do and harder still to keep it up over an extended period.

The main reason is that human beings are just not designed to avoid physical contact with others.

New York Times writer Jane Brody writes that “social interaction is a critically important contributor to good health and longevity”.

Referring to a long-term study by Lisa F. Berkman and S. Leonard Syme, Brody said findings drawn from 7,000 participants concluded that “people who were disconnected from others were roughly three times more likely to die during the nine-year study than people with strong social ties”.

Physical contact can mean hugging, as championed by American folk songwriter Fred Small in his catchy ditty, The Hug Song. This version is by Brisbane musicians Donald McKay and Rebecca Wright, who compiled this video exclusively for FOMM. Warning: it’s an ear worm.

Late last year, we moved from a small village where, for a certain proportion of the community, hugging is the first thing you do on encountering friends, whether or not you saw them yesterday or six months ago. These are not perfunctory hugs either, but warm, tight embraces that last, well, sometimes they last longer than one party would prefer. I have it on good authority that the public hugging habit has abated in the village these past few months.

If you were a regular festival-goer in the first part of the new millennium. you might recall the Hug Patrol, initiated at Woodford in 2001 by actor/comedian Arcadia Love. Street performers roamed in small packs through the dusty byways of Woodford Festival, approaching just about anybody with open arms (asking permission first). The Hug Patrol is still turning up at festivals, carnivals, fetes, shows – anywhere where there is a crowd. Arcadia is understandably frustrated with the hug-less nature of 2020, saying that ‘virtual’ hugs are just not the same. The Patrol’s last live gig was at the Northey Street summer solstice in December 2019. The Hug Patrol’s deeds have touched people deeply, as writer Sandy McCutcheon said in a testimonial:

“This extraordinary group of individuals has probably no idea of just what a positive impact they have. I was fortunate to witness (at Woodford) the effect they had on a large group of refugee women from Afghanistan. For women whose lives are in tatters, families are scattered or dead, the rare moment of physicality was of tremendous importance.”

Meanwhile The Conversation this week asked the most obvious question: “why are we all not wearing masks?”

There’s no doubt masks help stop the spread. A World Health Organisation study showed that face masks reduce the risk of infection with viruses such as COVID-19, by 67%, if a disposable surgical mask is used, and up to 95% if specialist N95 masks are worn.

The mask subject comes up often in community choir circles, where rehearsals are mostly still on hold and actual performances are being deferred to 2021. The theory about singers (and you’d have to ask why is it not the same for footballers who sprint 100m to score a try to be then piled upon by team members), aerosols can be spread up to 8m by singers (who don’t so far as I know, spit on the ground, or on the dressing room floor, or do that disgusting nose clearing thing ).

Plainly, a lot of people in Melbourne have not been maintaining physical distancing; nor, it would seem, have they been adhering to medical advice about social gatherings. The critical issue is, if you are feeling at all under the weather but have not been diagnosed, stay at home.

After the first month of the COVID-19 lock-down, the most common response you would get is, “I’m over it”.

Some of us spent 14 days in isolation, but in fairly comfortable circumstances, apart from not being able to leave home (except to walk the dog or buy groceries). I feel for residents in the public housing towers in North Melbourne, who up until today were not even allowed to do that. (One of the nine towers is still in very restrictive lock-down, the others have moved to ‘stage three’, like the rest of Melbourne.)

A Science Alert article on this subject (isolation and its ill-effects), said researchers based in Antarctica found that loneliness could be the most difficult part of the job.

Israeli adventurer and author Yossi Ghinsberg, who survived weeks alone in the Amazon, suffered loneliness, even creating imaginary friends to keep himself company. Which somehow reminded me of that Tom Hanks movie, where he is stranded on a desert island, alone except for a football called Wilson.

The degree to which isolation bothers you depends on your personality type (extroverts hate it). and your peer group. A report from Byron Bay about a ‘doof’ party that attracted thousands of young dance party goers, is an extreme example of how certain age groups find isolation and government-imposed health advice too inhibiting.

On the other hand, if you are a 70+ introvert with absorbing hobbies that can be performed alone in one room (Ed: who could he be talking about), the COVID-19 lock-down might not bother you at all.

So how much physical and social interaction does one have, in a typical day? If you are a checkout operator or a drive-through bottle shop attendant, quite a lot. Unemployed gamer, maybe not.

An academic study involving 7,290 participants was carried out in 2008 by researchers interested in reducing the spread of flu-like diseases. The first large-scale study of its kind, it found that respondents had on average 13.4 physical and non-physical contacts each day. The researchers recruited 7,290 people from eight European countries. They asked participants to keep a diary documenting their physical and non-physical contacts for a single day. Physical contacts included interactions such as a kiss or a handshake. Non-physical contacts, for example, might included a two-way conversation without skin-to-skin contact. The researchers concluded that the study provided a “deeper understanding of the transmission patterns of a hypothetical respiratory epidemic among a susceptible population”.

If you take this study as a ‘norm’, how do these average interactions compare with 1,000 young people at a dance party or, as happened in Auckland on June 14, 43,000 people attending a rugby game?

We are not out of the woods yet, people, hugs or no hugs.

FOMM back pages

Arts Take Virtual Performance To Another Level

One evening in April, a Kiwi songwriter friend living in London posted a YouTube video by the London Humanist Choir, performing a love song in Māori. The video of New Zealand’s unofficial anthem, Pokarekare Ana, was, as we are now accustomed, a multi-screen video with choir members recording their parts remotely. I shared this with a few Kiwi friends who live elsewhere, knowing it would tug at the tendrils of homesickness, which are almost always waving in the breeze.

This video has had some 37,000 views – not bad for an arts group with 322 subscribers. The group’s social media curator coined the cute phrase, ‘Choir-antine’.

The group’s leader, Alex Jaye, started by giving the choir singers notes on how to record, mostly to minimise unwanted noise, distortion and filtering. Once he received the 20+ videos, he used EQ and compression to correct problems detected in the audio (often due to mobile phone microphones).

“Very little corrective editing (on individual videos) was used as it kills the sense of there being a choir – which does invite blemishes naturally as part of the sound.

Mr Jaye used iMovie to edit the video, utilising picture-in-picture, a technique often used in sports broadcasts.

“Overall it was around a day’s worth of work, however mostly due to video editing not being my forte, so I would say all told five to six hours’ worth of editing.”

In the same vein, a virtual video by Camden Voices does Cindi Lauper’s True Colours a lot of justice.

Like Alex Jaye, the UK choir’s director Ed Blunt started by giving singers instructions for filming the videos to a click track (metronome).

“It was a steep technological learning curve for me as I only had limited experience with video editing.”

He also converted the individual video formats into a uniform file type. The video was synchronised separately from the audio and the different grids were arranged and then exported (one at a time) to an editing programme (Premiere Pro). The audio tracks were synced and mixed in Logic.

My point, before we get too much further into this topic, is the value of such contributions to the community in general. True Colours (this version) has had 1.64 million views. If even 10% of the people who watched this sent Camden Voices $1, they would be able to top up their larder, probably bare these past months from a lack of paid performances.

True Colours:

Sunshine Coast choir director Kim Kirkman concurs with the complexities involved in editing a virtual video. He produced a Zoom video for female barbershop group Hot Ginger Chorus, performing Cindi Lauper’s Time after Time.

“The audio part is the challenging part for me. I have to put 25 voices in line with each other and check that they are all correct. That takes quite a lot of time. The visual is very easy. I just do two runs through Zoom and then stitch that together over the top of the audio that I’ve done previously.”

Time after Time:

Musicians, performing artists, actors and dancers were quick to adapt the technology to the life of isolation. Anyone with a smart phone and the ability to film themselves could play. The production values on numerous videos by orchestras, jazz bands, country musicians and choirs have, for the most part, been outstanding.

The ‘Quarantunes’ series by the Nelson family (Willie and sons Lukas and Micah) is worth a look. Lukas, who wrote a lot of the music for the hit movie A Star is Born, is the one singing, in case you were wondering!

Turn off the TV and build a Garden:

Queensland Ballet is a local example of an arts company creating ‘mini-ballets’ to keep subscribers’ appetites whetted for next year’s season. On May 21, QB made the difficult announcement that it was postponing its 2020 season to 2021.

Queensland Ballet Artistic Director Li Cunxin AO said the company was planning a reintroduction of activity “in a cautious and methodical manner to optimize dancer and community safety”.

Mr Li said in a statement that the decision was also based on feedback from patrons that they may wish to wait until 2021 to enjoy ballet again.

“We have also undertaken economic modelling which has considered potential social distancing restrictions that would render any return to the stage as extremely costly and potentially detrimental financially to the company.”

If you are a ballet fan (and FOMM’s research suggests that readers are more likely to follow the arts than the NRL), you can donate money this month and a benefactor will quadruple your gift. So your humble $25 turns into $100 and so on. To keep the faith, QB is posting 60 short dance videos through the month of June.

Britain’s National Theatre has been filming live performances and streaming them every Thursday. The most recent play is Shakespeare’s Coriolanus, starring Tom Hiddleston. There was also a performance of Frankenstein starred Benedict Cumberbatch as the monster. Imagine!

This is high art delivered with a generosity of spirit while the theatre is closed to patrons until at least August 31. If you think about what tickets to live theatre cost in Australia, you could log on to PayPal and send them a few quid!

I rather liked comedian Sammy J’s Antique Roadshow piss-take recently where he evaluated the worth of a pair of tickets to a live event. As the faux antique owner says, “you mean people used to leave their houses?”

We might bear this satire in mind, given that this week the first patrons will be allowed into live rugby league games. The National Rugby League apparently pointed out that pubs and clubs were allowed to have up to 50 patrons on their premises (subject to social distancing rules). So, the NRL said, it was only fair that rugby league fans to be allowed in limited numbers, confined to the catering sections of stadiums.

It will be interesting to see if Fox Sports abandons its naff ‘virtual crowd’ audio, the sports equivalent of canned laughter in a comedy show where there is no audience.

Andrew Moore of the ABC’s sports show Grandstand left no room for ambiguity when he commented on this during a lull in play.

“When two players are down injured like this (a head clash known as ‘friendly fire’), the crowd would normally go quiet. Let’s have a listen (pushes window open). Nah, nothing! No fake crowd noise on the ABC, folks.”

Which is as good a point as any to observe that while arts communities were getting creative through the March/April covid-19 restrictions, the best Channel Nine (the home of rugby league) could come up with was re-runs of State of Origin matches from bygone eras. the transition over the next 12 months.

The best advice to choirs and singers in general is dire – there is no safe way to practice public singing while the coronavirus is active.

Dr Lucinda Halstead, one of the experts quoted in this paper, says physical distancing on a stage for a choir would not be possible:

“You would need a football stadium to space apart the Westminster choir”.

The reality is that normal transmission will not be resumed until social distancing ends (as is now the case in New Zealand).

Kia kaha (be strong).

Ross River Fever and other viruses

Ross-Rivr-Fever-viruses — The eastern saltmarsh mosquito – image Wikimedia CC

There is an ongoing household discussion here about the sliding screen door, which, if left open, exposes us to mosquitos, potentially carrying Ross River Fever. (It’s tempting to leave the door open so the dog, who lacks an opposable thumb, can get in and out at will. Ed)

Of course, we could just as soon be bitten when outside for a multitude of reasons (gardening, watering, chopping firewood, walking the dog at dusk). Nevertheless, I can tell if the screen door has been left open for a period as mosquitos the size of bees invade my study. It seems mine is the sort of blood to which mosquitos are attracted. I found that out big time on our caravanning adventures in the Northern Territory and Western Australia. If your blood group is type O or you are mosquito-prone, this article might be of interest.

North Queensland, the Territory and the Kimberley are among the places where one is most likely to be bitten by a mosquito carrying Ross River Virus (RRV). This is a disease for which there is no vaccine and no cure. And, despite common perceptions that it is a tropical disease, RRV can occur anywhere in Australia. An article in our local paper in early May revealed 121 cases were reported in the Darling Downs Health region in the March quarter. This is considerably higher than the norm (67 cases a year).

Condamine Medical Centre Dr Lynton Hudson told the Warwick Daily News his concern about Ross River Fever was that some patients may not come in for a physical consult due to COVID-19 fears.

As you’d expect, several years of drought followed by a late wet season, contributed to increased numbers of the southern saltmarsh mosquito, the type most likely to carry the virus. Complicating this year’s cycle is a mild autumn, which means mosquitos are still out and about, particularly at dawn and dusk.

As it happens, a member of our inner circle has recently been diagnosed with RRV, which started with a hives-like rash and a temperature. Fearing something dreadful like Lupus, she went to the local GP who, after some tests, diagnosed Ross River Fever. Stage two of the disease is swollen joints accompanied by arthritic pain and fatigue.

The condition is also called polyepidemic arthritis. Our friend was confined to bed for a few days until the anti-inflammatory medication started to kick in. She told me the arthritic pain was most intense in her knees, feet and ankles. The arthritis extended to her right wrist and finger joints, making it difficult to grip and lift when carrying out domestic chores like cooking

“I also felt extremely fatigued – so if I overdo it in the garden or something, I pay for it the next day.”

Her GP said there was not much she could do but ‘ride it out’ – easy to say when you are not the one home schooling three kids.

Every year, 3,000 Australians will develop RRV symptoms, which can last from six weeks to three months or longer and leaves patients with a risk of relapse or recurrence. RRV was first discovered in 1959 and named after the Ross River, which runs through Townsville. While people are more at risk of developing RRV if they live in humid regions around rivers, lakes and marshlands, the disease can be found anywhere in Australia. Some large marsupials, including kangaroos, act as an intermediary host.

Depending on weather cycles (drought followed by floods will do it), some years are worse than others. In 2014-2015, RRV cases more than doubled to 6,371.

Ross River Fever is one of a half-dozen viruses carried and spread by mosquitos, including Dengue Fever, Barmah Forest Virus and the lesser known Japanese Encephalitis.

Although RRV is not fatal or contagious, it is one of many notifiable diseases in Australia, with each State and Territory having its own parameters around notification. Included on the list is the bat-borne Lyssa virus, which can be caught by someone who is bitten or scratched by an infected bat.

There is no vaccine for RRV and unlikely to be one in the medium-term as the world’s scientists and epidemiologists are focused on finding a vaccine for COVID-19. Nor is there a vaccine for the mosquito-borne tropical disease, malaria. Mainland Australia is free of the disease; nevertheless 437 malaria cases were reported between 2012-13 and 2016-17. Cases were linked to people returning from a malaria-prone region.

Now that we are all in a state of heightened awareness about infectious diseases, we should perhaps remind ourselves of those not yet eradicated. Tuberculosis is one such illness – prevalent in third-world countries but contained in Australia to fewer than five cases in every 100,000 people. Tuberculosis or TB is primarily a disease of the lungs, although it can be systemic. It can be treated with medication, but patients need to be isolated, as it is extremely contagious.

While Australia aspires to a pre-elimination tally of one person per 100,000 by 2035, the incidence of TB is six times higher in the Indigenous Australian population. Legitimate cross border movements between PNG and the Torres Strait by traditional inhabitants unavoidably pose some risk of TB spreading in the Torres Strait Protected Zone.

Now that you are all feeling psychologically contaminated, the good news is the pre-elimination TB target (1 case per 100,000 by 2035), has already been met in the Australian-born population, who represent 72% of the total. A report by the Department of Health states that the incidence of TB has been ‘low and stable’ since 1986.

The point is, now that so much research capability is being focused on a COVD-19 vaccine (or cure), there a danger of being distracted from developing vaccines for other viruses, which, if not life-threatening, impose a serious burden on the lives of those afflicted.

The report, Mosquito- Borne Diseases in Queensland 2012-2017, may not appeal as bed-time reading in this time of heightened awareness of human frailties. So I will save you the chore and summarise a few statistics. For example, almost 14,000 people picked up RRV in the five years from 2012-13 and 2016-17. There were 3,986 reported cases of Barham Forest Virus, one of a small group of Alphaviruses including RRV and Dengue. There were 1,895 cases of Dengue fever in the same five-year period. Dengue is like a form of the flu. Most people recover in a week and fatalities are rare. In Australia, Dengue is confined to Far North Queensland, so cases diagnosed elsewhere are usually traced to a recent visit to FNQ or places where the disease is prevalent (Africa and South America). As for Japanese Encephalitis, which I referred to at the start, only three cases were recorded between 2012 and 2017.

As has been the case with COVID-19, we look to New Zealand for an intelligent response. The NZ Department of Health identified the RRV-carrying southern saltmarsh mosquito as a threat back in 1998. Over the next 11 years, with the help of the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries, the imported mosquito species was eradicated from New Zealand. I feel safe in using the word ‘consequently’ to report that there have been no reported cases of Ross River Virus acquired within New Zealand since September 2006.

New Zealand scored a world first by snuffing out the little Aussie biter and RRV over a decade, possibly because there are no kangaroos to act as incubators. Having said that, did you know there are two species of wallaby in NZ (Kawau Island, Rotorua and southern Canterbury)? Anyway, I reckon Australia should send a delegation to talk to the people who eliminated the saltmarsh mozzie. Like, tell us how to do it, Bro. (If that’s the case, the kangaroos should start feeling pretty nervous. Ed)

Related reading: https://bobwords.com.au/shoo-flu-dont-bother-me/

Non-viral news stories you may have missed

news-viral-fuel — Breaking news – some regional fuel suppliers accused of profiteering (not this one), charging $1.20 or more for a litre of unleaded petrol.

Even when the world is assailed by an invisible foe – a global pandemic – the ordinary news cycle continues. Not that you’d know it, with electronic and print media obsessed 24/7 with the virus and its long-term effect on the global economy. (That is, the economy has been seriously affected – not ‘impacted’, please- the latter referring to something jammed together, e.g. wisdom teeth. SWAG(SheWhoAddsGrammaticalNotes))

The Guardian Weekly has taken to presenting 15-20 news briefs badged “non-covid-19 news”. Unavoidably, about a third of these stories somehow manage to touch on the virus that stopped the world in its tracks. But at least they are trying to maintain perspective.

The mainstream media has not so much ignored standout news stories as relegated them well beneath the repetitive coverage of COVID-19.

For example, did you know that Australia’s Easter road toll was greatly reduced in 2020 compared with the four-day public holiday in 2019? Nationally, six people died on Australian roads, compared with 19 on Easter weekend 2019. The Northern Territory usually has the worst Easter road toll per capita, but this year joined Victoria and the ACT in recording zero deaths.

Over the Tasman, New Zealand reported zero deaths on the roads, compared with four last Easter and a record 17 in Easter 1990. That’s hardly surprising, given that New Zealand has been on Level Four lockdown.

Before the virus, stories about refugees and asylum seekers often led the news, or if not the news as we know it, definitely on social media.

The one news story that penetrated the mainstream news was the latest chapter in the three-year ordeal of a Tamil family seeking a safe haven in Biloela.

The family of four was living in ‘Bilo’ quite happily until March 2018, when the Department of Immigration removed them to detention in Melbourne and subsequently to Christmas Island. There have been numerous (failed) legal challenges to the Department of Home Affairs’ attempts to deport the family. The case came to public attention again last Friday when a last minute Federal Court injunction literally stopped the deportation flight on the tarmac at Darwin. The ABC reports the family will remain in Australia (at a Darwin hotel) until at least today. The Department of Home Affairs has repeatedly said the family does not meet Australia’s protection obligations. It is understood their visas expired in early 2018.

If anything positive came from COVID-19, it delivered a temporary reprieve for the planet, dramatically reducing traffic pollution in major cities.

The Guardian commissioned new data that estimates the global industrial shutdown will cut carbon emissions by 5%. Yes, global carbon emissions from the fossil fuel industry could fall by 2.5 billion tonnes in 2020. That is the biggest drop on record.

Activist groups resisting the spread of coal seam gas and/or coal development in rural Australia have put their direct-action campaigns on hold, instead relying on social media for exposure.

The ‘Stop Adani’ campaign, which aims to thwart development of a major coal mine in Australia by an Indian company, claimed a ‘win’ this week.

Social media posts said engineering group FKG had pulled out of the second stage of the crucial rail link being built between the Carmichael mine and the Abbott Point export terminal. Stop Adani’s main thrust now is to put pressure on contracting companies to distance themselves from the controversial project. The next critical date is May 21, when insurance broker Marsh is set to decide on providing essential insurance coverage to Adani. Toowoomba-based FKG Group declined to comment on the Facebook posts.

Adani Australia said on Tuesday it was awarding the $220 million rail contract to Martinus Group. Adani Mining CEO Lukas Dow said anti-coal activists had failed to stop the project going ahead. “Their recent claims that contractors have pulled out of our project are false and we remain on track to create more than 1,500 direct jobs during the construction.”

Meanwhile, Arrow Energy’s 50/50 owners Royal Dutch Shell and PetroChina announced a financial commitment to the first stage of a $2 billion coal seam gas (CSG) project in the Surat Basin. Queensland Premier Anastacia Palaszczuk predictably enough said positive things about the 1,000 jobs this project would create, describing it as “a milestone in Queensland’s economic recovery from covid-19”.

International news stories which did not receive the sort of coverage they did a year ago included the first anniversary of the Notre Dame Cathedral fire.

The anniversary was commemorated on April 15, signalled by a lone bell tolling in locked down central Paris. Despite the chaotic state of the ruined cathedral and COVID-19 restrictions, a mass was celebrated on Easter Sunday and livestreamed to Catholics world-wide.

Work has been halted on the $1 billion cathedral restoration (funds pledged by 340,000 companies and individuals), not only because of COVID-19 but also because of lead contamination.

Also largely missing from the media radar was the first anniversary on March 15 of the Christchurch mosque attacks. Ten days later, the lone gunman charged with killing 51people and injuring more than 40 changed his plea to guilty. The plea saves relatives of those killed and injured from re-living the event through what would have been an international showcase trial.

Unless you subscribe to John Menadue’s blog collective Pearls and Irritations, you probably did not read Judith White’s take on the gutting of the Australia Council’s funding. Cuts announced in early April are the last of savage cuts made in the 2016 Budget and rolled out over four years.

As White reveals, those to lose multi-year funding include the Australian Book Review (Federally-funded for six decades), the Sydney Book Review, Overland magazine and the Sydney Writers’ Festival. Small to medium creatives also affected included Melbourne’s La Mama Theatre and new music company Ensemble Offspring.

Speaking of the arts, Winton’s week-long outback film festival, usually held in June, has been postponed to September 18-26. A source said the Vision Splendid Outback Film Festival would go ahead at that time if the government changes its rules about large gatherings.

You may have started watching the latest in the outback noir series, Mystery Road on ABC TV. The original Mystery Road movie was filmed in Winton, as was the sequel, Goldstone. The latest made-for-TV series, filmed in and around Broome and the Dampier Peninsula in Western Australia, has a famous cast member. Swedish actress Sofia Helin, who played homicide detective Saga Norén in the cult series, The Bridge, was one of the first lead actors to portray someone with a form of autism.

In Mystery Road, Helin plays European archaeologist Professor Sondra Elmquist, digging for Aboriginal artefacts in a remote coastal location.

Apart from watching Grey’s Anatomy, we don’t watch 7 very often, but I did catch this snippet, tucked away at the bottom of an online news feed.

Australia’s oldest man, Dexter Kruger, quietly turned 110 on Monday, being characteristically optimistic when speaking to well-wishers at a (virtual) party held in his honour.

“My life has spanned a lot of years and I have touched seven generations of the Kruger family,” he said.

“I don’t know what else (to say), but I will invite you all to my next birthday.”

FOMM Back Pages: https://bobwords.com.au/climate-extremes-polar-vortex-bushfires/

Martial Law Or Just Do What You’re Told?

Martial-law-Brisbane-Ekka — Inventive Brisbane Ekka photo by David Kapernick

This may be Good Friday, but by any definition it’s not all that flash, given varying states of emergency in Australia and attempts to police COVID-19 restrictions (emergent but not quite martial law).

Well may you scoff, as hysteria spreads in the US about the very real prospect of the Commander in Chief ordering the armed forces to take over. Outspoken New York governor Andrew Cuomo has dismissed martial law rumours in his state, although he has tightened business restrictions. As always, the global situation changes by the day.

According to <militarynews.com>, there are more than enough believers that martial law could soon apply in some US states. As we should know, that means the abandonment of civil liberties, free speech and all recourse to legal protections through suspension of habeas corpus. This has happened in recent times in countries relatively close to us, including Fiji, East Timor and Aceh.

Martial law occurs when military control of normal civilian functions is imposed by a government. Civil liberties, such as the right to free movement or protection from unreasonable searches, can be suspended. Civilians may be arrested for violating curfews or for offences not considered serious enough (in normal times) to warrant detention.

The United States has imposed martial law in one or more States on more than a dozen occasions since the formation of the Union. Most were declared because of wars, civil unrest or natural disasters. President Trump has more wiggle room in 2020, thanks to John Warner’s National Defense Authorization Act, brought into law by President George W. Bush on October 17, 2006. In addition to allocating funding for the armed forces, it also gave the president the power to declare martial law and to take command of the National Guard units of each State without the consent of State governors.

The Atlantic reported last month on the extraordinary power available to the President simply by invoking a ‘national emergency’.

This delivers more than 100 special provisions not usually available in peacetime. For example, he can shut down many kinds of electronic communications inside the US, freeze Americans’ bank accounts and deploy troops inside the country to subdue domestic unrest. As The Atlantic’s Elizabeth Goitein observes, it would be OK if one trusted the President to do the right thing. But she points to past abuses, such as President Roosevelt’s rounding up and detaining Japanese nationals, even US citizens, after the bombing of Pearl Harbour. More recently, George W Bush supported programmes of wiretapping and torture after the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

As far back as the Civil War, some presidents have had misgivings about martial law. President Lincoln defended the suspension of habeas corpus, saying that while it was constitutionally questionable, it was “necessary to preserve the union”.

It may surprise readers to find that Australia was subject to martial law, notably Tasmania and NSW, during the Frontier Wars of the late 1800s.

Governor Arthur declared martial law (against indigenous peoples) in Tasmania in November 11, 1828. Soldiers were given the right to apprehend without warrant or to shoot on sight any Aboriginal person in the Settled Districts who resisted them. The edict stressed that tribes that surrendered should be treated with every degree of humanity; and that “defenceless women and children be invariably spared”.

The Tasmanian state of martial law remained in place for three years. Meanwhile, Governor Brisbane introduced his own version of martial law in New South Wales. I have lost count of the Australians who have told me “we were never taught that at school”. Even now, some of the evidence is disputed, but at least there’s enough of it out there to make up your own mind.

Roll forward to 2020 and we have an executive Cabinet running Australia, only recalling Parliament one time, to vote on spending a lot of money to keep the economy in ‘hibernation’. There is a bi-partisan delegated legislation committee to oversee these measures, but how much influence does it really have?

The most sensible analysis I’ve read of this National Cabinet Committee is from libertarian blog, <Cattalaxyfiles>.

The writer describes the Cabinet (the nation’s first ministers – the Prime Minister, premiers and territory leaders), as an attempt at ‘cooperative federalism’. But he argues it has no constitutional authority.

“The Commonwealth might not actually have the power to do many of the things that are currently being done. The States do. The ‘National Cabinet’ is an unconstitutional fig leaf that allows the States to coordinate their activities while appearing to have a unified national approach.”

Even with just a humble State of Emergency in place, Australian citizens have reportedly been subjected to harassment by police in NSW. Can someone sit on a park bench and eat a kebab? Not if the police have spoken to the same guy twice in the same day, apparently.

Life seems relatively benign in Queensland, compared with zealous police patrols of NSW streets, markets, shopping centres and beaches. Nevertheless, Queensland police have the power to order you to move on (when did they not?) and if you are flagrantly breaking the rules (using a kids’ playground for example), expect to get run in.

But is this anything new?

The National Museum of Australia may be closed, but you can still read online a summary of stern health measures taken by Australian authorities in 1918 and 1919, during the Spanish Flu pandemic’.

“The Australian Quarantine Service monitored the spread of the pandemic and implemented maritime quarantine on 17 October 1918, after learning of outbreaks in New Zealand and South Africa.

“The first infected ship to enter Australian waters was the Mataram, from Singapore, which arrived in Darwin on 18 October 1918. Over the next six months, the service intercepted 323 vessels, 174 of which carried the infection. Of the 81,510 people who were checked, 1102 were infected.”

Despite all best efforts, the illness spread and 15,000 people died of pneumonic influenza, the nation’s name for Spanish Flu. The death toll equated to 2.7 people in every 1000, one of the lowest death rates in the world.

History will show whether or not we can improve on this, more than a hundred years later. Much depends on how long we can all hang in there under virtual house arrest. The cancellation of the Royal Queensland Show (the Ekka) is a clear sign that authorities expect the pandemic to still be around in August.

Authorities decided that exposing up to 400,000 people to the coronavirus was too big a risk. Also, the State government has taken an option over the 22ha Brisbane Showgrounds site for temporary hospital accommodation, just as it happened in 1919, at the peak of the ‘Spanish Flu’ pandemic.

We can only imagine what a blow the Ekka announcement was to the State’s farmers – their annual chance to leave the drought and bushfires behind, put on their best duds and escape to the city.

It’s for the best, they say, but we don’t have to like it.

Further reading: NSW civil liberties advocate Nicholas Cowdery warns extended adjournment is “unacceptable and dangerous for democracy”

https://www.health.gov.au/news/health-alerts/novel-coronavirus-2019-ncov-health-alert/government-response-to-the-covid-19-outbreak

Working From Home In The Time Of COVID-19

working-from-home-covid-19 — Working from home through covid-19

Fifteen years ago, just after SARS but before the GFC and COVID-19, I opted out of full-time paid employment and started a consultancy business, working from home. This was an era when many large organisations did not want their employees working remotely. The resistance was hard to understand, given that even in 2005, the technology to do so made it easy, particularly for people in the communications industry.

Now, in plague-ridden 2020, many employers have made working from home mandatory. A Morris dancer friend, whose work often takes her to places like India, has her office set up in one corner of the house. That’s K’s home office above.

“Contrary to others perceptions of this period, I am finding that I am extremely busy (hence the short note), because I have to carry out my usual job achieving the same minimum number of hours. I also have to work out a family timetable and supervise and enforce the online learning that the children have been given. It is a real handful, and with limited computing resources in the house, we are packed like sardines into the office and dining room space. This results in a lot of distractions and consequently late hours of work.

“But I am finding this period more social because people are uploading virtual folk clubs, sessions and dance events I would not otherwise have the time to attend. It is an exciting and vibrant time, full of possibility for musical and creative pursuits.”

Mr Shiraz, who recently attended a virtual board meeting via Zoom, said he has seen some inventive ways of setting boundaries when someone is working from home.

“This can range from a sign on Mum’s closed office door “Mummy is at work,” to a friend who posted a list of possible answers to things the kids want to ask her (“Have you looked in the fridge?”).

Residential property researcher Michael Matusik, who has been working from home for nearly five years, has a few practical tips. The most important one is: “Put your arse in the chair” for a set time every day.

“You need to focus and the best way to do that is to be at your desk and sticking to a routine,” he said in a recent Matusik Missive.

”Make a to-do list for the day, week and month ahead and stick to it.

“It is easy to labour unproductively when working from home. It is best to set yourself timeframes to do certain tasks and to take set breaks each day.”

(see link below)

Freelance writer Lisa Southgate started working from home in late 2001 and loves it, so is intrigued to find that friends forced into it by COVID-19 are not coping.

“I was fresh from a job in a big newspaper office, and I knew, because I had a teenager on the spectrum, that whatever I did next it had to involve the late-ish start to the day we used to have in newspapers then. “My son was in his teenage years, and it took him forever to get to school.

“At the time I was getting heaps of freelance offers. I was working in property, tourism and business, and there was a property boom, a tourism boom, and an increase of interest in investment. So I called my accountant, set up an ABN and a business structure and went to it.

“It was great! I could get my son off to school – I could take the endless whingey phone calls from the school staff. And I could concentrate on work and not office politics.

“I didn’t have to spend so much money on clothes and makeup for looking presentable in the office. I sometimes wondered what my interviewees would have thought if they’d seen me sitting there in my Ally McBeal pyjamas.”

The key to working from home, Lisa says, is to work out when your brain works best and design your day around that.

Musician and instrument-maker Andy Rigby reports from rural Victoria that while there are no COVID-19 cases in the vicinity, he thinks it is only a matter of time. He is accepting that this (home isolation), will go on for some time, which might be a problem for his daughter, who is in Grade 6 and bored after day one.

For his part, Andy plans a re-union with the local bush (“which has been sadly neglected in our busy lives”.)

“I have several harp orders, plus whistles, and a fair bit of potential on-line teaching to arrange, so I don’t think I’ll be bored for some time yet.

“I reckon I would qualify for some Government assistance as a small business with most of my income (gigs and school jobs) denied by the virus.”

Self-sufficient people who live on rural properties have no shortage of things to do, although they don’t describe it as ‘working from home’.

Former Queenslander Marion lives on a 52ha farm, in Victoria, which includes about one hectare of ornamentals and vegetable gardens.

“I have no problem productively filling my day with just this work.

“I have had a vegie garden for the five years I have lived here and we have our own meat (cows and sheep) and chooks for eggs. So there is no shortage of food and we are relatively self-sufficient (except for the dreaded toilet paper which I am now rationing).”

Marion, like so many of the kind readers who responded to my request for home-alone anecdotes, advised us to: “Stay well, stay safe and stay sane. This too will pass.”

Teri from the Granite Belt is not troubled by isolation, keeping in touch with friends and family via group messages test and phone calls. She prefers the latter because “hearing someone else’s voice is the next best thing to a face to face visit.”

“Because we live on a bit of land, we love being at home. Nature is good company. There is always plenty to do here, both practical and creative, with veggie garden, repairs and decluttering top of the list at the moment.”

Ralph from South Australia says staying at home is something he has become used to in recent years and offers some tips.

“I go for days without utterance sometimes, but I am never bored, because there is so much to do. There is the variety of household chores, the cycles of gardening, getting dirty with weeds and compost, harvesting and house repairs.

“There’s writing the letters you’ve long forgotten to send to old friends and rellies, learning poetry, reading the world’s best speeches, playing chess and, can you remember the rules for cribbage and euchre?”

On a serious note, we know people who are at various stages of chemotherapy or have compromised immune systems. For them, self-isolation is literally a life-preserving strategy.

David, who has just finished his last round of chemo, is susceptible to coronavirus and understands that he needs to self-isolate, along with Mrs David. He tells me, in a fairly neutral way, I thought:

“(Mrs David) is doing her choir practise in the kitchen on her iPad for the first time ever, and it is working.’’

Peter from the Hinterland speculated that there is an important-sounding future PhD thesis in: “Priorities in Panic Buying as an Indicator of National Character.”

“Data I have noted to date (according to impeccably reliable newspaper reports):

Australia: toilet paper, then alcohol
Britain: toilet paper, then all groceries
Italy: pasta and tickets out of the country
USA: more guns
Argentina: viagra

Or as another Pete friend said, in a postscript to an email sent when we were travelling:

“Drive safe and keep your bum clean.”

More reading: Wise words from travel writer Lee Mylne https://aglasshalf-full.com/2020/03/23/a-freelance-writers-top-tips-for-working-from-home/

Lisa Southgate’s tips:

Michael’s tips https://matusik.com.au/?s=working+from+home

Splendid isolation in the time of COVID-19

Isolation-COVID-19 — Two wallabies practising social distancing (in Wodonga, Victoria)

As we drove 1,200kms in haste from Albury NSW to the Southern Downs, trying to escape Queensland border chaos, I was grateful for readers’ insights into COVID-19 and isolation. First of all we should credit Sandy W with the witty caption for this week’s photo.

Realising I’d be spending three days driving home before resigning ourselves to self-isolation, I asked FOMM readers for their thoughts on this health crisis. I was overwhelmed with responses, so will keep some back for next week’s quarantine episode.

Two readers sent me the same meme which essentially says:

“Your grandparents fought in a world war. All you’re being asked to do is sit on the couch. Don’t fuck this up.”

The meme memo was a bit too late for the hapless authorities who allowed 2,700 people to disembark from the Ruby Princess and mingle amongst the crowds in Sydney’s streets, shops and nightclubs; 130 passengers have since tested positive to COVID-19.

Yesterday we began 14 days’ voluntary home detention, mindful that we have been travelling through rural NSW in recent weeks.

King Richard of The Village said self-isolation is ‘great’.

“I’m enjoying the time to do all those jobs at home that I put aside for another day. We visit the IGA late in the evening when we need to and keep in touch with friends by phone. It’s a bit like my childhood memories of World War II and self-sufficiency.”

I asked our musician friend Silas Palmer how his gigs were going: “Six major festivals and a lot of small events, all cancelled but we’re in the same position as everybody else.”

“But we’re practicing a lot,” he added gleefully.

Katie Bee self-deprecatingly said: “So far the trickiest thing for me is that with so many things I CAN do, and so much time to do them in, my procrastination knows no bounds!

“But I’m finding myself a little more often on FB, and keeping in touch with friends by phone or email, and am gradually doing jobs that normally never enter my consciousness, after which I reward myself with some Netflix.”

Superchip from Calgary said that having been raised on a remote prairie farm in southern Alberta, isolation was not something that caused him great angst.

“I do not consider my formative years as being spent in social isolation, but I did spend a lot of time alone. I learned how to make my own fun. I learned how to just sit and try to take in my surroundings. I enjoy the company of other people, but I don’t need it on a constant basis. Given the state of the world at present, I feel I am one of the lucky ones. Getting past the pandemic will not be a mental challenge for me.”

Anne and John are self-isolating, which means missing out of physical contact with grandchildren.

“We are missing our music session, our book clubs and exercise classes,” Ann said. “Our little granddaughter (supposed to be keeping to her school routine at home), Zoomed us this morning and tried to teach us some origami to keep us occupied…..argh!”

Barbara is coming to terms with strict tests and limits in her home, the Independent Living Unit section of an Aged Care Facility.

“The impact of the virus has radically changed our lives in the past couple of weeks, but particularly in the past couple of days. All entrances other than the main one to our Residential Care Facility were closed last week; entrance restricted to two only visitors at a time (who have their temperature taken and are then asked to use hand sanitiser). This test has now been extended to delivery drivers visiting the facility.

Despite the constraints, she does not feel out of touch with the world.

“My IPhone is in full use. I can have uke jam sessions with friends; enjoy the light hearted Facebook posts and many, many things to keep my day full.”

A few of my readers appear to belong to the introvert club (we are apparently supposed to teach extroverts how to handle this).

Roger Ilott has been a professional musician and sound engineer for more than 30 years and is not fazed at all.

“As the ultimate stay-at-home, this is fulfilling a lifelong ambition of mine – I’ll never have to go out again!

“I actually always just wanted to be a session musician and did quite a bit of that in the 1970s and 1980s. Since Penny (Davies) and I started our own folk music label back in 1982, I’ve been able to do loads of session work as well as performing. I’m happy all my days sitting in the studio recording (and in cricket season, streaming the Sheffield Shield while I record!).”

After eight days in isolation, Ruth realised this was very similar to how her life has been for the past eight years, caring for her husband who had a serious stroke.

“I have come to this realisation after speaking to family and friends on the phone, some of whom are expressing angst and frustration. On listening, I realise I don’t feel like this at all. I am actually loving it. Loads of time in the garden( work and pleasure), heaps of time for photo sorting and sending, enjoyment in doing things I NEVER do, eg, cleaned all our windows inside & out the other day!”

Choir enthusiast First Soprano said that self-isolating for a couple of weeks would be easy as long as you prepared appropriately.

“Social isolation, as we know, is not a healthy situation (and unfortunately, unlike the Italians, we don’t live in high-rise flats; Italian city folk have been able to continue “socialising” from their balconies, which actually looks like lots of fun and would certainly keep spirits up), but happily in this day and age we have Skype and FaceTime so we can still easily keep in touch with family and friends.”

Jim from Albuquerque said life in the time of Corona had made a difference in his working class neighbourhood.

“Both friends and neighbours with either high or low paying jobs are on furlough or worse. Some better compensated than others in time-off but all paddling the same boat. Neighbourly relations are conducted at a safe remove but with a higher content of cordiality: Hey, howya doin’?; Feelin’ OK?; Need anything? Toilet paper?”

“Mercifully, no one is sick.”

Jon from Vancouver Island says there is always plenty to do on his little farm in what is often regarded as Canada’s Riviera.

“Spring has just arrived, which means preparing the garden for the upcoming season. Like many, I shudder when reviewing my market stocks but this brings with it a modicum of patience, realizing that fixing this up effectively is beyond me.”

Ms Proodreader, who lives alone, said she is enjoying the interaction with virtual choirs and musicians sharing online.

“I’m mostly staying upbeat but I’m prone to little bursts of panic. I’m very much keeping away from all media….. especially social media…… as there is so much misinformation and I just need to know the basics not the analyses and the what ifs.”

Yeh I’m with Proodie on that one. There is a lot of misguided and possibly inaccurate information being spread on social media by people who should know better. The mainstream media is completely obsessed and helplessly looking for any new angle.

As for the free papers left in the letterbox – wash your hands after reading.

Postscript: You might enjoy Erin Sulman’s Apocalypse Playlist. If you do have a listen, track 30 is Warren Zevon’s Splendid Isolation. It was recorded live in Brisbane in 1992 – you can probably hear us and Prince Richard of the Village cheering.

Don’t fence me in – a COVID-19 adventure

covid-19-travel-adventure — The author looking for an elusive bird at Sawn Rocks, 25kms from Narrabri. Photo by Laurel Wilson.

In downtown Dubbo, NSW, the checkout operator at one of the major supermarkets described the day as ‘crazy’. Shopping late (6pm) we managed to buy enough food to tide us over, mindful of Scotty from Marketing’s exhortation to stop hoarding, because ‘it’s UnAustralian’. But the PM was at least three weeks late with that edict, which fell on deaf shoulders (in Dubbo at least). There were plenty of empty shelves and shortages. No rice, mince, long life milk, potatoes, pumpkins or toilet rolls. I cracked a lame joke with a customer about SFM’s demand that we stop hoarding.

“Didn’t work here,” was the terse response. (Possibly because people resent being spoken to like naughty schoolkids.Ed.) The only things on our list that we could not buy were spuds and long life milk – the mainstay of campers everywhere. What is that about? In normal times supermarkets can’t give it away!

But these are not normal times, not at all.

As of 8pm on Thursday, there were 565 diagnosed cases of coronavirus in Australia. Yes, it is spreading fast. But lazy reporting, combined with deliberate sensationalism in the news media does not help with perspective.

Example: “The number of COVID-19 cases in NSW (265), has escalated dramatically,” the comment not balanced with the observation, ‘Australia’s most populous state’ (7.54 million).

Scotty and his War Cabinet came up with the idea of advising the cancellation of all non-essential events attracting crowds of more than 500 people. Just why they decided on that arbitrary number is one mystery. The other imponderable is why the COVID Crisis Team decided to foreshadow the plan on March 11 but postpone it until after the weekend of March 13-15, which just happened to be the start of the rugby league season.

As we all now know, future rounds of NRL matches will be held in empty stadiums, to attempt to limit the spread of the virus; to flatten the curve, as they say.

Regardless of what happens to the infection rate now, 80,000 people attended eight rugby league games last weekend, not to mention the thousands who attended the Hillsong Conference in Sydney. As of last Monday, you can’t go and watch a live footie game anywhere. I have no argument with that, but must roll out the old cliché about closing the stable door. Too late, Scotty, that horse has bolted. The War Cabinet may yet regret the decision to let 80,000 people co-mingle, three days ahead of a ban on mass gatherings, which they now tell us could last for six months.

As I said last week, we are on the road and anything could happen. The three music festivals and a garden show we had planned to attend have been cancelled. Nevertheless, we motored on down the New England and Newell highways, giving our new-ish caravan its first serious road-test.

People we know who are taking the coronavirus more seriously than we are (so far) seemed alarmed that we were not self-immolating or whatever they call it. We are not alone. I counted 185 vehicles between Moree and Narrabri (some 100kms). A third of them were trucks – essential services, no doubt. In a way, we travellers are all self-isolating, sealed in our air conditioned cabs except for times when we have to refuel (paying by EFTPOS, using the same keypad upon which hundreds of customers have already left their microbe-laden fingerprints).

We’ve been staying in local showgrounds, a process which usually involved leaving cash in an honesty box. Vans are parked a long way from each other so there’s not much interaction unless you go looking for it. As I have remarked to people who know me well – I have no trouble with social distancing.

It’s a bit hard to find a news story which is not touching on the coronavirus pandemic, even in a small way, so we switched off and went birdwatching. Lake Narrabri is a good spot to see water birds of all varieties, which we did, thanks to the unprecedented discipline of getting out of bed at 7am!

If we were not ambling around country New South Wales (centre of the coronavirus universe, remember), we’d not have seen the amazing Sawn Rocks (photo above). The basalt formation lies at the bottom of a small gorge in remnant rainforest. The spectacular geology is known in the trade as ‘organ piping’.

Later we drove to Gulargambone, (kudos for those who can pronounce it correctly) stopping off for a good soak in the Pilliga Bore Baths. There were three other people in the pool and we all negotiated our corners without anyone having to say anything. I noticed that they close the baths for cleaning on Friday mornings.

Matters of personal hygiene loom large when assailed by a fast-spreading virus for which there is no vaccine. Dubbo’s biggest supermarket was right out of all items related to hand sanitation. My plan is to buy a small spray bottle from a $2 shop and mix up a mild solution of antiseptic and water. I was bemused to see sideline officials at the Tigers vs Dragons game, disinfecting footballs every time one of them went off-field. Dip, rinse and dry. Then gloved-up ball kids ran the ball back to where it was needed. Did that really happen?

The cancellation of the three music festivals at Katoomba, Yackandandah and Horsham was not a financial loss for us, apart from deciding not to upgrade our non-refundable cheap air fares to Sydney and back.

We were just going to these festivals as punters, maybe picking up a walk-up gig along the way. But I feel for my musician friends trying to earn a living in a notoriously fickle business.

As one muso friend said: “We’re watching our careers evaporate and transition to an online model that can’t possibly be sustained.”

Sick of all the negativity and doom-saying across all media, I went on a hunt for the places which had the smallest exposure to COVID-19. Gibraltar, a British protectorate located between Spain and Morocco, has only three reported cases after banning all cruise ships quite some time ago. The Vatican (meaning the Holy See), had one reported case, and the ACT has three, including high-profile politician Peter Dutton. Or you could head for the Northern Territory where no cases of COVID-19 have been reported. But you’d have to be sure you were not carrying the virus, and apparently that is the one thing none of us know.

I’m not at all sure how the Vatican City, a walled enclave within greater Rome, has managed to keep coronavirus out. Italy now has 25,000 cases and the death toll has reached 1,809. Normally a haven for tourists in the lead-up to Holy Week, this report says tourists have vanished across Italy. That must be a weird feeling for the citizens of Venice, who each year host 20 million tourists.

Closer to home, the Byron Bay Blues Festival and Canberra’s National Folk Festival at Easter have both been cancelled, with a host of smaller events following suit. Sydney’s Royal Easter Show and Melbourne’s annual flower show have also been axed. This is likely to be a financial disaster for the catering businesses who earn a living from such events.

Meanwhile we will continue on our uncharted road adventure, spending a bit of money in local towns, as my editor person says “until someone in authority orders us to stop.”