None of us should be feeling smug about success in dealing with the virus because it hasn't finished with us yet.
Things were looking good in Australia and even better in New Zealand but even gradual lessening of restrictions has seen resurgence of new outbreaks and the number of new cases is growing at an alarming rate. On the news tonight I have seen a report about Israel and six weeks after removing restrictions they have peaks worse than the initial wave.
The trouble is that people have become complacent, partying in greater numbers that we should be doing just yet. A local hot spot near me is traced to the Cross Roads Hotel where people gathered in large numbers without wearing masks or observing social distancing. This pub is on a truck route from Victoria to Queensland and someone seems to have brought the virus with them and shared it around. A niece of ours was at the the Cross Roads recently with her two adult children. They are now in isolation pending swab tests and so are her parents. Her mother has heart and lung problems.
Also at the pub were 30+ guards from an immigration detention facility. There were having a birthday party. We are still not allowed to congregate indoors in groups of more than 10 people. The inmates at the detention compounds have zero protection, not even hand sanitiser. The main strategy seems to have been a belief that the contagion would not pass through the security gates. These poor wretches are waiting deportation and will most likely set off new flare ups in their home countries. The guards are being swabbed and are all off duty.
Various footballers, supposed to be in tight quarantine/social isolation so that some sort of competition can be staged, keep getting caught ignoring the rules. This weekend another one, and his parents and siblings, have been found to be infected after a large birthday party at home.
Adults are behaving like children. They are ignoring the reason behind the rules and guidelines and seeing how far they can push the envelope and break the rules, hoping not to be caught. As a result we are seeing outbreaks in nursing homes rising again and death tolls are beginning to increase..
This is a global war we are fighting, against an enemy that it as silent as it is invisible, and when we say, "We're all in this together", we need to understand that we all need to pull together, not just in our state or county, and not just in our country but as one planet. This is not time for competitions, or political point scoring. Nothing less than international co-operation is required and on an individual scale we need to think about how our behaviour threatens the welfare of others.
