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Please Do Not Pass Go
Aug. 17th, 2020 01:27 pmSo, as you may already know (especially if you are Australian) my city is not having a good pandemic right now. We're under Stage 4 lockdown, which means Melbourne has a curfew for the first time ever. There are severe restrictions on why we can leave the house and how long for and how far from home we can go, and also compulsory face coverings.
I am personally doing OK - much as I need to go bra shopping and want to get back in the swimming pool and eat out at my favourite cafe, I can wait. It turns out being an unemployable shut-in is great training for enduring lockdown! OK, I am not really a shut-in, but honestly my day-to-day life has changed very little, except the government has been forced to give me an adequate amount of money to live on, I don't have to do any Centrelink nonsense and my parents have learned how to use their webcam.
I am a bit more concerned about friends and family. I have local friends who are a lot more extroverted than I am, who are finding being stuck inside most of the time without face-to-face contact very tough, and my brother and sister-in-law are trying to work from home with a two-year-old in the house. (Fortunately she is not the only toddler who keeps interrupting daddy's very important Zoom meeting with clients because she wants juice, so I guess everyone just has to deal.) And while I am very glad my parents live in a rural area in a town where there are no cases, I know it's increasingly hard on them as the months drag by and their can't see me and my brother and their granddaughter and my aunts in person.
But! The people I am actually most worried about are my fellow citizens who cannot follow a simple set of rules so we can all get through this and get back to a less severe level of lockdown. A couple of weeks ago my unexpected exercise of the day was dodging out of the way of sweet potatoes thrown by a man who was apparently very angry about being told to wear a mask in the greengrocer, and had decided to express his feelings by screaming racial abuse at the tiny old ladies who run the place and flinging their vegetables at passing cars and pedestrians. I am not often happy to see the cops arrive and literally sit on someone, but if they want to arrest screaming racist white dudes who won't practice basic public hygiene during a plague, that seems like a good use of their time, tbh. I've also witnessed a distinct up-tick in people being rude to service workers because they apparently cannot read the fucking signs about appropriate queuing behaviour and/or paying with EFTPOS or credit instead of cash.
I know it's difficult! But that doesn't mean I don't facepalm every time I read about another person who got arrested because they went out at three in the morning to get cigarettes (which they could not get because all shops shut at eight when curfew starts) or because they were driving around playing Pokemon Go or because they went 140km to go surfing. Or the people who are driving across the city because they are bored with walking around their own suburb.
I know you're bored! WE'RE ALL BORED! It sucks! But please, Melbourne, stay in your house unless you need supplies, or you're on a one-hour walk/run/bike ride, or you're an essential worker, or you need to seek or provide medical care. Then maybe we'll all survive.
I am personally doing OK - much as I need to go bra shopping and want to get back in the swimming pool and eat out at my favourite cafe, I can wait. It turns out being an unemployable shut-in is great training for enduring lockdown! OK, I am not really a shut-in, but honestly my day-to-day life has changed very little, except the government has been forced to give me an adequate amount of money to live on, I don't have to do any Centrelink nonsense and my parents have learned how to use their webcam.
I am a bit more concerned about friends and family. I have local friends who are a lot more extroverted than I am, who are finding being stuck inside most of the time without face-to-face contact very tough, and my brother and sister-in-law are trying to work from home with a two-year-old in the house. (Fortunately she is not the only toddler who keeps interrupting daddy's very important Zoom meeting with clients because she wants juice, so I guess everyone just has to deal.) And while I am very glad my parents live in a rural area in a town where there are no cases, I know it's increasingly hard on them as the months drag by and their can't see me and my brother and their granddaughter and my aunts in person.
But! The people I am actually most worried about are my fellow citizens who cannot follow a simple set of rules so we can all get through this and get back to a less severe level of lockdown. A couple of weeks ago my unexpected exercise of the day was dodging out of the way of sweet potatoes thrown by a man who was apparently very angry about being told to wear a mask in the greengrocer, and had decided to express his feelings by screaming racial abuse at the tiny old ladies who run the place and flinging their vegetables at passing cars and pedestrians. I am not often happy to see the cops arrive and literally sit on someone, but if they want to arrest screaming racist white dudes who won't practice basic public hygiene during a plague, that seems like a good use of their time, tbh. I've also witnessed a distinct up-tick in people being rude to service workers because they apparently cannot read the fucking signs about appropriate queuing behaviour and/or paying with EFTPOS or credit instead of cash.
I know it's difficult! But that doesn't mean I don't facepalm every time I read about another person who got arrested because they went out at three in the morning to get cigarettes (which they could not get because all shops shut at eight when curfew starts) or because they were driving around playing Pokemon Go or because they went 140km to go surfing. Or the people who are driving across the city because they are bored with walking around their own suburb.
I know you're bored! WE'RE ALL BORED! It sucks! But please, Melbourne, stay in your house unless you need supplies, or you're on a one-hour walk/run/bike ride, or you're an essential worker, or you need to seek or provide medical care. Then maybe we'll all survive.