15, 9, 8, 12, 9, 15, 6, 11, 11, 14, 12, 15. A series of dumb, stupid numbers that, at least over the last three days, has just about cracked what little spirit remains in people living in Melbourne.
The lockdowns are good, and also demoralising.
Staying at home is the right thing to do, and it sucks fucken shit.
The State Government response has been largely successful, and also a failure.
All these things exist in unison, and all are objectively true simultaneously.
To live in Melbourne right now is to exist in hopeless limbo; torn between a series of objectively true fact and concepts that are fundamentally at odds with one another. And after seven long, long months, it’s finally pushing people past their breaking points.
It’s hard to describe just how much hope was hung on October 19th; the day that the Government previously asserted Melbourne’s 14-day rolling average of new COVID-19 cases would be under five, according to various modelling; the day where we might have been able to move to the next step of eased restrictions at long, long last.
Since October 1st, the daily case number has hit six once. Every other day has been eight or higher. Saturday, Sunday, and today have seen numbers of 14, 12, and 15.
The stubborn tail of the second wave wags. Now not only is October 19th out of the question, the originally earmarked date of October 26 seems fairly unlikely as well. And while some restrictions are likely to ease from this Sunday on, the vague uncertainty of everything is utterly exhausting. Will we be able to see friends? Will we be able to travel outside of the 5km bubble to do so? Will certain business be allowed to open? Will some of us be allowed back to work? Will we be able to do basic things like get a haircut? Or idly browse the aisles at a Bunnings or K-Mart? No one seems to know.
People are cracking. It’s making terrible people of us all. We’ve been so good and so patient and it’s now the middle of October and we’re all still enduring this.
If you’re sad about missing friends, to some you’re anti-lockdown.
If you’re concerned that Government contact tracing efforts aren’t up to scratch, to some you must be anti-Dan.
If what you’ve lost this year is giving you anxiety, to some you simply must toughen up as others have had it worse.
So many statements concerning these lockdowns are objectively true, but they’re so inextricably at odds with one another that picking sides does no one any favours. But people are, because they have to blame something.
The lockdowns have been necessary to curtail and squash a potentially catastrophic second wave, but they’ve also placed untold physical, mental, and economic pressure on millions of ordinary Victorians. Both true.
The State Government has done an admirable job handling a crisis no Government in Australia has had to endure on this kind of scale, but their contact tracing systems are severely lacking and the failures of the hotel quarantine scheme ultimately rest with them. Both true.
The roadmap out of restrictions the Government outlaid is necessarily elongated because a third wave would be cataclysmic, but its case level targets may be impossible to achieve. Both true.
Dan Andrews fronting daily press conferences has been effective at curtailing anxiety and unrest by providing the public with direct information, but 100 consecutive days of them is nothing to celebrate and there’s a rather insidious lack of transparency when it comes to addressing missteps and failures. Both true.
The journalists attending press conferences should not be subject to personal attack because of questions they ask, but live TV means Melburnians are given a raw, open front-row seat to media processes that realistically should never be for public consumption, and questioning from some outlets has quite obviously become increasingly quixotic and combative. Again, both true.
There’s no one simple solution to any of this. And so every small step in the opposite direction is a boot in the ribs of Melburnians.
Every new day of 10+ cases. Every Andrews press conference with more data and no resolution. Every time someone tries to tell you that it could be worse. Every social media photo of interstate mates out at a pub or whatever.
It sucks.
It all just sucks, so much.
