restless and unsettled
Got to cuddle nephlet, he made himself quite comfy in my arms, accepted being passed around to B1...and then turned into a big waily crybaby when it came time to feed him.
So tiny! So adorable!
--
I am feeling, as the subject says, restless and unsettled.
The omicron variant has taken away much of my usual summer activities along with the people I would be doing them with. Work is not presenting any particular interest right now. Church is remote (two of the ministers have omicron - along with 19 out of 50+ young adults: an unfortunate Christmas Eve service that turned out to be a superspreader event) and my bible study group is also hunkering down in the aftermath of the superspreader event (at least one family affected).
There's an irony in that the NSW premier (equiv of a US state governor) wanted to 'let it rip' through the population back when he was merely the treasurer, keeping everything open so the economy could keep going.
Well, he got his wish; he was elevated from Treasurer to Premier and the decisions were his. All restrictions for vaxxed and unvaxxed off in the middle of December with 95% of over-16s fully vaccinated and our case numbers ~600.
Ten days later, just before Christmas, case numbers were 10 times what they were when we opened up.
A week after that, just at NYE, the case numbers were at 3 times what it was at Christmas.
A week after that, it's doubled from the week before.
Today, we're at 45,000 cases a day. And that's only from people who can get PCRs, not counting those who've taken RATs and become positive and have decided they don't want to spend four hours in a queue.
Of course, in the coming weeks, the government will stop announcing cases in their daily pressers "so that people can focus attention where it needs to be: on the hospital admissions and ICU". That would be the 6,000 COVID-related hospital admissions that we have in addition to the regular run of Full Moon-Christmas-New Year-Midsummer medical madness, eh?
Oh, but we only have 150 people in ICU with COVID...
Well, we could have had only 6. That's what it was back a month ago, when there were restrictions, masking, number limits, advisories against mingling, etc...
I mean, it's just health workers looking after them - not really important people like, IDK, business and commercial property agents and lawyers and stuff. You know, people who hobnob elbow-to-shoulder with the likes of politicians who attended private high schools...
And, in delightful irony (although greivous for those small-businesses actually needing the cashflow), the economy ain't doing all that well, either.
Hospitality took a hit in the lead-up to Christmas and the Christmas-New Year break. What should have been one of the busiest times of the year saw people cancelling and staying home. New Year's Eve at the harbour was practically empty - my sisters got a hotel room with a harbour view for less than a quarter of the price it would usually have gone for with the usual crowds.
And a lot of small businesses are closing their doors. Their staff have contracted COVID, and while the government is saying "you don't have to isolate unless you actually feel unwell" a lot of people have people in their lives who aren't able to get a vaccination (kids under 12), or people in their lives who are vaccinated but still medically fragile. None of us want to be the vector for disease and possibly disability or death for someone we love who is fragile. So we play it cautious, we retreat into ourselves and out of company, we don't spend money the way we usually would at this time of year.
Or maybe the Australian conservatives just thought we were like America? Like the libertarians who hold that the greatest good is individual freedom and "I have mine so the rest of you can get fucked"?
Which...no. We're not. Our (so-called) 'greatest conservative leader' John Howard extolled the Australian principle of "mateship". No, not romantic/sexual mateship, but "he ain't heavy, he's my brother" kind of mateship. Howard sucked in a lot of things but he also managed a few moments. One was gun control in Australia. The other was that, yes, 'mateship' is a thing in Australia - although, not so much the blokey attitude that he imagined, but the care and responsibility for others. A social contract that Australians are slowly letting go of...but not quite yet.
So the vast majority of Australians are getting their COVID tests and staying home, even after they've tested negative. After all, the attitude is that it's everywhere now; we don't know who's carrying it, and we want to be responsible citizens of our communities.
Yes, sometimes there'll be situations which end up as superspreaders. But here's the thing.
About that church Christmas Eve service that was a superspreader event? By Christmas Day, the word had gone around that someone at the Christmas Eve service had tested positive on a RAT, and some fifty-something young church-going, bible-believing Christians spent their Christmas Day in iso from their families and their family celebrations. Including the young pastor who led the service that night.
Responsibility. To not only 'our people' but also the community at large.
The young adults who turned up COVID-positive? They're all double-vaxxed, so they're doing okay - not fantastic, obviously, but okay. Their families had the knowledge, foresight, time, and energy to hunt up vaccination appointments for these young people when vaccination was opened up for the adolescent cohort. If they suffer long-term ill effects, their families - and the church community - will have the will and money and energy to help them deal with it.
That'll be our responsibility. And while our community won't need the government that doesn't care if its citizens rise or fall financially (unless they take the government down with it, in which case it's an election priority), other communities, other families, other individuals will. And they're important, too.
But those young people? They might be unhappy that their Christmas was spoiled by COVID, but they chose not to put their 'one time of the year' ahead of the needs of the community.
There is no doubt that some Aussies are selfish arseholes, spewing shit and refusing to take any care or caution. Including an awful lot of our elected officials. Our Prime Minister hasn't been seen or heard saying anything of note about the pandemic since last year. Lots of pressing-the-flesh at the test match cricket, sure. But actual responsibility? Nope. He's been yabbering on abut "personal responsibility" and how the government can't take care of everything. That 'can't take care of everything' really means 'can't take care of anything', including foreseeing the need for more Rapid-Tests when omicron began making inroads, not to mention financial aid, increasing the payrate for health care workers instead of freezing it, or recognising that when people feel threatened they stay home and hoard their energies and resources.
So I find it hilariously ironic from a political perspective that the economy is really struggling right now, when all the politicians wanted was for 'business as usual' without thinking about what it meant that the economy was being held up by thinking, rationalising people with their human emotions and concepts of 'Australian mateship'.
But from the point of view of the small business owner who is legally permitted and able to run their shop/hospitality site but who has had staff turn up COVID-positive and now doesn't have the resources to run their business? It kind of sucks. Not least of which is, because they've chosen to close (because they don't have the employees), then it's not "government mandate" so they're not able to collect any compensation from the government.
Essentially, the government that's "good for business" and "knows how to run the economy" has basically screwed over small business and doesn't recognise the first thing about Econ 101: a fearful and wary population don't spend money.
So tiny! So adorable!
--
I am feeling, as the subject says, restless and unsettled.
The omicron variant has taken away much of my usual summer activities along with the people I would be doing them with. Work is not presenting any particular interest right now. Church is remote (two of the ministers have omicron - along with 19 out of 50+ young adults: an unfortunate Christmas Eve service that turned out to be a superspreader event) and my bible study group is also hunkering down in the aftermath of the superspreader event (at least one family affected).
There's an irony in that the NSW premier (equiv of a US state governor) wanted to 'let it rip' through the population back when he was merely the treasurer, keeping everything open so the economy could keep going.
Well, he got his wish; he was elevated from Treasurer to Premier and the decisions were his. All restrictions for vaxxed and unvaxxed off in the middle of December with 95% of over-16s fully vaccinated and our case numbers ~600.
Ten days later, just before Christmas, case numbers were 10 times what they were when we opened up.
A week after that, just at NYE, the case numbers were at 3 times what it was at Christmas.
A week after that, it's doubled from the week before.
Today, we're at 45,000 cases a day. And that's only from people who can get PCRs, not counting those who've taken RATs and become positive and have decided they don't want to spend four hours in a queue.
Of course, in the coming weeks, the government will stop announcing cases in their daily pressers "so that people can focus attention where it needs to be: on the hospital admissions and ICU". That would be the 6,000 COVID-related hospital admissions that we have in addition to the regular run of Full Moon-Christmas-New Year-Midsummer medical madness, eh?
Oh, but we only have 150 people in ICU with COVID...
Well, we could have had only 6. That's what it was back a month ago, when there were restrictions, masking, number limits, advisories against mingling, etc...
I mean, it's just health workers looking after them - not really important people like, IDK, business and commercial property agents and lawyers and stuff. You know, people who hobnob elbow-to-shoulder with the likes of politicians who attended private high schools...
And, in delightful irony (although greivous for those small-businesses actually needing the cashflow), the economy ain't doing all that well, either.
Hospitality took a hit in the lead-up to Christmas and the Christmas-New Year break. What should have been one of the busiest times of the year saw people cancelling and staying home. New Year's Eve at the harbour was practically empty - my sisters got a hotel room with a harbour view for less than a quarter of the price it would usually have gone for with the usual crowds.
And a lot of small businesses are closing their doors. Their staff have contracted COVID, and while the government is saying "you don't have to isolate unless you actually feel unwell" a lot of people have people in their lives who aren't able to get a vaccination (kids under 12), or people in their lives who are vaccinated but still medically fragile. None of us want to be the vector for disease and possibly disability or death for someone we love who is fragile. So we play it cautious, we retreat into ourselves and out of company, we don't spend money the way we usually would at this time of year.
Or maybe the Australian conservatives just thought we were like America? Like the libertarians who hold that the greatest good is individual freedom and "I have mine so the rest of you can get fucked"?
Which...no. We're not. Our (so-called) 'greatest conservative leader' John Howard extolled the Australian principle of "mateship". No, not romantic/sexual mateship, but "he ain't heavy, he's my brother" kind of mateship. Howard sucked in a lot of things but he also managed a few moments. One was gun control in Australia. The other was that, yes, 'mateship' is a thing in Australia - although, not so much the blokey attitude that he imagined, but the care and responsibility for others. A social contract that Australians are slowly letting go of...but not quite yet.
So the vast majority of Australians are getting their COVID tests and staying home, even after they've tested negative. After all, the attitude is that it's everywhere now; we don't know who's carrying it, and we want to be responsible citizens of our communities.
Yes, sometimes there'll be situations which end up as superspreaders. But here's the thing.
About that church Christmas Eve service that was a superspreader event? By Christmas Day, the word had gone around that someone at the Christmas Eve service had tested positive on a RAT, and some fifty-something young church-going, bible-believing Christians spent their Christmas Day in iso from their families and their family celebrations. Including the young pastor who led the service that night.
Responsibility. To not only 'our people' but also the community at large.
The young adults who turned up COVID-positive? They're all double-vaxxed, so they're doing okay - not fantastic, obviously, but okay. Their families had the knowledge, foresight, time, and energy to hunt up vaccination appointments for these young people when vaccination was opened up for the adolescent cohort. If they suffer long-term ill effects, their families - and the church community - will have the will and money and energy to help them deal with it.
That'll be our responsibility. And while our community won't need the government that doesn't care if its citizens rise or fall financially (unless they take the government down with it, in which case it's an election priority), other communities, other families, other individuals will. And they're important, too.
But those young people? They might be unhappy that their Christmas was spoiled by COVID, but they chose not to put their 'one time of the year' ahead of the needs of the community.
There is no doubt that some Aussies are selfish arseholes, spewing shit and refusing to take any care or caution. Including an awful lot of our elected officials. Our Prime Minister hasn't been seen or heard saying anything of note about the pandemic since last year. Lots of pressing-the-flesh at the test match cricket, sure. But actual responsibility? Nope. He's been yabbering on abut "personal responsibility" and how the government can't take care of everything. That 'can't take care of everything' really means 'can't take care of anything', including foreseeing the need for more Rapid-Tests when omicron began making inroads, not to mention financial aid, increasing the payrate for health care workers instead of freezing it, or recognising that when people feel threatened they stay home and hoard their energies and resources.
So I find it hilariously ironic from a political perspective that the economy is really struggling right now, when all the politicians wanted was for 'business as usual' without thinking about what it meant that the economy was being held up by thinking, rationalising people with their human emotions and concepts of 'Australian mateship'.
But from the point of view of the small business owner who is legally permitted and able to run their shop/hospitality site but who has had staff turn up COVID-positive and now doesn't have the resources to run their business? It kind of sucks. Not least of which is, because they've chosen to close (because they don't have the employees), then it's not "government mandate" so they're not able to collect any compensation from the government.
Essentially, the government that's "good for business" and "knows how to run the economy" has basically screwed over small business and doesn't recognise the first thing about Econ 101: a fearful and wary population don't spend money.