Fever pitch? Not quite, thanks to SlowMo

NO-ONE HERE FOR THE BEER: Tavener’s deserted local pub on a Saturday lunchtime

From ROGER TAVENER in Sydney

She'll Be Right, Maybe...

Australians across the 'Lucky Country' wept openly into their amber nectar.

"XXXX it. We're all XXXXed," they wailed. Very loudly.

They had to shout because Prime Minister Scott Morrison decreed yesterday we must all sit in a social-distancing zone of two square metres from each other in pubs.

So only 25 of us can sit in a 100m sq room. The few boozers trying to stay open have put markers on the floor.

Aussies can just about accept that absurdity along with other baffling and bonkers measures.

But with all the brutality of a bite from a Great White, ScoMo (as he's known here) shut Bondi Beach.

Yes he XXXXing shut Bondi, the world's greatest beach.

The reasoning? 

Yesterday it was over 100deg and hundreds of those young, fit people, who we all know are totally immune from Covid-19, actually decided to take a break from self-abusing, er, I mean self-intoxicating, to have some cooling fun on the golden sands.

And the irresponsible XXXXers, who know only old people over 45 will be viralled to a breathless death, didn't obey the two-square-metre law.

I know a few of these nice kids and they asked me what I thought of ScoMo's overall response to the tsunami of terror rolling in courtesy of Australia's masters, I mean biggest trading partners, the Chinese government.

Well, I explained, I tagged him SloMo (nicked by several media outlets) after his more than sluggish reaction to months of devastating bushfires. He hasn't learnt.

He continues to ignore hundreds of specialist doctors who wanted a severe early lockdown. Instead, protective policy has drifted for pointless months with  complicated, half-hearted, unpoliceable, picky little changes day by day.

It's all hot air and tut-tutting over panic- buying. He started it...

He's destroyed the mental health of the country by saying we have to live (or many thousands, die) like this for more than six months. Maybe a year.

That may be impossible for the common man.

As with his stubbornness over schools shutting and reluctance to visit country towns either burning or in drought or flood. The man's not for turning.

His thought processes may be coloured by his deep religious beliefs. God works in mysterious ways, he accepts.

God eventually made it rain. God is angry. God is punishing us. He's listened to enough sermons at Hillsong. Happy clappers have a very different mindset to most of us.

22tavenerpic2.jpg

His cabinet wants schools shut. But he, personally, won't allow it. And children are super-spreaders. In Italy kids killed their grandparents before they understood what was going on.

It's too late to do much about it now. Washing hands and social distancing (nonsense) may delay it for us vulnerable ones, but, eventually, this nasty little bug will attach itself to us.

He's been slow in getting more ventilators and new ICUs. Complacent about hoarding, and the daily supermarket sweep by a panicking populus.

He just wags his finger saying it's "UnAustralian". Well, that true-blue Australia doesn't exist in the big cites.

Millions of immigrants don't know who he is and don't watch Aussie tv, listen to the radio or read the papers.

"She'll be right " Yeah.

God will sort it all out.

Businesses don't know whether they are coming or going. Very complex formulae for hand-outs etc. 

Shockingly, like the UK, the PMs seem to have accepted being on a worse trajectory than the Italian experience.

What a model that is.

At least the UK has mobilised the army, requested retired medics and nurses to join the front-line, commandered redundant cruise liners which are being turned into floating hospitals. And built a giant tented morgue in central London and belatedly locked down naughty city dwellers.

Our leaders know what's coming. They accept the hospitals will be overwhelmed.

What they rejected was what China syndrome. Lock everything down fast until the virus ran out of hosts and the chain was broken. Simples.

Rejected because they dissed the Chinese as being compliant whereas Westerners wouldn't do it. They'd be civilly disobedient.

Nonsense. A month of early, precipitousness instant shut-down would have really attacked the spread, say many specialists.

But the diseased genie's out of the bottle and SloMo's attempts to 'flatten the curve' have already failed.

The Grim Reaper graph is spiking ahead of Italy's steady course towards a wipe-out of thousands in the north. 

That is the catastrophic course he appears to have set us on.

God knows when this hell will be over.

SloMo can only hope his prayers will be answered.

Of course many of us will be dead and won't be able to say: "Told you so."

And the survivors will just thank God they didn't get it. They'll even be drinking XXXXing Corona before you know it.


© 2005-2022 Alastair McIntyre