Boomers, please don’t lock me down.
Dear Boomers, is our complacency one of the reasons many of us are embracing notions of greater social control by our benevolent democratic leadership, competent or otherwise? With one new case of COVID-19 community transmission reported in Queensland on the weekend and another in NSW the following day on Monday, 15 March, please for the love of god, may we be spared calls for border closures and lockdowns.
In the throbbing heart of NSW we had the liquor lockdowns from 2011 - 2021 with the history books showing no mass revolt against this foolishness by Boomers. It was primarily the millennials and their ilk that led the revolt. Although of course some Boomers did their duty, and then some - looking at you Dame Julie Bates!
Now lockdowns are seen as a welcomed fortress against the latest public enemy # 1 - Covid-19!
Don’t get me wrong! Lockdowns have their place but as WHO advises, not as an ongoing response. Lockdowns were proposed as an emergency measure to ‘flatten the curve’ with the aim of buying time to allow for health systems to be strengthened to deal with the carnage that the pandemic would bring, including to strengthen testing and contact tracing.
Back in the day when HIV/AIDS was the major culprit lurking in our midst, I recall greater resistance to harsher measures that were called for by the well intended as well as by the malevolent who meant us harm. Calls to restrict rights and movements such as those banning backrooms and saunas and other venues were swiftly and efficiently batted away by our then glorious community leadership. Maybe it is a bit of a long bow to draw, but I wonder about the role of complacency and comfortability in our response to lockdowns and their associated restrictions on movement.
Then again, maybe this is not complacency at all, but more about survival because the greater our age the greater our chances of getting serious ill and possibly dying from the virus. Not an unreasonable reason I suppose. But there is a down-side of course, just survey any group of people in their 20s, 30s, or 40s! Unnecessary lockdowns have shattered dreams, destroyed livelihoods and futures. And this is just in Australia. The UN reports that millions of people have been forced back in poverty because of unnecessary lockdowns and their impact on the world economy and trade.
Despite a chaotic and slow rollout of the vaccination programme here in Australia, vaccinations will most likely be our bridge to a post COVID-19 world - shoot me up baby, I can’t wait!
In the meantime, lets resist calls for future lockdowns, particularly if community transmissions are very low. Instead, lets ramp up our calls for governments to make increased investments in the health systems’ capacity to do its job and then lets trust in the system to do so - unless of course you are in the the Sate of Victoria, but that is a story for another time.
