This week I am compelled to talk about how we, as humans, have responded to the pandemic. This has been triggered by a Buzzfeed article that is currently trending entitled "What Life Is Like In Countries Without COVID". Clickbait title aside, it focuses on how people and governments in Australia, New Zealand, Taiwan, and Thailand have effectively “flattened the curve” and are currently not dealing with mass daily deaths.
The article is full of anecdotes from interviewees in those countries, all skewing towards a “What pandemic?” smugness designed to appeal to fed up Americans and other readers in countries struggling with the virus. People are sharing the article with their attached comments of “This could have been us!” and “I hate my country!”, or the self-appointed experts commenting “Population size! Island nations! It’s incomparable!”, or just “Fake news!”
It links to another recent article in the Washington Post and, I think, rightly course-corrects some of that article’s overpraising of Australia’s relationship with its government (that compulsory voting means Australians see their governments “as the solution to society's problems rather than the cause” — yeah, ok). Unfortunately, the Buzzfeed article chooses to conclude their rebuttal with another simple — and somewhat saccharine — quote from a senior lecturer in psychology at UQ:
“I would say Australians are pretty skeptical of government. Politicians are not considered amazing people. Everyone rolls their eyes talking about them,” she said. “It’s not that we were making the sacrifices for Australia; we’re doing it for each other. We weren’t doing it because we thought it would please the government. We were doing it because it would please each other.”
It’s a nice thought, but it overlooks the people who didn’t take mask-wearing and hand-washing seriously, those who went out protesting lockdowns, and those who are still anti-vaccine and still sharing global hoax Facebook posts. We’re also a populous that generally takes well to over-policing, despite criticisms of a nanny state. We weren’t all looking out for each other, but there were social structures in place before the pandemic hit that made it easier for Australians to go on about our individualist lives without tearing the country down, too. These include universal healthcare, and a welfare system, while not great, that certainly kept many from more dire situations.
Australia also had state premiers who were ready to listen to epidemiologists and enact strict lockdowns on the capital cities where community transmissions rose. State borders closed. At a national level, we are basically stuck in the country until there’s a vaccine, or our national total of cases reaches zero and we create travel bubbles with New Zealand, Taiwan and other Pacific Islands. While these democratic countries have controlled the virus, we have done so with measures as draconian as authoritarian states, like Vietnam, which has also squashed its minor second wave.
Australia was lucky to have its state leaders enacting without kowtowing to overt party ideology, like our cowardly Prime Minister (yeah, I got political, suck on it, Scott). A big part of the Trump/Johnson/Bolsonaro/Modi/etc failure at COVID control has been playing at politics while real social policy that protects and saves people’s lives needed to be enacted, regardless of how “socialist” they’d seem to the party and its supporters.
Anyway, all the news and discourse around the pandemic has really hammered home the distinction between reality and politics and how the media reports on both. It’s depressing to see how governments and capitalists have ignored scientific suggestion to achieve their own ends. It’s also frustrating to read journalism that relies on clickbait positions that only fuel political partisanship.
To be honest, I don’t know where I was going with this, but I have a bit of writer’s block this week. I’ll stop now.
Links of interest:
A Remote Area of the Amazon Boasts Tens of Thousands of Ice-Age Paintings
Lil’ Dumpster Fire trundles through 2020
The 4th Industrial Revolution
The first Transgender Man will compete on RuPaul’s Drag Race Season 13! So excited for Gottmik:
Have a good week! Hope to be less brainfarty next time!
I liked this one Sam. You needn’t have felt uncertain about where you were going with it. We do forget about all the political nuances that went on in Australia between political opportunism, people, place and our embedded if bastardised social safety net system. Well done to have connected these elements with characteristic originality. Do not waiver!