Nasty stuff first: In Australia, 3,964 cases and now 16 deaths. The world tally is 663,828 cases and 30,822 deaths (how can that report appear so accurate?) At home in NSW, 174 more cases has pushed the state total to 1,971. The Ruby Princess fiasco alone has resulted in 215 cases so far. A total of 209,000 tests have been conducted with thankfully 98% negative. There is cautious optimism about the decline in the rate of daily reported new cases.
Here, as in other countries, we are learning the price of denial. What a difference a day or a week makes. Flippant, dismissive comments of several weeks ago now haunt those who made them, with vested interests to protect, as the media revisits them. Indeed, many politicians could more easily comply with the directive “don’t touch your face”, if they didn’t have to first scrape the egg off those faces.
Today we have announced a further package of $1.1 billion to address medicare, mental health and family violence. This is very welcome, with needs in these areas escalating along with the spread of the virus. Some of our fellow humans are behaving badly, not understanding that the exercise of their liberty is tyranny, and sometimes death, for others.
But let us all cut our politicians some slack, some distance if you will, while they go about learning a new language and how to project it on a bewildered public. They are so used to dissembling and avoiding answering questions asked that they find sincerity and empathy hard to do. Instead of answering the question they wish they were asked, our leaders are constrained to provide a direct answer to a direct question. Nothing less than a totally new set of vocational communication skills is required.
Awesomely Astute 