A sustained decline in new cases since mid-March suggests Australia has passed the peak of the pandemic. However, we must remain vigilant against new community clusters. It will be four more weeks before an easing of restrictions is seriously considered (mid-May). More testing (411,000 so far) and tracing will be conducted during this time. The new mantra for the road out strategy is control and suppress.
There are world-wide recriminations over the handling of the virus crisis. Many see the crisis as an opportunity for reform and a recalibration between growth and fairness. The rugged individuals in the USA are characterizing returning to business as usual as liberation, with support from their President. Some nations are already experiencing a double dip, or second wave, of contagion after relaxing their grip on control. Many health systems have been practicing just in time logistics and off-shoring to the detriment of their preparedness. It seems totalitarian regimes simply lie, as China has done, while democracies equivocate and dissemble. Both could use more transparency and integrity.
Some great brains are working on vaccines, others on economic recovery. We need big thinkers at the moment but we also need little thinkers, the electorate, able to distinguish truth from falsehood. We could even borrow some brains from America as they are clearly not using them at present. There will be a legacy of scar tissue. Who will blink first in the stand-off between get backs and the virus; I’m backing the virus.
Speculation of a virus-induced geopolitical tilt suggests France and Macron could be at the global centre of gravity. 42 year-old Macron sees the crisis as an existential event for humanity that will change the nature of globalization and the structure of international capitalism. It may also provide an opening to tackle environmental disasters and social inequalities.
Creatives are doing their best to cheer us up with massed remote video recordings and pieces of whimsy and humour. Mainstream visual media, however, needs to stop incessantly repeating four week old footage of that tall, jeans and mask-clad woman emerging from a pop-up COVID-19 clinic.
Australia added 41 more cases today (total 6,606) and deaths stand at 71. Of these NSW has 21 more cases for 2,957 and 30 deaths. Globally we have over 2.331 million and just under 161,000 deaths.
Awesomely Astute 