Many people are truly suffering because they’re doing the right thing. For me, lockdown hasn’t changed much as I mostly sit on the couch reading books – which is what I did before the restrictions were put in place, and it’s what I’ll be doing after they’re relaxed – so not seeing people isn’t much of a hardship. But for many it is very difficult. I can understand that people need company to make them feel whole, to take their thoughts away from unpleasant resorts, or to distance them from other urgent things like paying bills that pile up even as income is cut off.
No wonder the daily eleven o’clock press conferences the state premiers hold are so welcome for people sitting at home with little to do. One friend put up an image of the TV tuned to the news and commented as though it were, for him, an occasion to break out the popcorn. It’s the signal event that marks the weekly rhythm, the bass note that gives the day its form, the place people go to in order to feel, for a few minutes, that they’re in control of their lives, and not some bizarre new illness come out of Wuhan like a new horseman of the Apocalypse.
“Poor Johnny lacklustre lock down,” commented one friend, “no play dates, just the existential crisis of corona virus and media saturation, here is hoping this chapter of our lives can end soon.” This shows that some people have come to resent the eleven o’clock presser. The federal government has been the main loser from the notoriety of the presser, its approval rating sliding alarmingly even as people stock up on intellectual comfort food while seated on the couch. My friend John will no doubt be applauding the opinion poll result, but I can’t help but feel sorry for the government, its stars hung so high until recently, and nothing that the Opposition did seemed able to lay a finger on it. Now, it lies like a Coke can crumpled in the gutter, ready for binning. For all of its sinning.
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