Ghost town dispatch

Well, the shutdown is starting to kick in noticeably.  I overslept this morning and wasn't on the tram to work until about 0900.  This is what it looked like -

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This is the tram I’m on. Bourke Street mall has <20 people in it #covid_19 #covid19australia

A post shared by Stephen Tuck (@sdtuc2) on Mar 23, 2020 at 3:11pm PDT

It hadn't changed much three hours later.  How do I know?  Well, like everyone else in the office the whole sense of impending trouble was wearing me down a bit.  By midday I decided that what I needed most was some hot food and some air.  I went up to Seven-11 and bought a sausage roll and some sandwiches.  This is what Queen Street looked like -

Queen Street, Melbourne, 24 March 2020

The city, in short, is a bit of a ghost town.

More restrictions have been announced this evening, although so far nothing that's likely to put me off work ... yet.  My own perception though is that we may run into problems before the epidemic runs its course.  Based purely on myself and my co-workers, I fear an awful sense of demoralization will creep in, with the endless news cycle of bad news and the cancellation of the sporting fixtures that do so much to give people something else to care about for a few hours each week.

I don't know if this is a good thing or a bad thing to ponder, but I suspect that the Covid virus itself may be the least of our worries compared with the economic dislocation and the sapping of human confidence.