Responding to Covid; or, Tetris in real life

Yesterday saw me finally lending a hand with Red Cross.  After being unable to help out with the response to the bushfires this year, I finally had a role to play in responding to Covid-19.

On Friday a call went out for Red Cross Emergency Services to do food deliveries to people in strict isolation.  It was a kind of "come as you are" operation: there were a few utes and delivery vans, but most people were in hatchbacks and sedans.  We were to pick up the deliveries at the Yarraville Foodbank and then head off, with delivery addresses to be sent after departure by SMS.  It was kind of a chaotic way of doing it, although in a way that was to be expected: the management team would have had no idea precisely what carrying capacity they were going to have at their disposal.

Each household was to receive three 12kg boxes of food and a 7kg box of non-food supplies (soap, that sort of thing).  Each set of boxes was a "pack".  With a certain amount of playing-Tetris-in-real-life I managed to get four packs into my little Pulsar.

This came to 172kgs (in addition to which I also had my SES kitbag and some packs of papers).  I reasoned that the weight was still less than having four fully grown adults in the car and therefore it'd still be OK.  I might say that the degree the car sank down on its suspension (without even having my 85kgs on board) still didn't fill me with confidence!

I was told my destinations would be in the area of Warragul and Traralgon so I headed off down the Princes Highway in the general direction of Warragul.  Driving was interesting:  I was conscious of the extra weight and the long climb up the Westgate Bridge saw me flicking back through the gearbox.  The rain came and went all day and so I kept the speed down, what with driving a heavily loaded vehicle on wet roads.  I got as far as Officer when I was told to divert to Hastings, to make deliveries there and then at Tootgarook.  With a bit of grumbling over the geography of it all I stopped to get fuel and also food (thank you KFC!).

I got to Hastings about 2:30 and made the first drop off.  Direct interaction with the clients was (obviously) forbidden: the front door stayed closed while we dropped off the boxes and then called to say they could collect them.  By this point my phone had gone flat and so I found the St Vincents op shop and borrowed a power point for half an hour to put some juice back in it.

I made my second delivery in Hastings and then headed for Tootgarook, on the other side of the Mornington Peninsula.  This took me past the home I lived in as a child so of course I swung by to have a look at it.  The house is still there, repainted but the same.  It was a strange feeling, but it felt kind of good to know another family were there now.  It was a good house, and a good life.  Naturally I forgot to take a photo!

I made the dropoff at Tootgarook about 4:15.  I'd hoped to get a coffee and sit and look at Port Phillip Bay for a bit, but by then it was raining again in earnest and I said the Hell with it and drove home.  By the time I got there it was bitterly cold and certainly not running weather and so instead I went on a good long walk.  Most of the many restaurants in the area are now operating purely as takeaways and I decided I'd earned a pizza.  Da Peppe in Brunswick obliged (there's no photo: I was too hungry for it to last long!)

So there you have it: Saturday had everything.  It had a bit of community service.  It had miles.  It had pizza.  That's enough for any day.

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.

Living in Interesting Times

As the writers of Zombieland said, it's amazing how quickly things can go from "bad" to "total shitstorm".  This weekend has ended with us all heading off into the unknown.

Saturday saw me give groceries a miss in the morning: there seemed no point going to a live-action version of Dead Rising.  Instead I went out for a good long run which turned into a half-marathon distance outing.  I've blogged about it here (it's actually a decent post!).  I went up to get groceries and do laundry about 4pm.  I was expecting to find a Venezuela-style wasteland with empty shelves.  There certainly were some empty aisles, but it was very uneven.  There was as much fresh produce and tinned fish as ever.  Nearly as much bread as usual.  Minimal toiletries.  The Indian food section was basically untouched.

Some types of chocolate from the same maker were all gone and the others seemingly all still there.  The same could be said of the Mexican food section.  One had the impression of people panic-buying highly specific items.  This leads me to think that the public aren't worried about actual scarcity, but about the inconvenience of not having their specific preferred product when they want it.

After I'd done laundry I came back and was ironing my shirts when the pager went off for a missing person search.  We ended up with nearly forty members from Northcote, Essendon, Broadmeadows, Port Phillip, Malvern and Footscray Units taking part.  I'm happy to report that the subject was found safe and well (just lost).  I found myself part of the three person management team on this one which was very interesting.

I slept late today and had a wonderful, very chatty facetime with the girls (mainly Rachel) and took them on a tour of my neighbourhood.  They're a little bored being in lockdown and so I'll try and come up with more fun things like that to do with them. Rachel asked what cartoons there were when I was their age; she followed up by observing that "they were all black and white back then weren't they?"  How old do you think I am Rach?!?

I wanted some exercise so I went out for a walk along the Merri Creek trail.  I emerged somewhere in Fitzroy and happened to spot the Pinnacle Hotel.  As I was having a drink I saw the news that Victoria will go into shutdown from Tuesday as an anti-Covid measure.  I duly ordered another beer and some chips on the grounds that this might be my last chance to do so for a while.

And now, I'm really not sure what happens next.  At work tomorrow I'll scan my time limits for the next few weeks and see what needs to be dealt with extremely urgently.  Nobody seems to know what quite will happen or how long the shutdown will last.  I can't go up to the farm, so I guess I'll be confined to barracks.  Happily, I've done the laundry and have enough food for a bit over a week.  As best I can tell this has never happened before in Victoria's history, even in wartime.

Despite the inconvenience, and the risk of being unemployed for some extended period, it's a fascinating time to be alive.

Covid, Parents and Guilt

It's Friday evening, and I'm sitting here at my digs in a bundle of guilt.

Regular readers will know how on any given weekend I'm likely to be found working on the parents' farm.  That, indeed, was my plan for this weekend, until over the last ten days Covid-19 sent the world into a state of acutely nuts.

In what world should this be necessary? 

Well, I spoke to Dad by phone earlier today and said that I really wasn't keen to come up: both he and Mum are pushing 80, and neither is in the strongest of health.  As I ran the numbers, if they pick up Covid, their chances of dying are somewhere between 20-30%.  I feel fine, but the way I live means there's a decent chance I'll carry it up with me: I work in the CBD.  I use the tram once or twice a day.  I live in a house with ten other people.  Since this thing can be transmitted in the absence of symptoms, I'm a pretty bad risk.

None of which altered the disappointment in Dad's voice, or the guilt I'm feeling over letting him down.  I help people.  It's what I do.  If I don't do it, then there's really not a great deal of value in me.  And now, the best thing I can do for my folks is not to do the thing that principally does help them.  This, flatly, sucks.

What sort of illness seems purpose-built to corrode the bonds that should exist between people?