Credit: iStock.com/Nuthawut Somsuk
When the pandemic hit, I was firmly on the side of ‘do whatever we need to’. Total lockdown, suppress, flatten, eliminate, eradicate. Back then, it was new, and, I’ll admit, perhaps even a little exciting.
Several public figures, mostly from the right wing commentariat, bemoaned the lockdowns, saying they would destroy the economy and lives. I, like many others, went at them, accusing them of heartlessly putting the economy ahead of people’s lives.
Leaving aside the fact that New Zealand’s harsher lockdowns appeared to do a far better job of stopping the spread of the virus – meaning their economy and citizens restarted their lives far sooner – boy, have I changed my tune.
It’s pretty tough being a Victorian right now. This is evident in our response to the daily numbers – we’re expressing relief and hope when they’re less than 300! Compare that to the rest of Australia, where people are going to the footy, to pubs, to live comedy, house parties, seeing their family.
We’re all hoping the stage four lockdowns will succeed, and, from mid-September onwards we can start getting our lives back on track.
The problem with our current strategy is that there are lot of people who may never get their lives back on track. There are some who have already extinguished theirs, and while it is pure speculation on my part to suggest that Victoria’s lockdowns are leading to suicides, it’s really an unspoken, uncomfortable truth. For a more academic take on the matter, the Medical Journal of Australia has a fantastic paper out talking about the high risk of increased suicides, and what investments need to be made to address it.
I want to make it clear that I am not suggesting that we just open everything back up and ‘learn to live’ with the virus, nor go down the dubious path of herd immunity. I’m not in government policy, I’m not an epidemiologist, I don’t have the faintest fucking clue of how to fight a global pandemic, and you couldn’t may me enough money to be in government right now making these sorts of decisions.
What I do want however is for the public conversation to evolve. I want the politicians who front the media each and every day to tell us about the mental health impacts of the lockdowns. To tell us about the economic, social and socioeconomic impacts. I want a more mature conversation that deals in the realities of the stress Victorians are under. Even if stage four lockdown works, we’re still going to be living with and impacted by the virus for many more months, and likely years.
Campbell Brown, an ex-AFL player I disagree with on almost everything, recently posted this tweet:
Where once this was a hot right wing talking point, I now find myself sympathising with it.
I am overwhelmed by the dire stories I am hearing. A friend in a bad place, who has been unemployed since November, and can’t access any of the disaster payments. Tom Elliott’s friend, who was struggling and who he couldn’t see, who recently passed away, who he now fears may have taken his life. Stories of elderly grandparents struggling to maintain a grip on sanity. My brother, who has a hefty mortgage to pay and soon a new mouth to feed, down to only a few days a week of work, and the prospect of only being able to spend two hours with his fiancé when his daughter is born in October. Friends who work in aged care, now forced to sit at home worrying desperately about the wellbeing of residents.
A friend recently added me to a Facebook group called ‘Victorian Brotherhood’, effectively a support group for men struggling with the lockdowns. I had a two-minute scroll through it the other night and was nearly brought to tears, watching videos men had posted of themselves at their wits end, others sharing stories of friends they were losing. In a moving check-in at The Man Cave this week, our CEO shared with us the story of a teenage boy in his area who had just taken his life.
Daniel Andrews, Scott Morrison, Greg Hunt and many other politicians have spoken about supporting mental health, and there have been significant investments at both a state and federal level; but these acknowledgements and investments don’t, in my opinion, do enough. Having 20 Medicare-subsidised telehealth sessions with a psychologist instead of 10 does nothing to address how difficult it can be to find a therapist, nor does it really address the financial burden: my sessions cost $230 up front, and then I get a $130 refund. How does someone on a disaster payment afford that service once a week? Funding for community mental health services is also welcome, but these services are over-stretched and both Beyond Blue and The Man Cave have called for a total overhaul of the system and greater investment in prevention.
Our Prime Minister Scott Morrison has been found to be severely lacking when it comes to crises – he might quietly thank his lucky stars the coronavirus has made his awful handling of Australia’s horrendous 2019-20 bushfire season a distant memory – and his suggestion that people living outside of Victoria to simply give their Victorian friends a call was a pretty big slap in the face given the levers he could be pulling to support us.
I’d like our governments at all levels to tell us how you are supporting our health sector to tackle this virus – what are you doing to protect our over-worked and under-paid frontline workers? And not just PPE, but actual investments to increase our health sector’s capacity to deal with such a crisis? Instead of fining them for parking their cars in a red zone.
Tell us what you’re doing to address increased rates of suicide, small business closures, rent and mortgage arrears, Victoria’s frightening, rising COVID-19 death toll – and if you don’t have the capacity to do this, assign it to someone else in your government and get them to update us.
I also want our governments to acknowledge and do something about some of the key facts: that Victoria’s crisis is being worsened by insecure work, that it is overwhelmingly affecting people in lower-socioeconomic areas and that the Victorian government’s response to the pandemic has been to punish the public, rather than hold themselves accountable. If anything, COVID-19 has revealed the faults in a broken system.
I feel a lot of empathy for our politicians right now, and in particular Dan Andrews. No Australian politician has had to deal with a crisis of this scale in my lifetime, and he continues to front up every day, despite the fact that his mental health must be in the toilet too, given the exhausting work he has been doing. I have been a big advocate of him for a long time; in fact he is one of very few ALP politicians I would consider voting for over a Greens candidate.
But this shouldn’t stop the criticism being levelled at his government; which has plainly failed to protect Victorians from this devastating second wave, and the longer their lockdowns go on, the more people will be impacted not by COVID-19, but by severe mental health issues. I admire Dan for continuing to front the press conferences, and genuinely wish him the best, but the answers to why we’re in this situation will come out in the wash, and I hope all involved will hold themselves accountable.
Humans are social animals, and the anecdotal evidence I’ve collected tells me that without that social connection, many people are struggling. People are struggling terribly with COVID-19 as well; we must take it seriously and I will wear a mask and follow the rules for as long as I need to.
But there has to be more to the public conversation than “stay home, wear a mask and let’s hope the numbers go down”.
ramblings from djp 