Michael McGuire: Our impatience with Covid makes no difference, we have to deal with it

As Covid anxiety again starts to rise, South Australians need to make sure we’re cover the basics: be fully vaccinated, wear your masks and stay distant, writes Michael McGuire.

Without wanting to sound like a moralising politician, maybe it’s time for a back-to-basics approach.

A month ago, there I was, doing the journalism thing talking to happy families as they met at Adelaide Airport, in some cases for the first time in years.

November 23 feels like a long time ago now.

That was before the Big O came to town. Now it feels like we are all on edge again. People are feeling uncertain about where and when they should go out, if they should go out. Some of that is for understandable health reasons. No one wants to catch Covid-19 after all. A fair few don’t want to go out, do the right thing and QR code, then become caught up in someone else’s Covid drama and end up spending Christmas and New Year in isolation.

Plenty of others with other health conditions are taking their own precautions to minimise contact with the outside world.

And again, we have long waits for testing, people spending hours and hours waiting in line to have a stick jammed up their nose. You do wonder about those queues. It almost looks like SA Health have been taken by surprise by a virus that’s been around for two years.

There is hesitancy because there is, so far, no clear indication as to the true nature of Omicron. It is much more transmissible than anything else we have seen during the last two years, but symptoms may be milder. A vaccine won’t stop you catching Covid, but should stop you feeling the harsher effects of the disease and keep you out of hospital.

Covid testing lines at Victoria Park. Picture: Michael Marschall

Then we look at the news coming from overseas. The UK is again awash in Covid. It is recording more than 80,000 new cases a day and there is speculation some restrictions will again be brought in. Numbers are also spiking across Europe, the US, Asia and Africa.

At home, conflicting messages from some political leaders are unhelpful. NSW Premier Dominic Perrottet’s decision to lift mask mandates is misguided. Even the Business Council of Australia thinks masks are a “low cost” measure that will help maintain consumer confidence.

South Australia, in the absence of clear direction from the top, has seen businesses decide to close for themselves, worried about the health of staff and customers. Then there are those long lines, daily cases rising above 100 in SA for the first time, and reports of ambulances ramping Covid cases. This all adds to a general feeling of nervousness. There is also the slowness with which exposure sites are updated.

And the behaviour of the idiot bunch. Like the kid who decided it was OK to go clubbing after he tested positive to Covid. It’s hard to wrap your mind around such a level of selfishness, entitlement and arrogance.

Or the snowflakes of the anti-vaxxer movement, who claim victimhood and scream “but I don’t want to” like a particularly petulant two-year-old. Possibly a two-year-old who will go clubbing in 16 years’ time with a potentially deadly infection because their “rights” trump everybody else’s right to be as safe as possible.

So, as I said, back to the basics. We are going to have to wear our masks inside and on public transport a bit longer. We need to keep our distance from each other and use our hand sanitiser.

When we are eligible, we need to get our booster shot, just as many do with the flu shot every year. Hopefully, the federal government has learnt its lesson from its glacial rollout of the initial vaccination program and moves quicker to ensure the national booster program is sharp and properly targeted.

It’s tiring. We are all tired of it. It’s dominated our lives for two years now and done damage that will take years to fully comprehend. But wishing Covid away isn’t going to work. Our impatience with it makes no difference. We still have to do everything we can to stay on top of it. But we are learning to live with it. It’s just that it’s taking longer than anyone would have wanted.