Mike O’Connor: Truly disturbing lockdown confession

There are many strong opinions relating to the Covid-19 pandemic, but it’s this rather weak lockdown one that really scares me, writes Mike O’Connor.

The chardonnays and shiraz will now remain unslurped and the Great Ocean Road will have to wait.

Earlier this year, they seemed like a good idea. By October or November, I reasoned, surely it will be ­possible to do a few road trips, so we fired up the laptop and planned a drive from Melbourne to Adelaide taking in the Great Ocean Road and later, a trip to Western Australia.

“I’ve never visited Margaret River,” I said, visions of cellar door wine tastings dancing before my eyes. “Let’s do it.”

“Are you sure about this?” my wife asked. “No worries,” I replied.

“She’ll be right!”, thus being a ­philosophy that has often presaged disaster in the past.

We are now in the process of ­cancelling everything, my optimism sadly misplaced and the tourism and hospitality operators with whom we had planned to spend our hard-earned cash that much the poorer.

No one is going anywhere.

Everyone I know who shared my optimism has cancelled all their plans. Next year? Maybe, but it would be a brave soul who placed a non-refundable deposit on any excursion that involved crossing a state border.

Brisbane’s normally bustling South Bank during the last lockdown. Picture: David Clark

Disturbingly, I’ve met some people who have confessed that they have begun to enjoy the lockdowns ­because they removed the need for them to make any decisions or do anything other than exist.

The lockdowns provide the perfect excuse for sitting at home and doing absolutely nothing. No plans to make, no pressures, just existing and living via television and computer screens.

It’s insidious, a slow, creeping descent into isolation from the world.

Madness, surely, lies that way.

I’ve heard of others who in a desperate desire to find an explanation for the state in which we find ourselves have been seduced by the conspiracy theories that abound on the internet.

Follow one and it leads to another and then another. Travel far enough down the rabbit hole and before too long you have become convinced that the pandemic is a tool being used by dark forces intent on world domination and that the vaccines contain a secret element that enables the government to track your every move.

Crazy stuff, but there are people out there whose grip on reality has been seriously loosened by what is taking place.

“Thank God we don’t live in NSW,” we say, but in the back of our minds we know that the only ­certainty is uncertainty and that good fortune can turn into a spiralling ­crisis in a heartbeat.

So we plod along, our lives dominated by the morning scores of the sick and the deceased. Numbers up, numbers down, lockdown on, lockdown extended, lockdown off, borders closed, borders open and on it goes.

The unasked question in any social situation now is “‘have you been jabbed?” If you know the person well enough you might think you are on safe ground to ask but can you be sure?

Maybe they haven’t, so where does the conversation go from there? Do you tell them that they are being incredibly selfish and should do the right thing or do you just say “Really?” and change the subject while making a mental note to avoid their company at all costs in the future?

It’s an issue that will fracture some friendships beyond repair.

Do people still have any faith in their leaders? I suspect not. We know that their every pronouncement is politically driven by the secret polling of public opinion, which is then cloaked in the handy mantle of health advice.

We’ve been showered with so much rhetoric and hyperbole that the pronouncements from on high are now met with a shrug and a “Yeah. Whatever.”

When things go well, there are smiles all around and the usual chants of “we’re keeping you safe” and when it all goes bottom up, it’s ­inevitably someone else’s fault.

So we live in a strange world in which we watch our lives being ­controlled by an unseen force.

Resignation has become the ­dominant emotion in our lives. We make no plans because we have no way of knowing what tomorrow will bring, each day spent in the freedom of being able to venture beyond our front doors seen as a blessing.

It’s draining. It saps your energy and if you let it, could lead to the ­slippery slope of despair.

The people who suffered the death and destruction wrought by world wars are all but gone now and with them their stories of tenacity and ­endurance. This is the test of our ­spirit and strength. We will survive and emerge, we must hope, all the stronger for the experience.