David Penberthy: Reason behind US coronavirus case numbers
So far, Australia’s response to COVID-19 has been one of the most successful throughout the world. And the reason for this is one that we too often take for granted, writes David Penberthy.
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This photograph of my father and I was taken in a world that no longer exists.
It was taken last year on the banks of the Mississippi as we prepared to board New Orleans’ much-loved Steamboat Natchez for a Fourth of July jazz and fireworks cruise, followed by a late and loose evening at a sensational dive bar called Vaughan’s Lounge, rocking out to the funkadelic stylings of Cory Henry and his Treme Funktet.
July 4, 2019, now feels like a distant era.
It is hard to fathom the extent to which the world has changed since then. The manner in which the photograph was taken is itself a thing of the past. It was taken by a complete stranger who was standing right behind us in the steamboat queue, an African-American woman holding a glass of champagne, whose hand I shook as a thank you for recording our happy moment.
Remember handshakes? They were good, hey.
The photograph was also taken as a result of flying. It was taken as a result of boarding a plane from Adelaide to Sydney to Dallas then on to the world’s best-named airport, Louis Armstrong International.
Everything my old man and I did in our sensational and largely sleepless week in New Orleans now feels like it is under threat. I spent months devising a kick-arse itinerary for what was my second visit to the town that rejoices under the motto laissez les bons temps rouler, let the good times roll. I will list what we did at some length as I wonder now how much it is still operational.
Cajun breakfasts at Brennans and Stanleys. Burgers at Clover Grill and Port of Call. Old-school jazz at Fritzel’s and the Preservation Hall, the Hot Eight Brass Band at The Howlin’ Wolf, Delfayo Marsalis and his Uptown Orchestra at Snug Harbour, with beers beforehand at Frenchman St’s Red Apple bar.
There were 16 members of Marsalis’ wonderful orchestra performing on a stage about 12m wide. Social distancing would have ended that, you’d think.
We had a ludicrous long lunch at the legendary restaurant Commanders Palace which began with Dad and I taking selfies in the cemetery over the road, me wearing a ridiculous seersucker jacket, and during our meal, a jazz band marching through the restaurant as we drank bloody Marys decorated with pickled okra and Tabasco olives.
All that would be gone for now too.
Oysters at Royal House, shucked right in front of us by a genial waiter who was well within 1.5m, eaten at bar stools where your elbows rubbed against those of neighbouring strangers.
Not now.
All of these things are good times. The very act of travelling itself is the ultimate good time, especially if you’re sitting on the deck of the Natchez with a bourbon in your hand. It is good times that have been most imperilled by COVID-19, not to forget our lives and our livelihoods.
I have been reflecting this week on how many of these New Orleanian institutions will emerge the other side of all this. For while if any city knows how to survive and reinvent itself, it’s this one, the scale of the unfolding human tragedy across the entire state of Louisiana is already hard to comprehend.
Back on February 21 of this year, Australia (population 24.5 million) had 17 cases of coronavirus, one more than the United States (population 327 million) which had 16 cases.
Fast forward to this week and if you look purely at the state of Louisiana, which has a population of just 4.6 million, the infection and death rates in that state are off the charts compared to Australia.
On Friday March 27 Louisiana had 2305 cases and 83 deaths. By last Monday, 3540 cases and 151 deaths. By last Tuesday, 4025 cases and 185 deaths.
By Wednesday, 5237 cases and 239 deaths, on the same day there had been just 20 deaths across the whole of Australia.
Louisiana, with one-fifth of Australia’s population, has had 10 times the number of deaths.
That’s what exponential growth looks like, and it’s truly terrifying.
Not for the first time, there’s a sense in New Orleans that something really bad is happening to their city while Washington responds sluggishly.
And again, this freewheeling, libertine town has been cruelly defamed as the architect of its own demise, with its traditional March mardi gras parade being singled out as a mass infection point, despite the fact that many other large-scale public events were underway at the same time across the United States and indeed world, before the graveness of the situation had become apparent.
The reason so many people are dying in America is sad and simple. They don’t have a functioning public health system, whereas we do.
There will be many policy lessons from this shocking period of history. For Australia, one reassuring lesson we can take is we are on the right track with publicly-funded universal health care for all.
For America, with its more individualistic culture and hostility toward big government, there are now signs that universal health care is being considered as less of a socialist conspiracy than a vital means of collective self-preservation.
I am not a socialist by any stretch and often look at government and wonder if some of the things it does are necessary and could not be better handled by the private sector, even scrapped entirely.
But the one area of public spending that should be regarded as sacrosanct, and which should be rightly funded through a tiered system so that the rich pay more, is Medicare.
It is now a given across both sides of politics in Australia that this should be the case.
With our preparedness to fight this virus and our ability to manage the cases and reduce deaths so far, hopefully the Australian healthcare model will be revisited elsewhere to avoid the avoidable misery we are seeing in places such as New Orleans.
A city that has suffered more than any place should ever have to bear, but which to quote Steve Earle, a city that will never drown.
Originally published as David Penberthy: Reason behind US coronavirus case numbers