Coronavirus fears spread in Sydney and leave us all on edge
For everyone, the new decade has been as overwhelming as it has terrifying. But even with bushfires, the coronavirus and other tragedies, we must soldier on to the light, writes Louise Roberts.
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There’s a word that sums up how many of us are feeling about what 2020 has delivered so far.
Fear.
When we shut our borders on February 1 to incoming foreign passengers from China, there was a sense we were taking control to manage the scourge of Coronavirus.
That was nonetheless weighed down in some quarters with implications that a whiff of racism was behind the decision. Ludicrous, of course.
And the clipped response of Wang Xining, the deputy head of mission at the Chinese Embassy in Australia, was palpable when he said that although he understood our anxiety about the epidemic, any federal government response needed “to be reasonable”.
“The World Health Organisation didn’t recommend any restrictions over international travel and trade,” he was quoted as saying. “Actually, it opposes such measures.”
Xining also floated the idea of compensation for foreign high school and university students inconvenienced by the ban but any federal appetite for that remains to be seen.
Meanwhile in Sydney suburbia, fear of Coronavirus is skewering local trade as people abandon their regular dining routine. Normally bustling tourist areas are deserted with four confirmed cases in NSW and at least 29 under investigation.
But it’s all part of wider issue we need to confront. Within the space of a few weeks, catastrophic blazes have changed communities and generations beyond recognition.
Death, bravery, disbelief and heartbreak marked the new hours of the year as families scrambled to evacuate or salvage former lives from the ashes.
And then four bright young lives snuffed out by the dark evil of drink driving on an ordinary Oatlands street at the weekend made us question why we should ever let our children leave the house.
But fear can never be allowed to dictate our Australian way of life. Fear is what stokes existing tension. It is the fuel to ignite those who seek to divide and conquer us as a society, as our Australian community.
Ah, but it’s dangerous world we tell each other, holding us kids so tight that they wriggle in confusion as all sorts of doomsday scenarios race through our minds. Taking precautionary measures is part of the new reality. Better to be safe than sorry so shut down and shut up and stay safe.
If by some miracle a tourist coughs on us and we don’t get Coronavirus, we head to our local takeaway to find the owner weeping at the till because business is down 80 per cent.
But there’s a lot to be thankful for and we owe it to the Abdallah family of Oatlands, the fire families of Batlow, Bateman’s Bay and other areas to not let it dictate our Aussie way of life the world over.
It’s tough for parents whose first instinct is to protect their children from every shadow and perceived danger. But allowing anxiety to rule our lives isn’t living. And it certainly doesn’t set our children up to become resilient, self-aware and emotionally capable adults.
We’ve already seen the nanny state rob our children of so many of the freedoms we enjoyed – climbing trees at will, heading out at sun up and coming home at sundown. All without the need for mobile phones or tracking apps.
We never knew such a thing as antibacterial hand wash. We camped in the back yard and stayed up all night. We played hard and slept soundly every evening without the need for a device or computer.
If we wanted to talk to our friends we walked to their homes or hopped on our bikes to ride there. The past generations have seen layer upon layer of cotton wool wrapped around our precious offspring and we are in very real danger of suffocating them.
The reality is that life is messy. It can be joyful and bright, and it can be tragic and dark – and everything in between. You have to be brave to live it.
The astonishing Abdallah family are the embodiment of this. An unimaginable tragedy has beset them.
This time last week they were a family of eight.
Now they are preparing a funeral for three of their children – Antony, 13, and his sisters Angelina, 12 and Sienna, 9, who were killed by an alleged drink driver along in the city’s north west with their cousin Veronique Sakr, 11.
Yesterday their grandmother Georgette Abdallah said: “They were angels on earth... (we are) only going to see them in the photo now. We can’t hug them.” That’s a bruise to the heart.
And this from their mum Leila describing how she viewed her children at the morgue: ““I grabbed everyone’s hand and started praying from all our hearts … after praying I felt at peace, I felt like my kids are alive and they can still hear me and are around us.”
Never once have they extolled the dangers our children face every time they step outside the safety of their front door because we must hang on to the freedoms we have left.
If terror is allowed to blossom in our communities it will feed a culture that our already fragile city doesn’t need.
We don’t need more darkness.
What we need to hold on to with both hands is hope and light.