Sydney's rivalries survive like cockroaches after an asteroid but face masks bring us together

As masks become mandatory in Greater Sydney – a decision long overdue to many minds – we will all wear one for the team on trains and buses, sitting in cinemas and so forth, and look just a little bit more alike.

We could think of mandatory masks as a symbol of the coronavirus pandemic: that it has not only torn families and nations apart but also brought the human family together. A virus which knows no distinction between rich and poor, powerful and subjugated, increased our empathy as much as it did the spending on medical facilities and vaccines. So much so that we gave up a little personal liberty not just to spare a square but wear a square to spare a life.

Wearing a mask we are as one as never before.Credit: Tanya Lake

Yet scratch the surface of "we're all in this together" and you'll still find it, from Sydney's inner west to the south-west to the upper northern beaches: a grain of false pride, or call it NIMBYistic rivalry, lingering like the proverbial cockroach that survived the asteroid collision.

I'll be first to confess: during Sydney's lockdown last year, I opened The St George and Sutherland Shire Leader after each delivery and turned straight to the story that listed my area's case count. I would then gleefully scurry to tell my husband that our suburb still had a big fat zero (later to be known as a doughnut) even as more affluent parts of the district were in the double digits (no doubt casualties of the Ruby Princess disaster). Pretty sick, huh?

And when a Melbourne friend recently expressed concern that the disease had encroached on my neighbourhood again, my first reaction was to play down the risk: oh, it's not that close; oh, we only ever drive through that part. Not here. Not us.

And when the silvertails up on the northern beaches first took the latest hit last month, I joined in some frivolous schadenfreude, emboldened by the temerity of some residents to try and finger an outsider for bringing it in (presumably from the great unwashed parts of Greater Sydney) and wasn't this all the more reason to keep the povos away from our beaches. Yuck!

In the midst of a highly transmissible virus like this, bubbles save lives and livelihoods. But even as we measure our world in 1.5 metre orbits, as we covet doughnuts and take pride in the number of people who queue for a "nasal appraisal", it's worth keeping an eye on those bubbles of hubris as they pop up.

The masks we wear today might feel like a barrier, but let's wear them like a sign that we're all on the same side. SARS-CoV-2 thinks we are. It's right.

Rita Glennon is a Herald journalist.