Coronavirus: Grim numbers a daily fascination

Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews sanitises his hands after speaking to the media during his Friday daily briefing. Picture: Getty Images

What time’s he up? What’s the number?

These are the two questions that millions of Victorians are asking each day. The “he” is Daniel Andrews, and the “number” is, of course, the latest coronavirus positives.

Two weeks into the second wave and nine days into the second lockdown, waiting for the daily numbers game to play out has assumed a grim obsession for many of us in Melbourne.

For the more optimistic the conversation plays out a little bit like this: Premier’s up at 11am. Can’t be worse than yesterday. I reckon its plateaued. Yep, I agree, definitely plateaued. I reckon the numbers are actually quite good, considering. It’s flattening.

For the pessimists — who by the way might have been the optimists the day before — it’s a bit more like: Gonna be bad today. I just know it. Look at Sutton, did you see his body language yesterday? Even he’s looking scared. Bloody hell, today’s gonna be a shocker.

The pessimists have been in the ascendancy this week as 270, 177, 270, 238, 317 and 428 were announced by our increasingly stern Premier and his chief health officer, Brett Sutton.

Over the past fortnight as the second wave crept west to east, consuming suburb after suburb, there was a lot of on-the-spot ­recalibrating going on.

Once, just days ago, the “2s” were frightening. Now, as we come to terms with “3s” and “4s”, the “2s” don’t look so bad.

We have become experts in ­decoding Sutton, whose silky delivery mostly makes what he’s actually saying seem a little less scary.

But there was no lubricant on his words on Friday — a day that began shrouded in thick fog and blossomed into sparkling winter blue — when he offered this chilling assessment: “We have not turned the corner here.”

It’s a line that pinged from mobile to mobile, bouncing around an increasingly anxious city dealing with 10 COVID-19 deaths in just a week and a doubling of infection numbers in just a fortnight.

The other calculation millions of us were doing on Friday was triggered by the tightening of rules regarding travelling for exercise. You can only go a “reasonable” distance to exercise, and preferably stay in your postcode.

I’m in Richmond, 1.25km from The Tan, Melbourne’s famous running track, that wraps around the Botanic Gardens. But that sits mostly within the City Of ­Melbourne.

Will the police pounce as soon as I shuffle over Punt Road, cut through Gosch’s Paddock, and leave the confines of 3121? Yarra Park, in which the MCG sits, is 500m from my front door. But again it’s in the City of Melbourne. It’s enough to do your head in.

But for all the daily dislocation most of us are enduring, there is no shortage of perspective in this pandemic, and on Friday it was this: 10 Victorians have died in the past week.

The human spirit is a remarkably resilient force and Melbourne’s collective spirit will be seriously tested over the next 33 days of Lockdown 2, and whatever lays beyond. I just hope the optimists ultimately prevail.