Coronavirus: Mask use in Melbourne is up, but the mood is very low

Today’s the day. Mask up, Melbourne!

And it seems that almost everyone’s trying. Because compliance with the new law this morning?

A Melbourne cyclist dons a mask. Photo: Daniel Pockett

This is observational, but I’d say round 99 per cent.

One person I saw in Drummond Street in Carlton at around 8am – that’s peak commuter time – wasn’t wearing a mask, but he was on a bike, there’s some confusion about whether one must mask up on wheels.

Technically, it’s ‘impractical’ on a bike, and therefore you don’t have to, but he was wheeling his bike, so I’m not sure he would have escaped a fine.

Pretty much everyone else, including drivers in cars, and even very young kids, were masked up.

As for the atmosphere, it’s glum. Make that grim.

It’s hard for people to know that you’re smiling when you’re wearing a mask. Harder still to find reasons to smile.

It’s not the masks … no, it is actually the masks. They’re awful to wear, you find yourself pulling them down off your nose just get some air into you.

Some people have tried to make gay. There are frog masks, and smiley-face masks, and disco-mirror masks for sale.

Mask sellers must be pleased. But it’s an otherwise bleak situation.

Numbers in Melbourne have, as everyone knows, been shooting up, with infection now racing through the ranks of essential workers.

Some would argue masks are even more essential on a tram. Picture: Daniel Pockett

Every day, another shop in pretty much anyone’s local area closes, and this time it looks to be permanent.

On Wednesday, we heard that 90 per cent of people known to be sick – not necessarily infected, but sick – are still going to work. Some have no sick leave, and no money, but some obviously just don’t care. It’s too inconvenient for them to isolate themselves, and so they don’t bother.

They go out and about, get their shopping, run the kids to school. Pete Evans would be proud, but it otherwise boggles the mind.

The local paper, The Age, on the weekend ran a piece about people who are “crushing on Dan Andrews” – finding him sexy – because he’s so upfront, and in control.

He’s not in control.

Victorias are looking at restrictions until Christmas.

It had 484 infections yesterday. By contrast, NSW recorded 16 cases, and in beautiful Queensland? Just one.

Locals don their masks in Swanston Street. Picture: Daniel Pockett

Andrews has called an inquiry, and put in place a retired judge, whose job it now is to tell them what they did wrong.

Of course, they already know what they did wrong.

They hired hacks to do the security on quarantine hotels. They kitted them up with paper masks and a splodge of sanitiser an hour before their shift started and called that due diligence on infection control.

It’s a mess all right. That said, people are trying to cheer each other. Stopped at the pedestrian lights, I must have looked a little melancholy.

The passenger in the garbage truck beside me leaned out the open window, mask on, and said: ‘Look at me, I can’t eat these Cheezels!’

To prove his point, he had a go, left an orange smudge on the fabric. And winked over his mask.