Stuck in cruise control

As a cruise passenger stranded on a perfectly healthy ship, it is evident that the cruise industry and its passengers and crews are being made scapegoats for government bungling in the handling of the Ruby Princess in Sydney.

In our case, the Vasco da Gama, now at Fremantle port, has been in total isolation from any port and other people for 16 days. The ship is free of coronavirus symptoms and we may be the only community in Australia still going about our daily activities normally.

All Kiwi passengers have been medically screened on board, cleared and flown to Auckland.

More than 800 remaining Australians will now be quarantined for 14 days under police supervision in various facilities around Perth, which is completely unnecessary and places us at greater risk than our current very safe situation

Those of us from interstate then face a further 14 days in quarantine in our home state, probably in a hotel, before being allowed home.

Forty-four days of quarantine. It’s not right. It’s insane.

Paul Bailey, MV Vasco da Gama, Fremantle and Auchenflower, Qld

China did well

At a time when the world should unite to fight the coronavirus, there is much misguided hostility toward the Chinese people, with many, including Nine’s Sixty Minutes on Sunday, attempting to blame China for a failure in taking early action. This is unhelpful and unfair.

There was much confusion and uncertainty when the virus first broke out in Wuhan — the world had not seen anything like that before. In spite of that, China very quickly deciphered its genome and advised the world and instigated stringent actions to restrict its spread to the world, even before the World Health Organisation declared it a pandemic.

Indeed, China’s reaction in curbing the virus, coming from an unknown, was faster than many other countries that had gained the benefit of foresight. Many people have commented that had this virus initiated anywhere else in the world, the result could have been a lot worse.

Francis Lee, Zetland, NSW

This different life

Because of movement restrictions we are learning to enjoy our own company or that of our family at home without needing others to be involved. This has constrained our spending on non-discretionary goods and services. It is also encouraging us to be creative in our relationships, which is hopefully improving how we appreciate and rely on each other.

The proposition I have is that once constraints are removed and we are back to our normal way of living, that we actually change what was previously normal. We may spend less because we have learned to enjoy life without the instant but short-lived satisfaction of buying something we could do without. We may be happier in our relationships with family, friends and workmates because we have learned to live with ourselves and tolerate others.

Utopian? Certainly not. Just a wake-up call for the human race and nations to be more empathetic.

Richard Elsey, North Fremantle, WA

While all about us is doom and gloom, and we may be facing the biggest crisis in world history, I would like to reflect on the good things that we still have. I am a 91-year-old pensioner living in a retirement village and I would like to list the things we have now that we didn’t have during the last great crisis, the Great Depression.

We have ABC FM radio, Foxtel, Spotify, email, very clever phones, online banking and Peta Credlin (who always talks sense).

My old labrador still smiles at me and I may even get around to reading War And Peace, which has been sitting on my bookshelf for years.

Peter Weste, Sebastopol, Vic