No human contact but we’re still in this together

Player benches are seen with the new NRL distancing policy employed, at an empty ANZ Stadium ahead of Thursday night’s the match between the Canterbury-Bankstown Bulldogs and the North Queensland Cowboys played in an empty ANZ stadium Picture: Dan Himbrechts/AAP

The sands have shifted beneath our feet. The world as we knew it is gone.

We are now living in a lonely world where contact of a physical kind is frowned upon. Touching elbows is cold contact compared with warmly shaking hands. How we comfort each other in times of grief or stress is anyone’s guess.

Presidents and prime ministers are making addresses to their nations but there is nothing grand in what they have to say. The message is clear. The best way to stay healthy is to stay at home and see as few people as possible, while economists tell us that a recession is certain.

Apparently, all of this started in China because some of its citizens have had contact with bats. As environment minister I was dragged to a bat cave in Queensland to witness their flight. Millions of them flew out of a hole in the rock as snakes queued up to eat them. I will never forget the stench. I raced back to my hotel in Rockhampton and stayed under the shower for a very long time. My clothes were binned. While the local activists were telling me what a wonderful phenomenon I was witnessing, for a fleeting moment I considered allowing the miners who wanted to invade the bats’ domain to have their way.

Now it’s human-to-human contact. I don’t have a spleen, bowel, bladder, rectum or prostate so I must be the ideal target for this bug. Thus far, I am fine but the prospect of falling victim to it is enough to keep me up in the early hours.

Is it possible that millions of people will eventually catch it? Even President Donald Trump’s most ardent supporters must have been worried by his first statements on the matter. He wanted to paint this as a nasty Democrat-Biden plot. If ever there was a time when he should have proffered Joe Biden an apology this was it. Trump, however, follows the old dictum – never apologise and never explain.

Now is the time when we must contemplate the unthinkable. What chaos would ensue from whole nations shutting their economies down for lengthy periods to try to get on top of this? In Spain and South Korea infections are spreading like bushfires – fast, furious and impossible to control. As a person with more preconditions than you can poke a stick at, life will undoubtedly be more solitary over coming months.

Apparently, the National Rugby League competition will continue this weekend and will continue playing in front of empty stands. I am delighted at this development not simply because I am a Dragons fan but because we must not let this thing cower us into submission. As they say in show business – the show must go on. But there is an empty ring to those words when you see that the lights are out on Broadway and the live shows are in recess.

My son’s school is still open in accord with the aggressive stance on this issue taken by the Prime Minister but there is no guarantee about next week or the week after. If schools close at some point, a huge dilemma will be faced by those families where both parents work, which these days is most families. Who will look after the kids? Our society will, because of this plague, be put to the test on a few fronts.

What happens to people in self-isolation where there is no money coming in to pay the mortgage and the other household bills? The only answer is government and so far Scott Morrison has been more than prepared to step up.

When you are facing a crisis like this – savage, unrelenting, downright scary and unprecedented – there is no rule book; you make it up as you go along.

Governments around the world are taking and comparing notes and soon there will be one international protocol for treatment and handling patients. In the short to medium term the virus will continue to spread itself through the community but spreading is not the same as embedding.

The disease will be defeated but if the recession many economists predict arrives, it could last a little longer. We really don’t know how long a medically induced recession will last. There will be no fun in finding out the answer.

I hope economists are revising their text books. The relationship between wages and profits, which they have espoused for years, appears to have broken down. Wages are stubbornly refusing to rise as they should and governments are taking extraordinary steps to try to rein in this problem. At the time of writing, the Prime Minister has just announced “all non-residents will be denied entry to Australia from Friday night”. Tourism is such a big part of our economy so this is a very significant announcement and for travel agents and motel and hotel owners an almighty setback. Still, who could criticise the government for being diligent and careful at this time. There has been complete bipartisanship on this issue, another reason for the PM to include Anthony Albanese in the talks with the premiers.

The nation faces a mighty battle with COVID-19 and all of our resources and personnel must be focused on its defeat.