Authorities are trying to stop the spread of COVID-19 from Victoria by manning the state’s borders: 1000 Defence Force personnel — uniformed and serious — stand in heavy boots, ready.
Yet borders are porous, and this coronavirus is tricky. This is not like sandbagging a river. It is not like containing a fire.
Five days ago, NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian warned of what we might call “virus creep”, whereby the virus, having percolated in Victoria, would spread to other states.
She was right.
It has happened, and the spread may yet worsen because there are super spreaders in Victoria; there are silent incubators; and there are also quite a few selfish bastards.
What else can be said of those people who lied to the ADF about where they had been, and where they were from, while trying to drive into Queensland?
Yet there has been innocent transmission, too.
One of the latest and biggest NSW clusters is linked to the Crossroads Hotel at Casula, on the Hume Highway in NSW.
It’s where the truckies stop on their way to Queensland, and it’s not like we want to stop them. Among other things, they’re carrying toilet paper.
It’s also where weary road trippers get a Coke, or have a smoke, but it also now has a cluster of coronavirus cases.
Twenty-one people, so far. Ten visited the pub there. Eleven are “close contacts.” Because that is how contagion works: you many not even know you’ve got it before you’ve passed it on.
One of the people who went to Crossroads then went to local gym, Planet Fitness.
The gym now has a case.
Another went from Crossroads to the Star Casino. It now has a case.
And so, now, anyone who stopped in at the Crossroads Hotel between July 3 and July 10 must get tested, and guess who that includes?
Yet the Crossroads Hotel is not the only breach in the rampart. Another occurred in Merimbula — and this one really boggles the mind.
There have been some false positives in testing, which has been inconvenient for those involved, but from a safety perspective that is fine.
There has also been one false negative, which for NSW is potentially devastating.
A Victorian teenager travelled to Merimbula, for a family holiday. He had just tested negative.
But that was a mistake by Victoria Health — he was, in fact, positive.
His family is now in isolation, but they not only stopped during their road trip at the Tathra Hotel, they made it all the way to the NSW south coast before the mistake was known.
NSW Health must now contact all 80 people who were in the Tathra Hotel.
The Victorian health department has further confirmed that two of its COVID-19 patients attended pubs across NSW.
And so, now, NSW Health is urging anyone who attended the following venues to monitor themselves for symptoms of the virus:
• Cook @ Kurnell
• Highfield Caringbah
• Merimbula RSL
• Waterfront cafe Merimbula
• Murray Downs Golf Club
And yet some people still don’t take the idea of community transmission seriously.
Police have turned back more than 800 Victorians at the Queensland border, among them six people piled into a van who claimed to have been working in NSW.
Police checked their phones. They had for weeks been in a Melbourne hot spot.
But oh, they said, they felt fine.
What can be done about this idiocy?
We can’t build a barrier. This isn’t Hadrian’s war.
The ADF is doing what it can, checking cars and manning barricades, as are health officials, with their contact tracing.
The effort must at times feel more like the loathed business of applying contact paper to school exercise books: smooth a bubble here, and it pops up over there.
Yet vigilance is absolutely necessary. Without it, the second NSW lockdown may yet come.
This we know because the Premier has said this week that if you live in Albury or Moama — which is to say in NSW — you shouldn’t go to Sydney unless you absolutely have to.
Because this thing, this virus, it lays low. It creeps. And then it flares.
More Coverage
Wayward QLD Labor MP returns after legal woes
Wayward Queensland Labor MP Jimmy Sullivan will make a surprise reappearance at the party’s caucus love-in next week, but will factional treachery kill the vibe?
So many visits signal a whole lot of trouble
Labor is in trouble in the Northern Territory and in danger of losing at least one seat – Darwin-based Solomon – at the election.