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Watching the South Australian Premier Steven Marshall announce the six-day stay at home order brings about a strange sense of "here we go again".
This rolling and relentless COVID-19 pandemic is a lot like the grinding and exhausting bushfire crisis we endured here on Kangaroo Island back in January. And there are other similarities too.
And yet I am filled with admiration for our chief health officer Professor Nicola Spurrier, our health officials and yes Steven for their swift action. What legends!
Whether six days is enough will remain to be seen, but the whole point is the action needed to be swift. The sooner we get knock this thing on the head, the sooner we can get back to normal.
It seems we have the stark choice of uncontrollable deaths and a non-functioning health system, or slowing down the economy.
Looking overseas and I can't quite believe what is happening to my former host country, the good old United States, where I attended university and started working in small-town papers.
The less said about that the better, other than, we do not need to be heading down that path. Freedom is one thing, survival is another, and they're not necessarily connected.
On that note, can we call it stay-at-home and not the L-word?
Going back to the awfulness that was the Black Summer bushfires, for me personally there has been a silver lining.
I was nominated for a Walkley Award for best news coverage, along with the whole ABC's coverage and now eerily ironic, the Age's investigation into Melbourne's hotel quarantine saga.
I hold the belief that the pandemic and bushfire disaster are inextricably linked as they are symptoms of an overcrowded planet and nature pushing back.
If you think 2020 was bad, it's going to get a lot worse until the human race wises up to itself. The sad thing is, I don't think it can.
PS: Friday night is the Walkley announcement (watch on the Walkley website) but I am not too fussed, just stoked to be nominated and glad not to travel in COVID world.
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