Stop waiting and start living

THERE inevitably comes a point in wartime dramas at which someone looks up at a clock ticking loudly on the wall and mutters, “It’s the waiting that’s the worst.”

We’re all waiting now, casting nervous glances at the metaphorical clock that records the daily Covid case numbers as we cower at home in a self-imposed phantom lockdown.

The chief health officer says the triple-vaccinated should now lead normal lives. This after Premier Palaszczuk told us all to stay at home. Who to believe?

On the evidence, the Premier’s scare tactic seems to have carried the day. Dare devils that we are, we went to the pub last Friday night after agonising over whether it was safe to do so.

We needn’t have worried. There were six other people in a beer garden that would normally have been packed.

Where had all the drinkers gone? Sitting at home clutching a stubby and wondering how long the undeclared lockdown would last.

The restaurateurs, bar and cafe owners would love to know as they watch what’s left of their businesses melt slowly away.

We know we can’t go on like this but are unwilling to take that step that will take us out of the sanctuary of our homes and onto the street.

Two years of being stuffed around by experts has left most people so mentally exhausted that their spirit has been broken. We’ve been lectured, threatened, cajoled, patronised and herded like so many cattle for long that we’ve lost the will to fight.

The concrete border barriers that separated us from the rest of the world came down last week and apart from causing misery and heartache and postponing the inevitable, it is difficult to see what purpose, apart from being used for shameless political grandstanding, that they served.

Hark back to scenes of the former CHO Jeannette Young frightening the trousers off one and all with her nightly pronouncements that she was either “worried” or “very worried” at the detection of a mere handful of Covid infections.

What is her Worry Meter saying now, I wonder? “Very, very worried” or has it been quietly consigned to the scrap heap of history, having served its purpose of frightening the population into meek submission?

Never before has fear been employed against a population on such a grand scale.

The state government’s latest worry weapon is rapid antigen tests. The federal government, it has claimed, is commandeering them. Just why it would do this was not made clear but the accusation was enough to cause people to rush from the empty shelves at Woolworths which once contained toilet paper down the road to the chemists to try and buy some.

They didn’t need them any more than they needed another 20 rolls of toilet paper to add to the 100 they already had stockpiled in the laundry but if the feds were grabbing the tests for themselves, they’d better grab some as well.

The federal government, of course, is doing no such thing. No such mandate to suppliers has been issued by the Health Department and there is absolutely no evidence to support this claim.

The waiting is over for our neighbours. They tested positive last week so they can stop looking up at the clock and get on with their lives, but what of those of us who, due to a combination of luck and common sense, remain uninfected?

Do we stay at home for another year, running the gauntlet from home to supermarket and back, locking the door behind us when we return, ripping off the mask and whipping out an antigen test to see if we have survived another day?

Fear can’t rule our lives but politicians relish it as a weapon because it diverts attention away from their policy failures and shortcomings.

We have friends who have just returned from three months overseas.

“Where is everyone?” they asked. “At home,” I said, “too frightened to move.”

Mark Twain got it right when he said that if you do the thing you fear most, then the death of fear is certain.

The waiting might be the worst but only if you let it. Stop waiting and live.