{"id":198163,"date":"2021-10-25T12:01:10","date_gmt":"2021-10-25T11:01:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=198163"},"modified":"2021-10-23T04:56:08","modified_gmt":"2021-10-23T03:56:08","slug":"melbourne-the-longest-in-lockdown","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2021\/10\/melbourne-the-longest-in-lockdown\/","title":{"rendered":"Melbourne: The Longest in Lockdown"},"content":{"rendered":"

21 Oct 2021 – As a city, Melbourne previously prided itself with the air of a prim and proper heiress, one without peer in Australia: a gastronomic wonder, a sporting goddess, and a place of orderly public transport.\u00a0 The Economist Intelligence Unit glowed with praise, designating the city the world\u2019s \u201cmost liveable\u201d for seven years running<\/a>.\u00a0 There were few law and order issues; nothing to speak of in terms of war, famine, crisis and the sorts of things that disturb the money minded business traveller.\u00a0 Even after Vienna got on its high horse and knocked Melbourne off its pedestal, Melbournians were undisturbed.\u00a0 The city still had the dining and eating, the sports, the \u201cworld class infrastructure\u201d.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Anti-vaxxers protesting outside 111 Bourke Street, Melbourne.
(Source: Alpha\/Flickr)<\/p><\/div>\n

Then came the global COVID-19 pandemic.\u00a0 Like the nuclear fallout anticipated in Nevil Shute\u2019s On the Beach<\/i>, the menace had to eventually head down under and do its bit of gathering.\u00a0 But there was fierce resistance in the country.\u00a0 The lockdown formula became the policy de jour<\/i> and there was no greater example of this than Melbourne.<\/p>\n

In 2021, the Herald Sun<\/i> would look<\/a> with envy across the pond to note that Auckland in New Zealand has taken the honours of the EIU\u2019s essentially irrelevant assessment.\u00a0 Melbourne had suffered a slump, slumming in eighth spot.\u00a0 The EIU sternly noted that, \u201cThe pandemic has caused huge volatility in our biannual liveability index, which ranks 140 cities across five areas: stability, health care, education, culture, and environment, and infrastructure.\u201d\u00a0 But Melbourne\u2019s Lord Mayor Sally Capp, despite noting<\/a> the \u201cdevastating impact\u201d of lockdowns on the city, could still brightly note that \u201cwe remain one of the 10 most liveable cities in the world\u201d.<\/p>\n

The lockdowns \u2013 six in total \u2013 came with overly vigilant threatened and threatening police, punitive powers of hefty magnitude, mask mandates, curfews, limits on recreation time and demarcated areas of travel.\u00a0 It came with government attempts to vest what should have been purely health powers in agents who had no such credentials.\u00a0 Experiments were tried and abandoned: buildings were first hived off; then suburbs.\u00a0 Then, a ring of steel was introduced.<\/p>\n

Protests, angry and bitter, were organised, featuring an assortment of self-proclaimed freedom fighters, vaccine sceptics and conspiracy devotees.\u00a0 The city\u2019s tempers were disturbed but the government of Daniel Andrews was held up as an example to all Australia: If you go hard, and go early, you will be able to run the virus into the ground.\u00a0 For a time, this could even be said to be the case, so much so that it convinced the previously sceptical Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

Then came the Delta variant, with virological legs of such vitality as to outrun any razor-sharp expert of public health.\u00a0 Contact tracers were bamboozled by its speed, with lines of transmission fuzzy before the spread.\u00a0 The shift towards vaccination took precedence over the strategy of elimination.<\/p>\n

So, with grim perverseness, Melbourne will be opening at midnight on a day where the state has registered the second highest number of cases since the latest outbreak began: 2,232.\u00a0 Mandatory vaccinations, falsely advertised as matters of choice, will mark the hospitality industry as pubs, bars and restaurants open.\u00a0 Patrons will be scrutinised regarding their vaccine credentials.\u00a0 Magic numbers will be discussed like acts of sorcery \u2013 the double-dosed vaccinate rate of 70% for those above 16 being one of most interest.<\/p>\n

A stampede is anticipated in ending a period that has made Melbourne endure the greatest number of days in lockdown: a cumulative total<\/a> of 262 days since March 2020.\u00a0 This convincingly surpasses the record set by Buenos Aires of 234 days.\u00a0 \u201cThe longest road has been journeyed in Victoria and that long road really starts to open up tonight,\u201d Morrison declared<\/a>.\u00a0 Andrews, in reflecting upon a rather different sort of record from that of a city\u2019s liveability, called<\/a> the achievement \u201cimpressive.\u00a0 It makes you very, very proud.\u201d<\/p>\n

This reopening does little to take away from the sense of utter loss. There have been cases of madness, cases of violence, cases of suicide.\u00a0 Minds and lives have been lost, the spiritual world of the city rented and turned to a ghostly murmur of Banquo proportion.\u00a0 Gastronomic meccas such as Lygon Street have been strafed of the living, with lockdowns applied like a large, bristling brush, capturing all in its wake.<\/p>\n

There could be no shame in not surviving and enduring such suffering.\u00a0 That other city of long, crippling lockdowns, Buenos Aires, saw such institutions as La Flor de Barracas pass into history, a century old bar that had survived Peronism, military juntas, inflation and sovereign debt default.\u00a0 It took the novel coronavirus to vanquish it.<\/p>\n

Walking down Clarendon Street in South Melbourne, the buildings resemble a row of neglected tombstones and bits and pieces of spiritual martyrdom.\u00a0 There are some establishments, as if occupying fox holes of defiance, keen to keep making food, paying rent and fighting the nightmare.\u00a0 The Chevapi Grill, with a hearty Serb following, remains obstinately faithful to its customers.\u00a0 Several Vietnamese establishments, eagerly visited by trades people, continue in culinary defiance, their interiors spartan, quiet but resolute.<\/p>\n

The homeless perch with opportunistic hope, anticipating some money and food.\u00a0 Some occupy seats outside the Clarendon Centre with crow-like determination, exchanging morsels of gossip and reflecting about the coronavirus restrictions.<\/p>\n

There are notes of tearful apology from restaurateurs who fought hard and long but could not survive the sixth lockdown.\u00a0 There were promises that, somewhere in future, we would meet again over a coffee in some prosperous land that was not here.\u00a0 We might \u2013 but till then, the experiment of life, the vision of public health policy before disease, continues.<\/p>\n

_________________________________________________<\/p>\n

Dr. Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge.\u00a0 He lectures at RMIT University, Melbourne. He is a frequent contributor to <\/em>Global Research and <\/em>Asia-Pacific Research. Email: bkampmark@gmail.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

Go to Original – asia-pacificresearch.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

21 Oct 2021 – The lockdowns \u2013 six in total \u2013 came with overly vigilant threatened and threatening police, punitive powers of hefty magnitude, mask mandates, curfews, limits on recreation time and demarcated areas of travel.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":198164,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2236],"tags":[1686,1924,1868,1937,1864],"class_list":["post-198163","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-covid19-coronavirus","tag-australia","tag-authoritarianism","tag-covid-19","tag-lockdown","tag-pandemic"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/198163","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=198163"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/198163\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/198164"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=198163"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=198163"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=198163"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}