MUM called me tonight, the lockdown is taking its toll. She and Dad are not crawling the walls, nor are they seething with rage, they are just feeling the weight of it.
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I understand all they are going through, over here in Los Angeles we had varying lockdowns for months, as well as tens of thousands of deaths and hundreds and thousands of infections. I talked her through it, listened and then she said something which cut right through me. She was really feeling the distance from everyone. They may only be in the Northern Rivers, but she feels so far away.
During a time like this, whether it's next door, next suburb or next hemisphere, distance is compounded. This struck me deep in my stomach, it built in to an aching rage. My mum saying something to me that I must have said dozens of times to her during the torrid experience of COVID-19 in the US.
Even then, we were under an inept administration, there was no vaccine and the country was beset by misinformation wars arbitrated by none other than the then President Trump himself.
A son who lived through that in the US, who felt further from his country than ever before, should not be listening to his mother say that, in that very country, which on the whole, excelled during this global crisis. Until this year.
Just down from our house here in LA, the lights of Hollywood Bowl beam over the diluted stars as Christina Aguilera plays to a sold-out crowd. In West Hollywood, The Abbey continues to heave in the summer heat as patrons show their vaccine certifications.
This year I have worked a job in Wyoming and my girlfriend and I have travelled through Tennessee (catching up with fellow Novocastrian expat and old mate Morgan Evans), Alabama and Georgia. In October we head to Maine for a wedding.
Rewind to August 2020, LA had just commenced its second shutdown and all of this I just mentioned seemed like an absurd proposition even to the most ardent optimist.
Indeed, the then President had only just proposed a UV or a bleach "cleaning" of the interior of the body to fight COVID.
What was happening in Australia in 2020? We watched on with a longing envy as the Newcastle Knights played week after week, people travelled freely and expats reunited with lives and family in 'The Lucky Country'.
There is a saying about luck that has always stuck with me through my career, paraphrased it is basically that luck is preparation meets opportunity. If you are not prepared when the luck comes along, the luck is wasted on you.
Prime Minister Scott Morrison, Premier Gladys Berejiklian, the luck has been wasted on you.
Australia's geographic blessing, the selfless devotion of the quarantine workers, the prodigiousness of the public health professionals, you are lucky to have.
And the fortune of having enough distance from America to not be bothered by the turgid experience. All the while you had our failures in such clear sight I would have hoped you learned something from us.
Yet now my mum and dad look on with envy as the US passes 51 per cent of the population fully vaccinated, which has seen us weather the Delta storm.
There is no point going in to the minutiae of why Australia is now in this position, we all know why. America knows it well too. As things unravelled from June this year, American friends came to me with a bewildered, crestfallen air. The same people who would wax lyrical with me at the height of the third wave in Los Angeles about how they longed for even a semblance of the approach Australia had. Just something!
In October 2020, LA County public health chief Barbara Ferrer spoke with a terse warning, the numbers were heading the wrong way and if there were no health orders in place for Halloween we would likely see an explosion of cases.
At that stage, there were no border closures, no limits on travel distances, retail was open at 30 per cent, people could have five visitors and there was no enforced quarantine period for anyone who had travelled.
LAPD chief Michael Moore and LASD chief Alex Villeneuve even stipulated that COVID enforcement was not their major concern. On Halloween, LA County reported 1291 new cases, three weeks later on Thanksgiving 4952 cases, and four weeks after that on Boxing Day, 29,174.
Two weeks after Christmas, the air pollution thresholds in LA were lowered so that crematoriums could operate 24/7, our dear old friend lost her mum to natural causes and had to wait six weeks before they could release her body for burial.
Along with the toll of 26,000 Angeleno deaths we saw the vacuous protests driven by inane conspiracies, we saw brilliant public servants in the health sector beg to be listened to and time after time, warnings go from caution to dark realities.
I was not in LA for January and February, I was working in Australia. I was at the beach, I was seeing friends, I travelled from state to state. All COVID negative after my two-week quarantine stay.
I was basking in the lucky country, going to a gym on the harbour in Newcastle catching the headlines on the TV about LA county's dire situation knowing exactly what they were feeling, while embracing the gratitude of having a moment in one of the few countries that managed COVID well.
When I was in Australia I also listened to revered experts, akin to Barbara Ferrer, in the form of Bill Bowtell and Nobel laureate Peter Doherty, who spoke with equally terse warnings about the danger hotel quarantine posed by having it in the middle of a city.
Leaks every 20-odd days nationwide had shown the danger the system could present, but studious lockdowns dealt with community infections swiftly. Simultaneously, other public health workers were pushing for the vaccines which, in the US, had begun to be administered across the country. Indeed, vaccines were our only way out in America but in Australia they were the way to rejoin the world on Australia's own terms.
Yet, the warnings were not completely heeded. Quarantine mostly stayed in cities, vaccines trickled in and Morrison droned in that conceited, condescending way that "it was not a race."
In that period of time between October 2020 and March 2021, Morrison and Berejiklian needed only to have taken a moment to observe the US. The lessons were there, they had a look at the answer sheet and did not even bother to read it.
In May 2021, I took a complimentary Uber to my appointment and I received my second Moderna dose from a walk-in clinic in Studio City, I was fully vaccinated.
Only a few months earlier, my girlfriend had Johnson & Johnson. Within a mile of our home here there are five pharmacies that are walk-in vaccine clinics. There were multiple public health campaigns driven by celebrities, politicians, business people and sports stars. The three vaccines, Pfizer, Moderna and Johnson & Johnson, were America's only hope and they played it exactly like that.
Morrison likes to speak in sporting clichés so I have one that resonates with Novocastrians. In 2010, Newcastle were beating Penrith 24-6 at half-time, but the Knights lost 34-30.
That is what the Morrison and Berejiklian governments have done to Australia. A second half trouncing led by inaction on hotel quarantine, pedestrian approaches to the vaccine rollout, arrogance and conceitedness, ignoring lessons from the UK, India and the US. There's the embarrassing rhetoric from George Christensen and Barnaby Joyce denying the seriousness of COVID or belittling responses to outbreaks with snide, sectarian remarks. We in America saw that episode last year, we can tell you how it ends.
Now my mum is feeling the distance from her family. I said that to her dozens of times last year, but we had no vaccines then. We had a President who contracted COVID and then held super spreader events around the country. We have seen hundreds and thousands die. Australia will not get to that position, but it should not be in this one. A mother in Australia should not be calling her son in America saying she feels the isolation. She should be fully vaccinated and able to visit once more.
