Sydney is in lockdown again. Australia as a country had gone months with no community spread of covid-19. We were living pre-pandemic lives, albeit with no international travel, and no international visitors. Locked away from the rest of the world, we were fine. We were fine.
At the beginning of June, a returned traveler contracted the virus on his way out of hotel quarantine in Adelaide, and brought a highly infectious strain to Melbourne. Those infected took public transit, went out dancing, attended football matches in a 75% capacity stadium. Melbourne had to lock down again for two weeks, but they have managed to bring transmission back under control, and I am free to go back to work again next week.
I've been planning a trip to Sydney for months. It was postponed, and then postponed again, but this time everything was scheduled. Registrations were open for my public lecture, to be held in a lecture theatre in Sydney in mid-July.
But a couple of weeks ago, a driver shuttling international passengers tested positive. His contacts tested positive and their contacts tested positive, and the disease had been spreading exponentially before caught, in a country with less than 5% of the population fully vaccinated. So now Sydney is in lockdown. It looks like I won't be going. No public lecture.
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Australia has been handling this virus completely differently to the Americans. To Americans, lockdown meant trying not to get too close to your out-of-state visitors while you laughed together in the backyard and shuttled in and out of the kitchen and common bathrooms. To us, no visitors. No interstate travel. No travel beyond a 5km radius.
But today, nearly 50% of Americans have been fully vaccinated. All my siblings and teenage nieces and nephews are vaccinated, giving them some protection from this disease. Pandemic fatigue means they're traveling again. Holding classes in person again. Back off on their international adventures.
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My mother forwarded a message from my dear aunt and uncle. They had been called on a humanitarian mission before the pandemic hit. Their travels were delayed by a year. But now they are finally off -- to Africa! They've been flying from country to country to country, along with a legal team to try to help them advocate for human rights.
It's noble. They've felt the hand of God in their lives pushing them towards this service.
But my mother's letter indicates that a man from the American legal team tested positive for covid-19 upon arrival in Ghana.
The population of Ghana has even less vaccination than Australia: a quick internet search says just 1.3% of the population is fully vaccinated. Ghana has less health infrastructure than the Western nations the missionaries come from. The Western nations, for economic reasons, are actively blocking countries like Ghana from producing their own vaccines.
And then they ship Western missionaries into the country to test positive to covid-19. To isolate in the American sense of isolate. It is rage inducing.
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In the news in Canada, at the sites of former "Indian" schools, authorities have uncovered mass graves of children. These native children were forcibly taken from their families, and put into conditions of starvation, disease, neglect. For their own good, said the Church. When the children died, they were buried silently in mass graves, untouched until their very recent discovery. This situation is beyond horrifying. In Australia, they forcibly removed children as well. The Stolen Generation, those children are called. The colonists had already taken lands and livelihoods. And so they took the children. The language. The culture. The love. There is nothing more completely horrifying than the thought of stealing children.
There was an Indian School in Brigham City. We used to drive past it on our way to visit my dear aunt and uncle, the humanitarians. I remember asking what the buildings were for, and being told about my church's noble actions to educate the savages. I remember asking if the children were still there? No. The school had been abandoned. If it had been so noble, why was it abandoned, I wondered as a child.
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There was an article in the newspaper here recently about another pandemic, one likely seeded on purpose. In the 1700s, the British colonists didn't find a land empty and ripe for their harvest. They found people living here, towns, crops, life, and a civilisation that stretched back 50,000 years. And so they brought in smallpox.
The outbreak started near Sydney. Natives knew how to treat other diseases, but not this one. They quarantined the sick in caves, but it was not enough. As death took their families, some fled inland and spread the disease with them. By the time the colonists, evil incarnate, were ready to move, it was easy to execute the remaining survivors in mass shootings, and take what they wanted.
This is the story of human flourishing.
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Sydney is in lockdown.
There are 82 active cases of covid-19 in the entire state of New South Wales, where Sydney is located. There are nearly 8.2 million people living in the state. But we have watched the world struggle under the weight of this pandemic. We have watched people die. Economies fail. Continents struggle under the weight of extended spread of disease. We have learned that early eradication is the best strategy. Quick, thorough, effective lockdown, and then open back up to life again.
And honestly, it's all we have in our arsenal. The vaccine rollout hasn't gone well. We are still lacking in supply. Those under 40 years old are still ineligible for vaccination. Only 5% of our population is fully vaccinated.
It grows heavy.
