OK. So. I got some news for you.
It’s a Saturday night… and I’m not drunk.
Nope. Stone Cold Steve Sober. Went through half a bottle last night during an online games night with friends, and was gonna finish it off tonight during an online movie night. But I was over at Eva’s for the movie night and I left the bottle at home on the desk next to the computer….
The computer that I’m writing this on…
There’s a half bottle of wine right here, in front of me…
ANYWAY.
[Very rapid tone change – cue sound effect of a vinyl record suddenly stopping]
A very dear friend of mine has had a ridiculously rough year. The kinda year where everything that can go wrong does go wrong… and it also all goes wrong during a global pandemic. The kinda year that takes away the things you hold the most sacred. The kinda year the Romans used to call a horrible anus.
Today she tweeted that she’s low on optimism. Which is, to put it frankly, thoroughly unsurprising even if the universe isn’t using you for faecal target practice.
But fortunately, a tweet like that is sometimes a bat-signal to someone like me. Because in some ways, optimism’s my bag, baby. Positivity. Togetherness. Peace, love, happiness. I’m sure I’m nauseatingly saccharine to some people. Sometimes I’m like a fucking Hare Krishna, but without the robes or vegetarianism. Or the history of child abuse. Yeah that’s an ironically darker comparison than I was aiming for there, sorry about that.
So anyway, optimism. Lemme try and Ted Lasso the shit outta this.
You could be asking, just how the fudge-muffin can anybody be positive these days? In a world of surging Delta not Goodrem, the fall of Afghanistan, the ever worsening climate crisis, the impending collapse of OnlyFans?
It’s not easy. And I don’t have any simple answers. I can’t control the virus, I can’t transform the Taliban or rescue translators, I can’t drown Clive fucking Palmer in a pool of untreated sewerage and then set that pool alight.
And that’s the first step, I think. Acknowledging that individually, we can’t solve all the crap that’s going on. Some problems are bigger than us. Not one of us can eradicate SARS-CoV-2, but all of us can control our approach to it. We can stay home, wear masks, postpone holidays, delay our engagement parties. It’s not easy, of course. And it will often feel like it’s not working, but I can promise you it absolutely is. Every single decision you make to do the right thing is an important step in the right direction.
And it may seem particularly unfair and useless when we see cockwombles protesting in the cities, or tradies waving their unmasked noses everywhere, or when we see the numbers climb frustratingly ever higher. It IS unfair. It’s horribly unfair. Every time somebody flouts the law it is cruelly unfair to everybody else. You have every right to feel angry, disheartened, and exhausted. Acknowledge that. Feel your feelings. Scream into your pillow, punch your bed, loaf on the couch and eat takeaway while watching something trashy on TV. These are not normal times, they are not good times.
So how about that optimism, huh?
Well let’s remember the most important thing: this pandemic will end. The 1889 flu pandemic ended. The 1918 flu pandemic ended. The 1957 and 1968 flu pandemics ended. The SARS-CoV-2 pandemic will likely end a lot sooner, and with far far far fewer deaths than all of those put together. The 1918 flu – sometimes called the Spanish Flu – killed between 50 and 100 million people. So far Covid-19 has killed 4.4 million people. And while each of those deaths is a tragedy, it’s a fraction of what it could have been.
And like I said, this pandemic will end – and sooner than previous pandemics, because we have a lot of effective vaccines. Will we eradicate Covid-19? Probably not. But with immunisation we’ll keep it at bay while we develop better treatments. We just need to make sure everyone who can get vaccinated, gets vaccinated.
Now, this may surprise you but I’ll be open about this: I’m not a fan of the current federal government, and I think the vaccine roll out has been, well, a shitshow. Lots has been written (by me and others) about why it’s been so terrible. But the good news is we’re soon, hopefully, going to be awash in lots of different vaccines. We’ll have bucketloads of vaccines by the end of the year:
Pfizer: 4 million doses in September, 10 million in November and 6 million in December
Moderna: 1 million in September, 3 million a month after that
Novavax: 51 million doses probably by the end of the year
Vaxzevria (Astrazeneca): According to General Frewen “we have enough for anyone that wants it, we can get it to any pharmacy that needs it usually within 24-48 hours.”
So, we’ll get vaccinated. The pandemic will end. We just have to survive until it does.
And hey, we’re good at surviving. You’ve done it your whole life.
This isn’t going to be easy. My brand of positivity isn’t really sunshine and lollipops, because the world is a pretty awful place sometimes. But I have confidence that the world is still a hundred times better than it was a hundred years ago, and a thousand times better than it was 500 years ago. And in a year, many things will be a lot better than they are now. In two years they’ll be even better than that.
And I acknowledge that I’m writing this all from a position of privilege. I can still leave the house to work, I’m not having to look after children while I work from home, I’m dating an amazing person who makes me extremely happy, I have a fair whack of Maslow’s needs pretty well covered. I’m privileged, but even then I struggle. We are all struggling. But there is hope, and there are reasons to be optimistic.
If you’re in a bad place, please reach out. To friends, to family, or to Lifeline or Headspace or Beyond Blue. And if someone reaches out to you, listen to them.
Strange, I could’ve sworn there was still some wine in that bottle an hour ago…
Boobs are great.