As I remarked in yesterday’s blog, there are numerous very positive aspects to the current dreadful virus attack, not only the up-welling of creativity that has occurred and which gives me so much hope for humanity (with a number of reservations of course) but also numerous side effects – the beautiful lack of huge environmentally dangerous airplanes roaring along overhead – yesterday I heard on the news that three (3!!!) international flights would be arriving at Brisbane International Airport. Isn’t this wonderful?
The road outside our house is superbly quiet all day, no large groups of overweight men on ridiculously huge motor-bikes roaring past our front gate all weekend or huge gaggles of people on racing bikes all chatting away at full volume disturbing our peace on a Sunday and during the week it is also so much quieter than normal – a sort of absence of sound that is hard to describe, but has a sort of empty quality and is totally delightful.
Also those webcam views of the centre of normally bustling cities, showing empty streets with only occasional lonely policemen to be seen – not only spooky and weird, but pleasing as well. To be honest I am enjoying the whole experience, but then, I am not sick, nor do I live in a small flat on the 10th floor of a sky-scraper so I can wander around in our 5 acres of land without any worries.
Sadly people living in Luanda or any other city in Africa or pretty well any third world part of the earth will have another experience – I have plenty of water to wash endlessly and space to wander around easily without coming closer than the limit of 1.5 meters to another human. Those poor souls have no water to spare for endless washing of hands, nor do they have the space to indulge in “Social Distancing” so I presume that the illness associated with this virus will wipe out thousands of such people. This gives me considerable pause to put it mildly! I have no idea how to help ameliorate their situation, sadly. So in my more depressed moments I assume that places such as Africa, Pakistan, India and such-like will come out of this experience almost empty.
One thing that is certain, once all of this is over and we set about reconstructing our “normal” world again, things will likely be very different from how they were – I hope in a positive way, but we shall see………………………………………….
OZTHOUGHTS 