Stay home, stay safe
THE NEWS is grim.
Thousands are dying in Europe and America, and China has yet to overcome humanity’s biggest threat since Spanish Flu killed 50 million people – including 15,000 Australians.
The first Diggers carried that virus back from World War 1 and infected 40 per cent of the Australian population.
Other pandemics such as SARS in 2002 hardly touched our shores and only six Australians died as a result.
But this time it is different.
Read more
In just under four months, Covid-19 has paralysed the world economy, shut down huge cities such as London, Paris and New York and spread with terrifying speed throughout entire continents.
UK prime Minister Boris Johnston haut his country on a wartime footing and says more than 20,000 Britons could die.
In America, the White House health chief is warning of up to 200,000 deaths.
This is what we are trying to avoid in Australia, and Toodyay is uniquely placed to ride out the storm.
We’re far enough away from Perth to avoid big shopping centres and mass public transport systems where infections can easily spread, yet close enough to essential medical services and basic necessities such as food and water.
But this will work only if we take seriously at home what other parts of the world have until recently ignored, to their great cost.
We don’t need to be hit on the head with a hammer to know what to do – stay home, wash your hands and keep a safe distance from others.
Human beings are social animals and simple rules are sometimes easy to forget.
But we ignore them at our peril.
Toodyay’s disproportionately large older population is at greater risk of infection than others in our community.
Most people who get ill will recover but older people are always more vulnerable to anything that might be going around.
In his 1932 Inaugural Address, US President Franklin D. Roosevelt said about the Great Depression crippling America and the world: “We have nothing to fear but fear itself”.
He was right – and we will get over this crisis too if we all heed the warnings and do the right thing.
Stay home, stay cool and stay safe.
Michael Sinclair-Jones
Editor
