Lockdown #12: Social Inequity
It’s a dank dreary February day outside
And we still haven’t cast this virus aside
More lockdown pain
We’re at it again
Victorians told to take it in our stride
A State-wide return to lockdown stage four
Only essential reasons to go out your door
Our tracing detectives’
Processes defective
A faster spreader than they’ve seen before
We’re told it’s a mega contagious strand
This UK variant that’s reached our land
That spreads like lightning
Deadly and frightening
Gotta stop a third wave rants Premier Dan
Before lockdown had left our leader’s lips
Supermarket shelves were already stripped
While our MPs fled
To Canberra instead
Us and them the rest of us quipped
No Chinese New Year or Valentines celebrations
Our weekend gatherings suddenly cancelations
This short sharp shock
Let’s hope it’ll knock
This defiant disrupter into annihilation
Restaurant food for Valentines Day
Most of it had to be thrown away
Small business falls flat
No romance in that
While stock market investors are making hay
However tennis fans were still allowed
At the Friday night Open to shout out loud
And what more disgrace
No masks on their face
Spreading the virus in the tennis crowd.
If there’s serious risk of a deadly contagion
They should’ve closed courts at earliest occasion
We’ve resigned to compliance
Fatalistic reliance
On them keeping us safe from this viral invasion
They’re still defending Trump from the indefensible
Ransacking the Capitol was reprehensible
But he won’t be convicted
Republicans conflicted
Voting no impeachment so incomprehensible
Victorians were just getting back on our feet
From the world’s longest lockdown, virus in retreat
Business was returning
Economy churning
While waiting for vaccines for COVID to be beat
But we’ve had enough of these community lockdowns
While infected travellers continue to touch down
To quarantine hotels
Where the virus expels
We’ve served our time, but still getting knocked down
And where did this latest fiasco begin
A nebuliser at the Holiday Inn
Droplets spayed out the door
Into the corridor
Infecting workers and their next of kin
Then NZ locks down like in solidarity
Their three new cases such irregularity
Auckland confined
Be strong and be kind
Said Jacinda drawing on popularity
Yet all governments have had a year
To build more quarantine stations not so near
Crowded city locations
With proper ventilations
Purpose built and workers in protective gear
My remarkable Kiwi cousin has just weeks left to live
The cruelty of cancer is hard to forgive
Here family have flown
But they won’t get home
No room in quarantine and no alternatives
This pandemic has exposed such inequity
Rules that are applied inconsistently
Families in desperate times
Stuck behind borderlines
While others can travel with impunity
My cousin’s plight has been hard to accept
Only weeks to say goodbye and reflect
It is so unfair
He is loved so dear
Hard work and decency, with total respect
When the time comes, let’s hope they will get home
That compassion will allow them to all be flown
To NZ and isolate
Then to commemorate
The life of the nicest man we’ve ever known.
Kevin Holmes • 14th February 2021
