2020 is a year which is unprecedented in the amount of hyperbole which has been thrown around and unprecedented in the amount of use that the word "unprecedented" has gotten. When you shine the smallest light of scrutiny upon how unprecedented this is, it ceases to be unprecedented and just looks like another thing that has happened many times over. I can't help but feel that if you look at the cholera pandemics of the 1880s, the typhoid and tuberculosis pandemics of the 1890s, and the 1918-20 Pneumonic Influenza Pandemic, then what we are currently going through is not really unprecedented but just a current failure of people to remember the past.
Someone wiser than me once said that those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it but for so much of history, the actual ability to remember the past is impossible because people who are living were not there. For instance, there will be people voting in the United States elections this year for whom it is impossible to remember what the events of September 11 2001 were like to witness because they weren't alive at the time. Likewise, although we can read about the past and perhaps learn something about it from those people who have left a record, when it comes to remembering it, then it is literally impossible. There must be very few people indeed, on the whole entire planet who can actually remember the 1918-20 Pneumonic Influenza Pandemic and I suspect that there would be nobody who is currently living on the planet who has a birthday in the 1800s.
As yet another reminder that we are living through something which very few people alive can remember, we are seeing the same kinds of protests, demonstrations and reactions to public health orders that the newspapers wrote about a hundred years ago.
I was privy to one of these demonstrations this week; which happened outside of the Mosman Town Hall by parents and students from a high school in Mosman, who I later found out were arguing that the Year 12 Formal should go ahead; despite and possibly in spite of the enduring pandemic.
From what I understand, I think that they were arguing in favour of holding the Year 12 Formal outside; on Mosman Oval. In principle this sounds like a sensible idea because if this pandemic is spread by droplet transmission and putting physical space between people is excellent in mitigating the risk, then holding an event outside is a good idea. I am actually surprised that more institutions like churches and movie houses haven't moved outside because not only do maximum occupancy limits increase massively when moved outside but the basic science suggests that moving outside to the best kind of ventilated area, massively reduces the risk of community transmission. This was the most widely used solution to the problem of holding events during the 1918-20 Pneumonic Influenza Pandemic.
After the rabble had cleared out, we then had some ex-rabblers appear at our door because they wanted to have their tax returns done. Mr Seventeen and his mate Mr Eighteen arrived at our offices as cold callers, having shown some initiative and while I was quite frankly shocked to find out that Mr Seventeen had derived more than six figures of income as part of a tax minimisation strategy by his family, there's nothing illegal about that.
The thing that I find really really odd was Mr Seventeen wanted to get his dad to leverage Mosman Council into allowing the Year 12 Formal to go ahead on Mosman Oval. I do not know how much leverage that his dad has with the council but it is certainly worth a try.
As the formal is proposed to be held on the oval, which is outside, then the chances of COVID-19 transmission are significantly lower than if they were inside. We know that the COVID-19 virus is primarily spread from person to person through respiratory droplets released into the air when talking, coughing, or sneezing. This means that people in confined spaces such as nursing homes and cruise ships are particularly susceptible to community transmission. If you are outside though, fresh air is constantly moving, which disperses the droplets; so that means that you are far less likely to breathe in enough of the respiratory droplets containing the virus that causes COVID-19 to become infected.
While I could write some piece about how there are multiple Australias and how this and indeed every pandemic affects poorer people in a more pronounced manner, I can't help but feel a sense of loss for the kids of Year 12 2020; irrespective of what economic class they come from. The pandemic doesn't care about class; nor does it discriminate against whom it chooses to visit. The fact that halls and venues all over the world have been closed as a sensible response to this public health crisis, is not only inconvenient but quite sad.
I personally can not relate to what the loss of a Year 12 Formal is like because I never went to mine. I have no idea what the asking price was but as my dad had been made redundant in the recession of the 1990s, the the Year 12 Formal was a luxury to which I was never going to be a part of.
However, for kids who were expecting to go to their Year 12 Formal; especially in a year which has been so incredibly disrupted and disturbed, this must be heartbreaking for them. In a lot of cases, the Year 12 Formal marks possibly the last time that they will ever see some of their fellow classmates and when you already have raging hormones on top of an anxiety producing set of circumstances, this must be just awful. For them to miss out on an experience with the only people who went through the thing together, is a cruel twist of fate.
I find myself hoping that the council will yield to their requests because just as I do not think that people deserve a lot of what they have got but should be thankful that they have won the lottery of life, I also think that people do not deserve a lot of what they get when that same lottery declares all entries to be void. In other words, just because life happens to have dealt you a better hand, doesn't therefore mean that you somehow deserve bad things happening to you more. There is no moral through line here.
I hope that the kids of Mosman do get to hold their high school formal out on the oval if that means that it is able to go ahead. I can see how fancy clothes and terrible shoes out on the grass might make dancing difficult and I can imagine the kind of stink that the neighbours will kick up over having loud music play into the summer night but in a year which is so disrupted, a little bit more disruption isn't going to hurt. Let the kids have their high school formal on the oval. 2020 is already weird; it doesn't need to be cruel as well.
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