Plague Update #23

After our brief trip to the fourteenth century its glad to be back in a more civilised time.  In Italy the COVID outbreaks have led to a rise in attacks on Gypsy communities, in Tanzania the president apparently submitted a goat for testing and his health department couldn't tell the difference (or so he claims) and in France the British head of a French pharmaceutical company has announced that the United States will have first claim on any vaccine they develop which has prompted fury from everybody who isn't American.  To be fair the reason presented is because the Americans stumped up most of the money for the research.  It's also important to realise that so far there isn't a vaccine so they are essentially arguing about a theoretical eventuality.  There's happier news from Thailand where restaurants only permit one person per table.  The owner of one restaurant has added a panda plush toy to each table so that the lonely restaurant goer has somebody to talk to.

Back in the land of good sense and functional government (and the disturbing thing about that is its actually true) Australia's COVID impacted unemployment figures were released.  The prime minister took to the airwaves to say how dreadful they were.  He was right.  He'd be even more right if the figures were accurate.  Without some careful accounting around the various government assistance schemes in place at the moment the rate would be considerably higher.

While the nation trembled at the unemployment statistics (some of us are still trembling with COVID-19 as well) the Queensland state government announced its interest in taking an interest in the airline that went belly up a week or so ago.  Protection of jobs and services was the justification offered.  This was met with ridicule from a senior government minister who pointed out that Queensland doesn't have any money and they would have to borrow every penny for such a foolhardy exercise.  Kind souls forbore from pointing out to him that his government's entire reaction to the COVID-19 pandemic was also funded by debt.

I'm not sure if a government taking a stake in an airline is a good idea.  Governments are notoriously bad at running businesses.  In fact the only people worse at running this airline than the state government would have to be the people who actually were running it when it crashed.  Seriously if you're running a major business and you can't screw taxpayer dollars out of the government pretty much at will you must be really bad at it.

Incidentally this slagging off between various politicians is the latest sign that things are getting back to normal. The stern bipartisanship they were demonstrating was starting to get deeply creepy.  In my home state restaurants will open this weekend but only as long as not too many people go to them.  That seems like a recipe for success.  Down in Tasmania my correspondent contacted me, weeping with joy, to inform me that her children would be returning to school in a fortnight.  There will be no argument about this; it doesn't matter if the poor tikes catch the plague in the meantime; back to school they're going.  Not before time, not only has my correspondent run out of alcohol but apparently coffee is getting short as well.