Plague Update #34 - Report Report

 Well the report on the investigation into the Ruby Princess debacle has been released.  For those of you who have been trying to obliterate the last few months from their memory allow me to ruin your hopes.  The Ruby Princess was the cruise ship that dumped a couple of thousand diseased passengers on the docks at Sydney a few months ago in the hopes no one would notice.  Given the number of infections and deaths that resulted questions were naturally asked as to how they were permitted to do that and who was responsible.  

Those questions were formally encapsulated in an enquiry which reported last week.  It basically pointed out the obvious, that there had been catastrophic failures on the part of the various government officials responsible.  Since the only other possibility was that they did it deliberately I can't imagine that this surprised anybody too much.  What did surprise some people were the recommendations for how to avoid this in the future.  There weren't any.  In summation the report basically said "a whole bunch of people screwed up but, you know, whatever."  To be fair what the report actually said was that the people who made these mistakes realised their errors and wouldn't make them again.  Wouldn't it be nice to have such a sunnily optimistic disposition?  I guess we'll just have to wait until the next cruise liner turns up with a batch of sick passengers before we find out for certain.

Meanwhile humans are not the only ones suffering in the pandemic.  Rescue shelters (which are basically just euthanasia centres for animals) report a massive upsurge in people adopting dogs (and to a lesser extent other animals).  Apparently the desire for companion animals in these times of doom has been so great that the shelters have been swept clean.  Animals who were looking for a dignified way out of their misery have suddenly been dumped with a bunch of needy humans who expect them to fill the coronavirus created holes in their lives.  That's a lot to ask of a dog, particularly one who, since it was in an animal shelter in the first place, can reasonably be expected to have a few issues of its own.  If this goes on much longer the streets are going to be full of emotionally disturbed people hauling traumatised animals around on leashes.  I'm not immune from this myself but I would point out that I had my stuffed puffin well before the COVID outbreak and he quite enjoys being hauled around on a leash.

In the meantime animal shelters are just bare spaces with the occasional tumbleweed blowing through and a screaming mob at the door demanding companionship.  It seems that workers in these places will be the next to lose their jobs and there won't be any animals left to help them through the difficult times to come.  I would encourage those people to stay strong, times might be tough right now but you will get your job back eventually.  As soon as the pandemic is over those shelters are going to be filling right up again.