Plague Update #9 - OK, Now We Know It's Serious

A tidal wave of shock rolled across Tasmania leaving the population gasping and choking, and not just those with COVID-19.  The huge news today?  The Tasmanian government has banned garage sales.  That's right, shit just got serious.  I tried to contact my correspondent for her views but she was curled up under the kitchen table weeping hysterically.  A couple of other things were announced today as well.  Free childcare for all and the prime minister announcing he expected it to take six months before we got out the other side of this.  Although that sombre message was immediately undercut by one of his idiot MPs telling his local newspaper that he expected all the restrictions to be reviewed in three weeks.

But back to the garage sales.  Garage sales are the Australian equivalent of recycling.  Worthless crap nobody has any use for is piled up on the front verandah and random strangers pay to take it away so that they can have a garage sale of their own one day.  It is not exaggerating to say that this nation was built on garage sales.  Actually it is exaggerating to say that this nation was built on garage sales but it is still one of the few ways you can meet your neighbours without starting the conversation with things like,

"Turn the damn music down!" or

"Stop sleeping with my wife!" or

"Did you kill my dog?"

They are an important part of our nation's social glue and also one of the few ways you can discover what poor taste those next door possess without resorting to burglary.  Banned garage sales are to Australia what monstrously expensive cauliflowers are to New Zealanders, a sign of the imminent breakdown of society.  Mind you this is Tasmania we're talking about so it isn't like society had far to go.

While Tasmanians are waiting for society to break down (estimated wait time, fifteen minutes) they have less to amuse them than ever before as racing of both the horse and dog varieties was also cancelled.  In case the Tasmanian government was still liked by somebody they also closed the brothels.

While Tasmania prepares itself for a bleak future the rest of the country is still busy barricading itself off from itself.  Queensland is thinking of moving towards a "hard border" which basically means nobody gets in.  There is actually an interesting constitutional question about whether they have the power to do this.  Well, its interesting if you find those things interesting.  What I find more interesting is what the Federal government might do if they decide Queensland doesn't have said power and Queensland does it anyway.

Putting aside the spectre of imminent civil war for just a moment the government has airdropped doctors onto the various cruise ships still loitering around our coast like teenagers at a mall.  Those crew members officially designated as sick will be transported to hospital, apparently.  In slightly sillier news the prime minister also suggested that landlords and tenants had a mutual interest in coming to productive agreements with each other so that when business gets back to normal (in either three weeks or six months) the landlords still actually have some tenants.  This isn't actually silly, it was just silly to expect it to be acted on.  So far the response has been underwhelming.

Back in Queensland the premier announced that public servants were going to nobly forego the pay rises they had been promised.  This came as a bit of a surprise to the unions who represent those public servants who then approached the premier and said something along the lines of "What the fuck?"  It will be interesting to see how that turns out and whether the Queensland premier is still the Queensland premier in a weeks time.

Its been at least a couple of days since an animal species was threatened with decimation so it is with great pleasure that I announce that we've been infecting ferrets with coronavirus.  This is claimed to be a step towards a vaccine but it may just be because even biochemists need a hobby