Written 15 December, 2020.
https://www.news.com.au/world/north-america/us-politics/electoral-college-voting-to-formally-make-joe-biden-the-next-us-president/live-coverage/a9ef37eb453876b5c468a75129281663
I’ve longed for this day! If I did, a world away, imagine how overjoyed Americans must feel.
At last Joe Biden is safely the President Elect of the US, with an enormously compassionate speech, and the first time, anger at Trump. But it’s the same day the death toll of the virus reaches the massive tragedy of 300,000 unnecessary deaths, with a million cases diagnosed each week, and someone dying every 30 seconds. Hospitals are overrun, ICU beds are full, hospital staff are exhausted with grief- all this with Trump consumed with 80 attempts to overturn the election results, uncaring of his people dying – and the vaccine is rolling across the country, but too late.It’s going to be a terrible, terrible winter.
And in England, a new version they say of the virus, with 60,000 dead, one of the highest death rates in the world, lthough there too, at last, the vaccine.
Thank God we’re safe here, though we marvel at this miracle.The Federal government at least listened to the scientists, although it often veered off course, but somehow – there’s success. “A complaint population” I read in an OS newspaper. I thought we were far from compliant – a nation of rule-breakers, rascals, for we commonly thumb our nose at conventions. I suppose it’s an easy, fast way to explain the miracle. More, isolation, luck, being an island, distant and able to watch the chaos and tragedy in China and Europe before it came here, a sense of cohesion, a social contract that’s forged in compulsory voting, and an educated population. Perhaps less following of silly fantasies on social media. In Victoria, where Daniel Andrews imposed the strictest long lockdown in the world, braving hell from the Federal government who said the financial world would end, now there 46 days without community transmission, and in NSW, despite the many mistakes, 13 days without local transmission. There are constantly cases in hotel quarantine, for we must bring Australians home. We all live on a knife edge.
But today, rosellas.
And a farewell to Dee and Tripi in our pergola. Dee leaves tomorrow, and the next day we return to the city, soon to fly to Melbourne for Christmas with GG’s sister (coming from Perth, a cervical cancer survivor) and niece and family- as long as there’s no coronavirus. It’s the better side of my family, with people who love each other. So precious. So rare.
