Australia is rife with mixed messages at the moment, but the one currently doing my head in is the encouragement to order takeaway to support local businesses. I get that people want to support local businesses. They are often an integral part of small communities, are run by people we care about, employ people we care about. But there are two major flaws I see in this strategy. One is, we are still creating a vector of transmission. Sure, it might be less than if we all crowded in the cafe, but there is a line from the homes and other connections of staff and owners to each other and to customers, and vice versa. We're just minimising the customer-customer vector. Don't go climbing. Don't go riding. Don't go camping. Don't go to the beach. But do go buy takeaway. Does anyone else find this message a little inconsistent? How the hell are we gong to trace contacts if one of these takeaway providers becomes ill? I am so not eating food prepared by other people at the moment.
The other is that this is just not a viable strategy for keeping small food businesses alive. Anyone who has worked in the industry know that it's always marginal. The chances of covering costs on the limited services available is pretty slim, let alone making a living out of it. We are also asking people in the community who have lost jobs or reduced their income to spend money supporting these businesses. For example, those in my community who worked in the outdoors industry have basically lost all income for an indefinite period. How are they going to be able to prop up local businesses?
This appears to me as yet another way in which our government is trying to fob off dealing with a major crisis onto individuals. Slowly, our government is realising that this strategy is rather limited and turning to government intervention - enforceable closures, boundaries and isolation, increased financial support, but it has stopped short of the incredibly obvious solution to the mass loss of livelihood caused by this. Universal basic income. Massive queues at Centrelink could be avoided. The delays in processing claims and the immense stress on Centrelink staff avoided. People in need supported. The farcical measures to try and keep some non-essential services functioning that still contain risk stopped. Clarity could prevail and we could actually have an effective shutdown without people starving or loosing their home or business. People will say but not everyone needs it, to which I say, who cares? So a few people will get some money they don't need. The government does that to big businesses all the time. High income earners will still be paying tax on it, whilst low income earners won't. The money and stress saved in administration will make up for it. Imagine if all that policing welfare that we do just no longer happened. This is a time when we are seeing how flexible the world really is, and different ways things can work. The benefits of a large, benevolent state are becoming obvious. Maybe once shutdowns have finished, we could move onto to government job creation instead of welfare policing. Maybe it's time to find out if the world doesn't end when we simplify welfare.
I am not buying takeaway. Not because I don't want to support local business (don't you love how there is always a moral imperative in these things? Good citizens support their local businesses. I think good government supports their people), but because I think it is an unnecessary risk. A much greater risk of transmission than a solitary ride on gentle trails, or a climb on an obscure crag, both of which those with moral imperative like to tell me I shouldn't do. Driving to pick up your takeaway is a much greater risk of an accident than my gentle trails or obscure climb as well.
I believe one of the reasons people are not adhering to physical distancing is the inconsistency of the message. If the message was clear, then people might hear the urgency of the message, and also make better decisions about what they do. And if people don't start making better decisions about what they do, we will all be subjected to the required boundaries of the lowest common denominator and be shut in our houses. I don't want to be unable to do anything because the government has a policy full of loopholes or people are just doing stupid shit. We are trying to avoid something that has droplet transmission. So don't have close contact with other people and don't touch shared surfaces whenever possible or wash your hands before and after. Minimising your time around other people is the easiest way to do that. But the stay at home message is pointless unless you also don't go to the hairdresser, don't crowd crags or beaches and don't get takeaway. I'd love to not go to the supermarket, I was never a fan of them at the best of times, but it seems unavoidable every so often. Try and make staying at home fun enough that you want to do it and make sensible choices when you do leave the house. Right now, exercise is an acceptable reason to leave the house. If we follow the principles of physical distancing, all we can still do that. If we don't, we'll shut in our houses completely for months.
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