Currently a covid shitshow here.

Numbers are increasing rapidly, people have been queuing for 8-10 hours for PCR tests and often being turned away. Results have been taking up to a week or more to get back.

Now there’s been a pivot away from formal PCR tests to self-administered Rapid Antigen Tests (RATs) because the systems just can’t keep up. It used to be that if you had a positive RAT, you were required to have a PCR test to confirm and you’d be monitored by NSW Health. No longer – now you just kind of manage yourself. And positive cases from RATs aren’t currently recorded – though this will change next week.

eeep – numbers don’t include those self-administered tests

To add extra spice, there is a shortage of RATs – they sell out quickly and are almost impossible to locate. And when you do manage to find them, they cost quite a bit – 2 for AU$30 is probably the cheapest I’ve seen.

In NSW we’re required to use a government app to check in wherever we go. The app then alerts you if a positive case was in the same location so you can watch for symptoms or take other actions as directed. Given the current numbers, everywhere you go there’s a case, so checking in will be phased out at the end of the month.

when too many supermarkets are barely enough

Two guys in my team have now had it, both double-vaxxed super-fit gym bunnies – the first was wrecked and very, very ill; the second “luckily, not even in the top 20 worst colds of my life”. Most of Bessie’s boyfriend’s family tested positive during the week.

Surely only a matter of time before it visits us. Hopefully will be mild when it does.

Boosters have only just become widely available. Most people were not originally eligible because of the huge delay in rolling out the first vaccinations. Don had his booster yesterday, I have mine next Friday and the Babies in early February.

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Of course all this has started to impact supply chains and empty supermarket shelves are starting to reflect it. Surely a very bumpy January and February ahead.

Lots of “Ride the Wave” and “Let it rip” and “Live with the virus” rhetoric from the Federal and State leaders and not a teensy bit of planning or preparation to actually “live with it” – just kind of hoping it will all magically go away? Or that we will be distracted by lunatic tennis players?

There’s a point that you realise that those governing us have even less idea of what they’re doing than you could ever have conceived.

I definitely need to remove myself from the news for a bit.

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