quarantine - thegoodwills.com

Adopt a duck in mental health week

It’s Mental Health Week, aptly coinciding with a self-diagnosed bout of post-viral depression. Those of you who suffer the ‘Black Dog’ will know that a flu or virus can tip you into a depressive cycle. She Who Also Gets It commonly says: “Don’t be depressed – it’s boring.” Fine for her to say if she’s OK.

(Read to the end then come back and watch this 43 second video by Bob)

As my Ma would have said (and maybe yours too), ‘misery loves company’. Statistically-speaking, about 40% of my readers will have suffered from some kind of mental health episode in their lifetime. The other 60% will probably let this FOMM go by (“Why doesn’t he write something nice and fluffy, grumble, grumble, or at least say what he thinks instead of quoting other people?”)

The latest data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) tells us that more than 40% of Australians aged 16-85 years have experienced a mental disorder at some time in their life. One in five (21.4% or 4.2 million people), had a 12-month mental disorder. Anxiety was the most common group of 12-month mental disorders (16.8% or 3.3 million people). Young people were most at risk with 39.6% aged 16-24 years reporting a 12-month mental disorder.

Note: 12-month disorders are categorised as including anxiety, mood, impulse-control and substance use disorders.

The latest national study into mental health and well-being was released in July. Among its findings are that 3.4 million Australians aged 16-85 years (17.5%) saw a health professional for their mental health in 2020-2021. Of these, 57.4% had a 12-month mental disorder, 17.7% had experienced a mental disorder at some time in their life and 24.0% had no lifetime mental disorder. (To quote the quintessential Aussie singer-songwriter Kasey Chambers- ‘If you ain’t worried now, you’re not paying attention..’Ed)

That latter cohort (the 24%) are probably those referred to in this World Health Organisation (WHO) report. The WHO said that in the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic, global prevalence of anxiety and depression increased by 25%.

“The information we have now about the impact of COVID-19 on the world’s mental health is just the tip of the iceberg,” said Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO Director-General. “This is a wake-up call to all countries to pay more attention to mental health and do a better job of supporting their population’s mental health.”

The WHO’s Mental Health Atlas showed that in 2020, governments worldwide spent on average just over 2% of their health budgets on mental health. Many low-income countries reported having fewer than 1 mental health worker per 100,000 people.

Australia stands out from the crowd in terms of investment. Government spending on mental health-related services in 2019–20 was estimated to be around 7.6% of total government health expenditure.

The Australian Institute of Health and Welfare says $11 billion was spent on mental health-related services in 2019-2020. Of the $11.0 billion, State and Territory governments spent 60.0% ($6.6 billion). The Australian Government’s $3.8 billion contribution covered Medicare-subsidised mental health services and prescriptions.

Australian Government spending on prescriptions equates to about $22 per person. Anti-psychotics (48.1%) and antidepressants (32.5%) accounted for the majority of mental health-related subsidised prescriptions.

That may well be, but I pay something close to full price for mine, mainly because my doctor told me not to accept the generic version. On the other hand, I paid $6.90 for the antiviral meds prescribed when I tested positive to Covid-19. The full price on the packet was $1,130, Now you see why Australia is so lucky to have Medicare.

Ah Covid, that was almost a month ago. I still have a cough and after walking the dog on the river circuit, I have to take some Ventolin and lie down. Multiple research reports have emerged which discuss the serious implications of ‘long Covid’ and lingering symptoms such as lung problems, fatigue and ‘brain fog’. Clearly there is much work yet to be done to establish the long-term risks of having had Covid-19.

And yet the collective Australian government response to Covid seems to be aligned to President Joe Biden’s recent claim that the pandemic is ‘over’. We shall find out after today, which is when Australian State and Territory governments agreed we should no longer be required to quarantine after testing positive. My view of it is simplistic. As of today, 10.3 million Australians have had Covid and 15,399 died with Covid – more than people killed on the roads in 2020.

Perhaps it was coincidence that the US health administration also eased its quarantine recommendations. The Center (US spelling) for Disease Control and Prevention said in August it was no longer recommending that adults and children quarantine at home after having been exposed to Covid-19. The CDC instead recommends those exposed wear a mask for 10 days and take a test on day five. The CDC is, however, saying that Covid is ‘here to stay’, recommending that people who have tested positive to the virus isolate for five days.

Greta Massetti, chief of the CDC’s Field Epidemiology and Prevention Branch, said the changes reflected data indicating 95% of the population has some protection, either from infection or vaccination.

On September 29, Australia’s National cabinet unanimously agreed to scrap the mandatory Covid isolation requirement, with exemptions for those working in high-risk settings such as health or aged care.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said (in the same breath) that disaster payments for workers diagnosed with Covid would end, with the same exemptions for high-risk workplaces.

As The Guardian reported, all State Premiers and Chief Ministers agreed to the change, claiming it was “not sustainable” for governments to keep paying workers to stay home.

Predictably, the Australian Business Council and the Chamber of Commerce and Industry welcomed the decision.

I was taken by surprise, not expecting a Labor Government to make what is clearly an economic decision, rather than support measures that lower the risk of the virus spreading in the community.

Chief medical officer Professor Paul Kelly cautioned that quarantine measures may be re-introduced if pandemic conditions such as transmission rates dramatically changed. (Something reminds me about stable doors and horses bolting..Ed)

“We wanted to make sure that we have measures which are proportionate and that are targeted at the most vulnerable,” Mr Albanese said after the meeting. “We want to continue to promote vaccinations as being absolutely critical, including people getting booster shots.

“We want a policy that promotes resilience and capacity-building and reduces a reliance on government intervention.”

(Ed: Capacity building is ‘the improvement in an individual’s or organization’s facility to produce, perform or deploy’.

Mr Albanese was asked whether casual workers would now be forced to work while sick. His response was that the government could not keep paying for such financial supports, comparing the strategy to influenza.

“The flu has existed, and health issues have existed, for a long period of time, and the government hasn’t always stepped in to pay people’s wages while people have health concerns,” the Prime Minister said at a press conference.

While the advice here and in the US is (still) to wear a mask for 10 days after contracting or being exposed to Covid, the mask mandate for public transport was removed in all Australian jurisdictions last month. Apart from medical centres, hospitals and aged care centres, mask-wearing has become optional.

I wore mine while filming the short duck video (above). Avian flu – you can’t be too careful.

Angst in the time of Covid

polio-cholera-covid — Image: A young girl is given oral polio vaccine – Wikimedia CC

Amid reports of doubters who (still) believe Covid is fake news, this week we examine the history of public protest and vaccine hesitancy in times of contagion.

Those 3,000 or so people who mingled on Sydney’s streets a while back, protesting against the Covid lockdown, protesting about vaccines – it’s nothing new.

In the early 19^th century, Joe Public was getting riled up by the spread of cholera and the seemingly poor response by doctors and authorities. There was similar dissent shown when the UK government sought to make the smallpox vaccine compulsory in 1854. There was an ‘anti-mask’ movement during the Spanish Flu and much stigmatisation of polio victims in the first half of the 20^th century.

While the threat of cholera has been eradicated in countries with good drinking water and sanitation, there’s still a lot of it about in parts of Africa and Asia.

Cholera is a severe diarrhoeal disease which, if left untreated, can kill within hours. It is commonly transmitted via food or untreated water, particularly in countries with poor sanitation. Even now if you are travelling to Asia or Africa, your GP will advise getting vaccinated.

And here, dear reader, is where the great divide starts; the inevitable chasm between the majority who accept the science and medical advice and those who don’t. There are those who think the Covid vaccine is a plot to de-populate the planet or a conspiracy to control our minds by implanting microchips. Mine has already succumbed, as you can tell.

The first cholera epidemic (1831) emerged in Russia then somehow moved to Scotland, causing considerable angst and consternation. Just absorb this snippet from Wikipedia and put it in the context of Sydney’s Covid lockdown (and protests).

“A major riot took place in Aberdeen on 26 December 1831, when a dog dug up a dead body in the city. Some 20,000 Aberdonians (two-thirds of the city’s population, although this number has been criticised as an exaggeration), protested against the medical establishment, who they believed were using the epidemic as a body-snatching scheme similar to the Burke and Hare murders of 1828”.

In the summer of 1832, a series of cholera riots occurred in various towns and cities throughout Britain, frequently directed against the authorities, doctors, or both. Of the 72 cholera riots in the British Isles that year, 14 made reference to body-snatchers (“Burkers”).

Burkers were people who believed that medical authorities were acting in co-ordination with the State to purposefully kill and reduce the population (weeding out the poor and weak). Sounds outlandish now, eh?

Despite oral vaccinations being in widespread use, the World Health Organisation (WHO) recorded 499,447 cases of cholera and 2.990 deaths in 2018, spread across 34 countries. About 75% of cholera cases were attributed to Yemen. As the WHO observes, cholera is most likely to re-emerge and spread in countries affected by war and civil unrest and/or where infrastructure has been damaged by natural disasters.

If you roll back 102 years to the Spanish Flu pandemic, it is not hard to uncover instances of public unrest. They ranged from people stigmatising those who had the virus to complaining about having to wear a mask in public.

Historian Humphrey McQueen says mask wearing was strenuously enforced in New South Wales.

“The demand for masks was so extensive that to prevent profiteering, the Commonwealth Government declared butter muslin and gauze to be `necessary commodities’ within proclaimed areas.”

Opponents of mask wearing saw them as breeding grounds for infection or as sapping the community’s ‘vital force’. A ‘Bovril’ advertisement alleged that anti-influenza masks were ‘like using barbed wire fences to shut out flies’.

McQueen said there was widespread support for inoculation throughout the country. By the end of 1919, 25% of people in in New South Wales had received two inoculations against Spanish Flu.

“Melbourne’s socialites reputedly arranged `inoculation parties’ where the guests ‘got the needle’ in turn to slow music and a prize was awarded to the shapeliest arm.”

Vaccine hesitancy is no surprise to David Isaacs, Professor of Paediatric Infectious Diseases, University of Sydney.

Writing in The Conversation, he explored the topic from smallpox through to the Covid vaccine.

“In 1853, concerned by pockets of poor uptake of smallpox vaccine, the British parliament introduced the Vaccination Act, making infant smallpox vaccination compulsory.

“Mandatory vaccination fomented opposition, something we should remember if considering making a modern vaccine mandatory.”
Protests quickly emerged, with more than 80,000 vaccine dissenters marching through Leicester carrying banners, a child’s coffin and an effigy of Jenner.

Eventually, the success of Jenner’s smallpox vaccine silenced the anti-smallpox vaccination movement.

I sometimes look at the smallpox scar on my arm (1955) and wonder why people were so scared of something that could spare you from a disease more contagious than Covid-19, with a 30% mortality rate.

In the first half of the 20th century, the ‘silent killer’, polio (infantile paralysis) swept quickly through the US and other countries.
The US was desperate for a polio vaccine and it got one, but not without an early setback. Virologists Albert Sabin and Jonas Salk, competed to develop the first polio vaccine.
Salk’s vaccine, made from killed polio viruses, was ready for a large clinical trial in 1954.

Five companies applied to mass produce the Salk vaccine, four major pharmaceutical firms and one Californian family firm called Cutter Laboratories. The trial results proved the vaccine worked, so vaccination began in 1955.

But within two weeks, children who received the Cutter vaccine (but not the vaccines made by the four other companies), started to develop paralysis. Of the 200,000 children given the Cutter vaccine, 40,000 developed polio, 200 were paralysed and 10 died.

“The polio vaccination program stalled due to the ‘Cutter Incident’, but the fear of catching polio was so great the public was soon reassured the other vaccines had not caused polio,” Prof Isaacs wrote.

I don’t remember being told this story as a child in the 1950s, lining up in a New Zealand schoolyard for the polio needle. New Zealand was as badly affected as Australia, with five polio epidemics from 1914 to 1954, resulting in many deaths and people my age being left with a lingering legacy.

Polio Australia says there are 400,000 Australian survivors of the childhood polio epidemic. At its peak between 1944 and 1954, the virus killed 1000. The highly contagious virus, spread via faeces and nasal mucous, resulted in poor people and those living in overcrowded situations being stigmatised. Then as now, outbreaks were dealt with by closing schools, borders and public facilities like swimming pools. Victims were quarantined and newspapers published a daily tally of polio cases and deaths.

Prof Isaacs compares these stories with the public concern which arose in 2020 about the Covid vaccines, primarily because of the risk of blood clots. He concludes with the ‘greater good’ argument.

“In Australia, a concentration on individual risk at a single point in time ignores the benefits to the community of widespread vaccine uptake.

“History tells us the public can tolerate risk of harm from vaccines when the severity of the disease warrants the risk.”

I don’t know about you, but my second AZ shot is due tomorrow. I’ll run the risk.

More reading:

The Cutter incident

Why borders are important

border-controls — Image courtesy of Department of Primary Industries and Regional Development (WA)

Breaking events in Washington tempted me to change course, but when wise people like Barack Obama and Jacinda Ardern have already had their say, I’m staying with today’s topic.

Before Covid-19, restrictions at Australian border crossings were limited to bio-security controls, primarily on carrying fresh fruit and vegetables and plant materials from one State to another.

Travellers, particularly those who take their households with them (camper trailers, caravans and RVs), should download this detailed booklet.

You’d be as surprised as I was to learn of the many items banned in particular states. The objective is to prevent the spread of pests like fruit fly and plant diseases such as banana bunchy top virus, potato cyst nematode or grape phyloxera.

Pests, diseases and weeds can be spread from one part of Australia to another through the movement of many items, including plant or plant products, fruit and vegetables, animals or animal products, soil and agricultural machinery.

It is probably dangerous to generalise about what’s OK and what’s not, but transporting honey, bananas, live plants and soil between States is a bit of a no-no. If in doubt, ask. And, if you’ve been working on a farm, make sure your boots are free of imported soil.

I do recall tossing some fresh fruit into a quarantine bin before entering Western Australia, which has some of the strictest bio-security measures in the country. Throwing away perfectly good fruit seemed a small price to pay when you understand the risks.

The reason for the zealotry over honey is probably because WA is the only Australian state relatively free of bee diseases, including European foul brood disease (a bee killer). So, that jar of raw honey you bought at a market in country Victoria should be binned at the border, in case there are spores lurking in the untreated honey.

My point is that fair-minded Australians would probably do the right thing to help States safeguard agricultural industries against imported diseases.

So why then are people trying to subvert the border controls imposed to stop the spread of Coronavirus?

Before Christmas, Queensland police turned away more than 100 people who attempted to travel into the State from NSW virus hot spots. Police had ramped up border security on the State’s road crossings and increased compliance checks on travellers undergoing home quarantine.

Chief Superintendent Mark Wheeler told the ABC that 57 vehicles containing 115 people had so far been turned around at the Queensland-New South Wales border since the restrictions were reimposed.

“People who are trying to game the system — we will catch you,” he said.

This week Queensland police commissioner Katarina Carroll branded a tweet by conservative lobbyist Lyle Sheldon as a waste of police resources.

Mr Sheldon posted a tweet, which he later said was meant as a joke, about his “sneaky run across the border and back” and “avoided the CCP [Chinese Communist Party] virus police” in the process.

Police visited Mr Sheldon’s home to question him about the tweet (about his beach run from Coolangatta to Point Danger and back), and left soon after.

The Brisbane Times quoted Commissioner Carroll, who said the tweet was “disappointing” because it involved valuable resources to investigate and clear Mr Shelton.

“He can cross the border because I understand he has a G-Pass. So it was just a funny tweet that, in the end, all it did was take away resources that needed to be in other places.”

Bees in a bottle aside, there have been serious attempts throughout 2020 by people determined to defy Queensland’s border rules. The border has been closed since mid-March, (albeit with a brief re-opening), allowing access only to people with border exemption passes.

Between March and the end of September, Queensland police issued fines totalling $3.5 million to 2,296 people. Fines averaging $1,500 were imposed for breaching a range of Covid-security health directions.

Gold Coast lawyer Bill Potts told 9News it was not surprising that so few people had paid their fines.

“The reality is if you’re prepared to breach the laws there for public safety and the health of the community, you’re exactly the person who won’t pay a fine.“

Commissioner Carroll said “quite a high percentage” of people are also failing to pay their bills for hotel quarantine.

Under Queensland’s COVID regulations, people generate a SPER (State Penalties Enforcement Registry) debt if they do not pay their fines. These will be added to the latest tally, which is significant. According to Queensland Treasury, 1.32 million people owing $376 million are paying off their fines through a repayment arrangement or unpaid community service.

There is also the case of the so-called ‘Logan Trio’, three women who allegedly lied on their Covid paperwork to avoid quarantine after entering Queensland from a Melbourne hotspot. The three have been charged with fraud, with their case set to be heard on January 20.

Meanwhile, many citizens will have found themselves stranded on the wrong side of the border. As it stands, Victorians who have been visiting Queensland for Christmas are able to return to Victoria by a direct flight between Queensland and Melbourne. I should add that if they were still in Melbourne on December 21 they have to be Covid-tested and wait for a negative result before flying home.

For those who came by road, the options are limited, as they cannot drive via New South Wales without applying for a border exemption and risking an expensive hotel quarantine stay on arrival. The alternative is a sprawling detour by road via Camooweal, the Northern Territory and South Australia (to Adelaide) then to Melbourne. The distance is about 5,100kms, compared with 1,766 direct Brisbane to Melbourne by road. Or the 4WD short-cut via Birdsville to Adelaide. Bear in mind there is paperwork involved at all border crossings and rules can change overnight.

These are pesky (and expensive) inconveniences, but where we would you rather be? Our daily cases are considerably less than 1% of those reported in England, the US, Brazil, India, Mexico and dozens of other countries.

Many of us have friends or relatives in England where the new strain of Coronavirus is spiralling out of control. The severe lockdown is at odds with border controls during the first six months of the pandemic, when Brits routinely took holidays to the continent. Non-essential travel between England and Europe has been banned since late October,

Meanwhile, Greater Brisbane is going into a three day lockdown from 6pm tonight to curb the spread of the mutant UK strain. While there was only one new locally acquired case in the past 24 hours (Queensland), New South Wales has 196 active cases including 6 acquired overseas. Victoria has 38 cases (which may explain why they are keeping the border closed to NSW).

Obviously this is a fast-moving story, but we should try to keep up with the news, even when we think we are ‘safe’; for example, this week’s discovery of Coronavirus traces in sewage at locations including Warwick and Stanthorpe.

I read about that in Australia’s first new independent regional daily since 1955, the Warwick-based Daily Journal. The first edition on Monday contained a Covid update, including a checklist of conditions prior to entering the State.

All that aside, if you are coming into Queensland from elsewhere, the entire state is a biosecurity zone for bananas, grape plants, mangoes and sugarcane.

But you knew that, eh?

Why Human Beings Need a Hug

hug-isolation-love — The Hug Patrol. Photo contributed by Arcadia Love

Forgive me, dear readers, for I have sinned (giving a hug in the privacy of my own home). A friend I had not seen for six months came to visit and the impulse to hug was too strong. We did the right thing to a degree, our heads facing away from each other, so the droplets would disperse in the same room, (where other people freely mingle).

You may have seen examples of people not observing the 1.5m COVID-19 physical distancing rule. Sneaks have taken phone footage in Brisbane nightclubs which show people mingling in close quarters and not sitting down to dance, as the Queensland Premier suggested.

The universal advice to maintain a physical distance of 1.5m from another person outside your immediate family makes sense. But it is hard to do and harder still to keep it up over an extended period.

The main reason is that human beings are just not designed to avoid physical contact with others.

New York Times writer Jane Brody writes that “social interaction is a critically important contributor to good health and longevity”.

Referring to a long-term study by Lisa F. Berkman and S. Leonard Syme, Brody said findings drawn from 7,000 participants concluded that “people who were disconnected from others were roughly three times more likely to die during the nine-year study than people with strong social ties”.

Physical contact can mean hugging, as championed by American folk songwriter Fred Small in his catchy ditty, The Hug Song. This version is by Brisbane musicians Donald McKay and Rebecca Wright, who compiled this video exclusively for FOMM. Warning: it’s an ear worm.

Late last year, we moved from a small village where, for a certain proportion of the community, hugging is the first thing you do on encountering friends, whether or not you saw them yesterday or six months ago. These are not perfunctory hugs either, but warm, tight embraces that last, well, sometimes they last longer than one party would prefer. I have it on good authority that the public hugging habit has abated in the village these past few months.

If you were a regular festival-goer in the first part of the new millennium. you might recall the Hug Patrol, initiated at Woodford in 2001 by actor/comedian Arcadia Love. Street performers roamed in small packs through the dusty byways of Woodford Festival, approaching just about anybody with open arms (asking permission first). The Hug Patrol is still turning up at festivals, carnivals, fetes, shows – anywhere where there is a crowd. Arcadia is understandably frustrated with the hug-less nature of 2020, saying that ‘virtual’ hugs are just not the same. The Patrol’s last live gig was at the Northey Street summer solstice in December 2019. The Hug Patrol’s deeds have touched people deeply, as writer Sandy McCutcheon said in a testimonial:

“This extraordinary group of individuals has probably no idea of just what a positive impact they have. I was fortunate to witness (at Woodford) the effect they had on a large group of refugee women from Afghanistan. For women whose lives are in tatters, families are scattered or dead, the rare moment of physicality was of tremendous importance.”

Meanwhile The Conversation this week asked the most obvious question: “why are we all not wearing masks?”

There’s no doubt masks help stop the spread. A World Health Organisation study showed that face masks reduce the risk of infection with viruses such as COVID-19, by 67%, if a disposable surgical mask is used, and up to 95% if specialist N95 masks are worn.

The mask subject comes up often in community choir circles, where rehearsals are mostly still on hold and actual performances are being deferred to 2021. The theory about singers (and you’d have to ask why is it not the same for footballers who sprint 100m to score a try to be then piled upon by team members), aerosols can be spread up to 8m by singers (who don’t so far as I know, spit on the ground, or on the dressing room floor, or do that disgusting nose clearing thing ).

Plainly, a lot of people in Melbourne have not been maintaining physical distancing; nor, it would seem, have they been adhering to medical advice about social gatherings. The critical issue is, if you are feeling at all under the weather but have not been diagnosed, stay at home.

After the first month of the COVID-19 lock-down, the most common response you would get is, “I’m over it”.

Some of us spent 14 days in isolation, but in fairly comfortable circumstances, apart from not being able to leave home (except to walk the dog or buy groceries). I feel for residents in the public housing towers in North Melbourne, who up until today were not even allowed to do that. (One of the nine towers is still in very restrictive lock-down, the others have moved to ‘stage three’, like the rest of Melbourne.)

A Science Alert article on this subject (isolation and its ill-effects), said researchers based in Antarctica found that loneliness could be the most difficult part of the job.

Israeli adventurer and author Yossi Ghinsberg, who survived weeks alone in the Amazon, suffered loneliness, even creating imaginary friends to keep himself company. Which somehow reminded me of that Tom Hanks movie, where he is stranded on a desert island, alone except for a football called Wilson.

The degree to which isolation bothers you depends on your personality type (extroverts hate it). and your peer group. A report from Byron Bay about a ‘doof’ party that attracted thousands of young dance party goers, is an extreme example of how certain age groups find isolation and government-imposed health advice too inhibiting.

On the other hand, if you are a 70+ introvert with absorbing hobbies that can be performed alone in one room (Ed: who could he be talking about), the COVID-19 lock-down might not bother you at all.

So how much physical and social interaction does one have, in a typical day? If you are a checkout operator or a drive-through bottle shop attendant, quite a lot. Unemployed gamer, maybe not.

An academic study involving 7,290 participants was carried out in 2008 by researchers interested in reducing the spread of flu-like diseases. The first large-scale study of its kind, it found that respondents had on average 13.4 physical and non-physical contacts each day. The researchers recruited 7,290 people from eight European countries. They asked participants to keep a diary documenting their physical and non-physical contacts for a single day. Physical contacts included interactions such as a kiss or a handshake. Non-physical contacts, for example, might included a two-way conversation without skin-to-skin contact. The researchers concluded that the study provided a “deeper understanding of the transmission patterns of a hypothetical respiratory epidemic among a susceptible population”.

If you take this study as a ‘norm’, how do these average interactions compare with 1,000 young people at a dance party or, as happened in Auckland on June 14, 43,000 people attending a rugby game?

We are not out of the woods yet, people, hugs or no hugs.

FOMM back pages

Tales of quarantine and homelessness

quarantine-homelessness — Image: Nurses wearing surgical masks during the 1918 Spanish Flu’ pandemic which killed 15,000 Australians and millions worldwide. State Library of Queensland CC

Had it not been for the coronavirus outbreak (the WHO calls it COVID-19), few Australians would have known of Manigurr-ma, a purpose-built accommodation village 30kms from Darwin.

Manigurr-ma, or Howards Springs as it is zoned by Australia Post, was built in 2012 at a cost of $600 million as part of the Ichthys LNG gas project. Developed by infrastructure company Aecom for the multinational INPEX consortium, the village can house up to 3,500 people in 875 accommodation units, each with four rooms. There is a 1,750-place dining hall, a commercial kitchen which can produce 10,000 meals per day, a licensed tavern, a cinema, medical centre and laundry.

For the next fortnight or so, the village will be home to 266 Australians evacuated from the coronavirus epicentre, the Chinese city of Wuhan. Despite assurances that the risk to the general public is minimal, Howard Springs residents are making their opinions known.

After the LNG plant at Howard Springs became fully operational in 2018, the village was closed, after housing 3,500 construction workers at its peak. In May last year, Ichthys LNG Pty Ltd transferred Manigurr-ma to the Northern Territory government at a ‘peppercorn’ rental. A spokesperson for the NT Government told FOMM a ‘have your say’ campaign was carried out last year.

“Proposals were received from a range of parties, including public feedback for the future use of the Village and its assets.

‘‘The various submissions will be considered in the final decision by the Government about how the site and its assets will be used”

FOMM notes that the proposal required submissions to be “commercially viable”.

Given that a shortage of housing is a key issue for Darwin’s homeless population, I hope someone threw that particular hat in the ring.

Quarantine, from the Italian Quarante (meaning ‘forty’), has been around since Old Testament days. The word referred to a rule introduced in Venice that all ships suspected of harbouring people with infectious diseases stood offshore for 40 days.

Several small islands off Venice known as Lazarettos were established in the 1600s when plague was rampant. Some of these off-limits islands were later converted to mental hospitals or convents. But as far as the general populace were concerned, they were, and still are, ghost towns.

Most countries had a place where people with leprosy or plague were banished. China had a well-established policy from 600 AD to detain plague-ridden sailors and foreign visitors, preferably at sea.

North Brother Island in New York’s East River was used for decades as the site of an infectious diseases hospital. A reporter from the New York Post who was recently taken on a guided tour of the now-closed station wrote that the island’s remote location was deemed perfect in the 1880s for a hospital to treat contagious smallpox and typhoid patients.

“Mary Mallon, who earned the name Typhoid Mary by passing the disease to 51 people while working as a cook in Brooklyn and Long Island, was its most infamous tenant. She displayed no symptoms herself, but was quarantined until her death in 1938.”

Sydney’s Quarantine Station at North Head (Manly) took in immigrants who had fallen ill (as well as some residents). As the authors of a book published in 2016 found, some recovered and were released. Some never made it out.

‘Stories from the Sandstone’, published in 2016 by the University of Sydney’s Peter Hobbins, Anne Clarke and Ursula Frederick, chronicled the history of Sydney’s Quarantine Station. The title of the book comes from archaeological discoveries of inscriptions carved into sandstone by some of the 16,000 people kept at North Head between 1830 until its closure in 1984.

In the mid-1880s, infectious illnesses like smallpox, tuberculosis and scarlet fever were common and there was even a recorded case of bubonic plague in 1900. As Dr Hobbins says in the book, as a result of extensive immunisation programmes, effective antibiotics and improvements in the public health system, infectious diseases do not decimate the population as they did in the 1800s or even during the Spanish ‘Flu pandemic of 1918-1919.

The most visible (and possibly the largest), quarantine station in the world in 2020 is the cruise ship Diamond Princess, moored off Japan with its 2,666 guests and 1,045 crew ‘couped (sic) up’ as an ABC report had it, until time dilutes the fear of contagion. Princess Cruises this week confirmed reports of 39 new coronavirus cases aboard the ship, berthed at Yokohama.

“We are following guidance from the Japan Ministry of Health on plans for disembarkation protocols to provide medical care for these new cases,” the website update states.

The Diamond Princess had been due to leave the Japanese port of Yokohama on February 4, but cancelled the cruise on advice from Japanese health authorities.

The cruise ship’s situation fits the definition of ‘quarantine’ – preventing the movement of those who may have been exposed to a communicable disease, but do not have a confirmed medical diagnosis.

The key difference between Coronavirus (now known as COVID-19) and SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome) is that people with Coronavirus are infectious before exhibiting symptoms. This may explain the comparatively higher numbers of people contracting the disease and the overly-cautious approach to quarantine here and abroad.

A Medical Journal of Australia report compiled after the SARS epidemic had abated in 2004 demonstrated the effectiveness of Australia’s border screening. Of the 1.84 million arrivals into Australia during the study period, 794 people were referred for screening to the Australian Quarantine and Inspection Service. Of these, four travellers met the World Health Organisation (WHO) definition for SARS. None of these people were confirmed to have SARS.

The media loves contagion stories about as much as it drools over earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, tsunamis and croc and shark attacks. Are they beating it up? Time will tell. Whatever you read on social media, as of February 13, 2020, 15 Australians had been confirmed as being infected with coronavirus. Five have since recovered.

As usual, the trail of research leading into the history of quarantine stations lured me away from the point I wanted to make.

When the Northern Territory has 12 times the national average incidence of homelessness, how is it there are 875 living units sitting vacant near Darwin (for at least 18 months)?

NT Shelter estimates that 16.5% of Territorians under 16 are experiencing homelessness. The system seems unable to cope, with Shelter’s findings that 48% of people get turned away due to a ‘lack of resources’.

As Australia’s Prime Minister Scott Morrison conceded, we are no closer to Closing the Gap. The policy was announced in 2008 with noble intentions to help bridge the gap between health and welfare outcomes for indigenous compared to non-indigenous Australians. There are no simple answers to the fact that 90% of the Territory’s homeless are indigenous. As a Triple J story revealed, a survey of non-indigenous people in Darwin revealed a lot of ignorance about ‘long-grassers’ – indigenous people who sleep rough.

Larrakia Nation Aboriginal Corporation’s random survey of 300 people found the majority romanticised the notion of sleeping under the stars. Only six people identified a lack of housing, failed public policy and the impact of assimilation and integration policies as reasons for homelessness.

When the last person at Manigurr-ma is cleared to leave, it would be an interesting exercise, at the very least, to trial the centre as a homeless shelter. After all, though homelessness is not contagious, it does have far-reaching effects.