If you can’t have the Olympics the next best thing Is Covid 19. It works in reverse though so the higher score you get, the worse you do. No score at all means you win. So, for dying you score a gold medal. New cases is worth silver. Infection is bronze. Strangely, Australia will probably achieve a similar position in this tally as in the Olympics, coming in behind the usual suspects, US, China, Europe.
Surprising improvers (?), so far are Japan and South Korea, with China after starting badly, making better progress downwards.
Naturally, you can’t make light of calamity. The British, whose sense of humour was improved by the setbacks of The Second World War were not able to build on that with subsequent disasters and their humour has been in steep decline.
Humour may be employed as a coping mechanism sometimes, but with Covid 19, there are no such escape hatches. You have to be deadly serious to survive. Day dreaming, joking is off the menu.
It must be in the National Psyche or perhaps it is just in the personal one that tallies hold the eye. The Olympic tallies are one. We love tables. Footie tables. Who is in the top eight. Who will take the wooden spoon.
I noticed today a second consecutive day is lower new cases for NSW and felt a sense of pride and triumph and hope for greater achievement.
Snakes and ladders upside down.
Watch this space. Have we ever watched a space so much?
This space takes the cake.