Virus to be 'stopped in its tracks' by state premier of South Australia.

Last weekend's front page Covid story led off its third paragraph with: 'Friday marked another grim milestone ...' .

Bodies piling up in the streets blocking the view of jaunty kangaroos bouncing along in the distance? Black-hatted cart drivers, medieval-style, yelling 'Bring out your dead'?

No. The sentence continued:

' ... with 97 new cases recorded.'

97 Covid infections in New South Wales is another grim milestone?

More than half of Australia - 14 million people - are currently under house arrest.

No, wait. It has just gone 3 o'clock Tuesday. The following breaking news just hit the ticker (the radio speaker in my case):

South Australia has recorded a new locally acquired case on Tuesday as the state is plunged into a full lockdown.

One new case - later revised up to four - and the entire population of South Australia has been placed in lockdown. So add almost two million more people to the 14 million above. The South Australian premier, greedily pursuing his fifteen minutes of Winston Churchill-style fight-them-on-the-beaches grit-laden fame, grated out in his press conference: ' ... we will stop this virus dead in its tracks ...' , repeating the fighting words in his summary as if to ram home his self-imagined Winstonian moment.

Who needs a vaccine? This man can stop Covid-19 literally in its tracks!

Meanwhile a man in Sydney warned the public last week that shopping would be 'carefully scrutinised'.

'The question will be ... what's your reasonable excuse for being here? You don't need that pair of shoes today.'

The man was - is - New South Wales assistant police commissioner Tony Cooke. A month or so ago, a woman in Adelaide warned people attending a football match that they should 'duck' (i.e., dive) if the ball came towards lest they be infected by ball-dwelling virus particles. The woman was - is - South Australia's chief health officer. A few months earlier, another woman - in Queensland - said that 'Queensland hospitals were for Queenslanders', barring sick or injured people from across the border who might be minutes away from a Queensland hospital, but hours from one in their own state. The woman was - is - Queensland's premier. A mother lost her baby due to the literal interpretation of that directive.

Complete and utter hysteria, combined with nasty, brutish political point-scoring - and a kind of civic cruelty never before seen in this country. The stoic Australian mateship quality and that ingrained scepticism of unhinged authority that has been innate to the Australian character since colonial days is threatened - perhaps forever. Would you want to be in the trenches with this class of people?

A crisis brings out the best in some, but in the bureaucrat class it now brings out the worst. And the politicians just voted themselves a pay rise even as thousands of small businesses crumble around them.