Your Money or Your Life?
I live in Melbourne, Australia. We suffered our second wave of COVID-19 outbreak back in July and have just come out of a hard lockdown after 112 days. At the most extreme, we were allowed 1 hour of outdoors exercise a day and only 1 person per household being allowed to do shop for essential food once a day.
In a city of 5 million people, we recorded over 700 cases of infections a day at our peak. This seems like an incredibly low number to force a virtual shutdown of a city. It has certainly created a lot of controversy. But the undeniable fact is, it has worked. Our 14-day average is now sitting at just above 2 cases per day. This means our tracking and tracing volumes are no longer overwhelmed to the point of giving up. Our hospital system is no longer over-stretched. We should now be well-equipped to put out infection spot fires that will inevitably still continue.
Even so, we are still taking a cautious approach. We still have a 25km-from-home travel limit and our in-home visits to see friends and family are still limited at the moment. It is almost as if our Premier clamped down hard so that we could come out of this second lockdown in time for same kind of COVID-Normal Christmas.
In contrast, the US now has more than a million coronavirus cases and is heading towards 250,000 casualties. It is also gut-wrenching to watch Europe going back up in flames with France and Germany just announcing new national lockdowns.
I have been intrigued by the vastly different pandemic management responses by different countries. Some have openly chosen to prioritise the economy over health. Some simply don’t have the resources to cope with a shutdown. However, even when resources are available/attainable, they seem to have the view that some lives just don’t matter as much as the overall economy. Others like New Zealand and Australia have taken a much more aggressive Life-over-Economy approach. A great number of countries have yo-yoed between the two extremes, opening up and closing down, often pushing the stop button just-too-late in hindsight.
It’s in crisis times like this pandemic that our politicians and our governments really reveal their true colours about the values they hold dear.
Melbourne’s handling of the pandemic, especially our steadfast and unwavering strategy to enforce lockdown, has even drawn praise from Dr Anthony Fauci. He also commented that he wouldn’t dare to publicly suggest similar lockdown measures in the US. “If I were to use the words shutdown and lockdown, I’d be in serious trouble … they’d probably throw tomatoes at me,” he said.
Australia has enviably been able pursue this path in part because of the bolstered economic safety net the Government introduced to support people who lost their jobs and those whose employment has been significantly impacted by COVID-19.
Whilst it has not been without frustrations, the Melbourne lockdown protests were nowhere as dramatic as those in the US, France or Italy. We have gritted our teeth through the Lockdown and come out the other side. By some estimates, shutting down Melbourne was going to cost the Government $7.5 billion alone.
Bluntly speaking, Australia chose Life over Money.
It’s an agonising choice — having to decide between the lessor of the two evils. Either way, the choice will come with some long-lasting ripple effects that will be felt in the years to come.
It’s a hard-enough task when we are trying to walk the fine balance between competing priorities in our own lives, imagine what is on the minds of government officials trying to walk the tightrope of money Vs life.
What would you do if you were the decision maker setting the government policy? Just as our governments’ decisions reveal what they value, what we think very much reflects our fundamental view on money Vs life.
Our politicians’ approach to pandemic management and our personal views reflect our core value system.
We each experience the impacts of our governments’ decisions in our own way— be they impacts on our finances, our sense of freedom or our wellbeing. Our personal experiences inevitably colour our view on the ‘rightness’ of our governments’ decisions.
But we should rise above that. Regardless of our personal circumstances and how we have personally been impacted by COVID-19, we should also let our conscience guide us. Our conscience and our value system should anchor what we believe is for the greater good.
I’ll admit, I’ve vacillated between the let-it-rip vs shut-everything-down extremes. It’s been frightening see my personal attitudes change as my personal circumstances shifted and sobering to reflect just how much more work I have to do on my self-development. To be clear, we each have our own views. There is no right or wrong.
So, wherever you are, do you agree with what your Government is doing, the decisions they have made about your life or your money on your behalf?
Ask yourself…
What should you value more, your life or your money?
What would you choose if forced to decide — your money or your life?
What kind of society do you want to live in?
