AustLit

'Vaccine comparisons. Mass protests. Interstate sniping. Quarantine complaints. Community scapegoating. The pandemic soundtrack closes around us like an ever-tightening girdle; each new statistic and flash of opinion and political obfuscation turns the screw further. The daily press conferences have become morbid viewing, sound clips looping on endless repeat, channels of doom. As the miasma invades my psyche I realise it’s not the lockdown or even the pandemic causing the greatest distress; it’s the dissent emanating like scattershot from the calamity’s core. Everywhere I look, it seems, there is something ready to flay my already-scorched nerves.' (Introduction)