There have been choppers circling above south-west Sydney. I’ve heard them as I take my kids to local parks during the day. I’ve heard them as I try to switch off for the night and get some much-needed sleep. The heavy whirring has been an ominous reminder – though not about the pandemic so much as the long arm of the state. I haven’t seen the army yet, though I’m half expecting to see tanks rolling down the Hume any day now.
What has been a more potent reminder for me of what we’re facing is actually knowing two people who tested positive for the Delta variant of Covid-19.
Coincidentally, both men are named Michael. One is in his 50s and lives in the inner west; the other is in his 30s and lives in my suburb in south-west Sydney. The former lives with Jack, his pet dog, and works from home; the latter lives with his mother, in her early 60s, and works in traffic services.
Inner west Michael got over his bout of Covid at home, with the mild flu-like symptoms disappearing almost as quickly as they came. He attributes his easy recovery to sheer luck as well as vaccination, as he already had one shot of AstraZeneca. South-west Michael ended up fighting for his life in the ICU. He had not yet been vaccinated.
“Like a lot of people, I never believed I could get Covid,” he messaged back when I asked him how he was faring. “I would never wish on anyone what I have been through.” After 21 days of isolation, finally able to breathe again without a respirator, Michael received “the best news ever”: he was also no longer infectious and able to be discharged from hospital to continue his recovery at home.
The difference between the two men’s trajectories couldn’t be more stark. But there are a few things they have in common. Neither knows how he caught it, and contract tracers were unable to work out the sources of their infections. Both felt they got the runaround when it came to care.
But south-west Michael had by far the worst experience of care as well as illness. He initially turned up at the local hospital with immense pain in his gut. “I’m pretty sure people who test positive shouldn’t be sent back home, especially with no medication and other people living with them,” he wrote on his Facebook at the time. His mother and girlfriend later tested positive, though neither were as badly affected.
Michael has long been in the habit of posting live video updates for his family and friends, and he kept it up while in hospital. Some were distressing. He is a healthy young man, after all, yet required intubation for high-flow oxygen to help him breathe. For a while there it seemed as though it was touch and go. I was moved each time he signed off with “God bless you all”, after urging everyone to get vaccinated.
What struck me watching Michael’s videos these past few weeks was not just his perseverance and the gratitude he felt, but also his frustrations with the lack of continuity of care and how dehumanising his experience was. “The last 21 days all I’ve had is astronauts surrounding me, all covered from head to toe … it’s going to be good to see normal people again.”
Of course, our frontline healthcare workers are working their guts out and require more resources and support during this time of crisis, especially given how exposed they are. But patient-centred and humane care is just as important as ever. We need to hear community concerns as well as patients’ voices, which is how we keep building trust. The system should serve all of us. It should meet the needs of healthcare workers as well as the community.
While Michael was in the ICU, vaccinations in south-west Sydney have ramped up. Now that he’s out of hospital, he will have better access to vaccination. Walk-in and mobile clinics are being rolled out by the south-western Sydney local health district. Mobile clinics are being held in locations significant to communities, including Wat Phrayortkeo Dhammayanaram, the Lao Buddhist temple in Edensor Park. Last week I visited the new clinic near my home, operating out of Bankstown sports club, and noted its huge capacity. As I walked away I wondered why we didn’t do this months ago, instead of squandering so much valuable time.
There have been pleas for more empathy for the residents of south-west and western Sydney as these areas are still disproportionately burdened by the lockdown and case numbers. But empathy is useless if it’s of the “thoughts and prayers” variety. Given the way Delta is affecting younger people like Michael in the Canterbury-Bankstown local government area, ensuring there are more vaccinations here has been a step in the right direction.
Labor’s proposal of $300 payments for fully vaccinated people is worth considering. Offering carrots rather than bringing out big old gnarly sticks will almost certainly get us closer to where we need to be.
In the meantime, given what is happening right now in Sydney, we need to keep taking the social determinants of health into account, since these factors clearly influence Covid’s spread. It’s a trajectory that will only continue and keep going well into our not-fully-vaccinated future.
Sheila Ngoc Pham is a writer in public health, media and the arts. She lives on Darug land in south-west Sydney with her husband and two children
