WALLSEND MP Sonia Hornery summed it up t when the anxiety around COVID-19 returning to the Hunter began to reach fever pitch late last week.
"Can we end the incessant rumour mill," she asked on social media at the weekend.
"I know I am sick to death of responding to message about rumours, as are my staff and other offices."
For the record, Hunter New England Health on Monday was clear that no cases had emerged in the region yet. It understandably remains exasperated at a near-constant stream of such rumours when it has the enormous task of the vaccine roll-out to preoccupy it sufficiently.
Nothing moves faster than an alarming idea on social media, perhaps. But it is instructive as to how the road out of the pandemic requires a shift towards expert advice rather than hearsay.
"This is not a time to cut corners," Premier Gladys Berejiklian told the media on Monday, when 112 cases were added to the Sydney outbreak that continues to clamp down on NSW.
"This is a time to stay at home.
"We have a collective responsibility to make sure we do the right thing ... it only takes a few people to do the wrong thing at the wrong time for us to be in lockdown for longer than we want to."
There is nothing exciting or glamorous about staying at home, getting tested when required and protecting those around you. Whatever novelty there was understandably wore off sometime last year. But that does not make it any less important, valorous or crucial in ending a pandemic we hope will be one of a kind in our lives.
Equally, though, there is something truly dangerous about muddied waters around the state of the situation we all face.
That situation is perilous enough without exaggeration, addition or enhancement. As mask rules in cars show, grey areas abound without conspiracy theories flourishing, distracting and even undermining urgent messages from health authorities.
With the delta variant's virulence, time between thought and action matters.
Vaccines and obedience to public health orders are the two paths that will lead NSW out of lockdown conditions. While not all of us can access the former, the latter is a matter of putting the many before the desires of the few. Broadly, we all know what to do. It is a matter only of doing it.
