Victorians. Today you are the world’s first people who have faced and defeated a Covid-19 Wave 2 with statistical validation.

Your geographically small State relative to the rest of Australia, is its second-most populous. Your capital city Melbourne, sprawls around a bay dotted by communities ethnically diverse—some from the 19-year Global War on Terror—with all the communal, cultural and communications variables that brings. Your regional areas boast a proud diversity too part-dairy, part-agriculture, part-fishing and part-mine.

On August 5, 2020, your State found itself on an exponential trajectory of Covid-19 cases that peaked at 725 before you locked down and placed Melbourne under nightly curfew.

Around that time, the United Kingdom faced a similar tally. But you, not they, immediately limited your travel from home to one kilometre and your time for exercise to one hour outdoors. You closed your non-essential businesses, eateries and pubs. You wore masks and otherwise stayed home. And in doing so, you still endured historical malaises in mental and domestic wellbeing. You did all this for almost three months.

Today, you have reported 0 new Covid-19 cases and 0 Covid-19 deaths.

Today, you can celebrate the hope of reclaiming your lives while the United Kingdom, Europe, the United States of America, the Indian Subcontinent, Africa and the Middle East face daily Covid-19 case numbers now trending into the tens of thousands. You saw it coming. You sacrificed your daily routines and knuckled down to reality, while these other continents and nations did not.

It matters not whether you complained, remained stoic, smiled, supported one another, cried, screamed or endured mental pain—to all of you who accepted the laws required of you in lockdown and therefore formed a true community: This is your victory.

To those who did not: To those who instead, did everything to derail, obstruct, demean and destruct your State’s lockdown—this victory is not yours. But this does not mean that the future guaranteed by your fellow Victorians is now not yours to accept and relish too.

To you the naysayers, negativists, media con artists, political agitators and wannabe influencers I do not doubt that you have suffered—accounting for your behaviour. Whether it be out of fear, self-doubt, anxiety, depression, anger, narcissism or some other form of clinical condition you suspected was there—now is the time to seek help.

Every war has its casualties. Every war has its patriots. Every war has its cowards.

To those who have acted contrary to the public good in this fight against an untreated, massively contagious and deadly virus—whether for perceived fame or economic enrichment—do not rejoice in the discomfort you caused your fellow Victorians.

Your 15-minutes are now over.

To all other Victorians, your time in the limelight has only just begun. Look after each other, enjoy the bumper holiday shopping season that’s coming—open your businesses to all with a smile making customer and employee safety your first priority.

Covid-19 needs a vaccine and it may yet take another eight months to come. Victorians, till then, your war goes on—hopefully one now the rest of Australia will join you in. But you have the enemy on the run.

Keep Covid-19 at bay, do everything you can to keep its doorway into your lives closed and it will be defeated.

Today is your Zero Day.

© 2020 Adam Parker.