Lockdowns, Exclusion and Resilience: Our first Pandemic Related Studies

Abstract

It’s hard to believe that the COVID-19 pandemic has been with us for more than a year. While vaccine rollouts and the impacts of emerging strains of the virus vary markedly around the world, in Australia our borders remain closed (for most of us), keeping loved ones and family members apart. Even returning Olympians are in extended quarantine as they pass through the Covid ‘red zones’ to their home-towns around Australia (2021, ABC news).  Concerns about double standards arise as famous actors and other celebrities enter and leave Australia, while family members are denied permission to cross boarders to see dying loved ones. ‘Fortress Australia’ is riven with inequalities and vulnerabilities that have always existed in our society, but are experienced during the pandemic in ways never before realised or imagined.