Though I grew up with plastic Christmas trees, a “real one” is so much nicer. But on the other hand, I don’t like the idea of chopping down a tree for only a couple of weeks. I also live in a small apartment, so a big tree can look out of place. So, for me, a small tree suits best, and also if it’s living.

Guess what I found at the supermarket this morning?

Aside from the supermarket, I popped into the shops in the CBD today. As you’ll see from the photograph, there’s a few people wearing masks, but not many.

Though not as crowded as a peak hour tram on Bourke Street in Melbourne, the light rail trip through the city today was also reasonably crowded.

A couple of colleagues from Melbourne were in Sydney this week, and they too remarked at the lack of prevention. “I was the only person at the airport wearing a mask”, one told me.

“Everyone has forgotten everything”, I said to some friends over dinner tonight. “I’m worried about what will happen after Christmas”, I added, mentioning the post-Thanksgiving breakout in the United States.

The US is clearly in a different position to Australia in many respects, and that gives us a degree of protection.

But still I worry we might be at risk again, as we go out shopping for Christmas, and get together with family members and friends. I’m not an epidemiologist, of course, so I can’t be sure of how a further outbreak might occur. But, still, I’m worried, as I think we haven’t quite got the balance between rights and responsibilities for our own and other’s people’s health.

I might need to pull out the facemasks I bought a few months ago and start wearing them again.