Editor’s Letter – M2 Mar/Apr 2020 Issue
Fade in:
An ominous beat leads us into a darkened living room. A flickering television is the only illumination.
A montage of news reports plays on the screen.
Tom Hanks and his wife have coronavirus. Italy is lock-down. President Trump shuts the borders to European travellers. The NBA suspends the season. Stock market down amid virus concerns. Covid-19 declared pandemic.
We pull back from the television and scan the trashed floor of the living room. Someone left this place in a hurry.
Cut to: The street outside. Night.
The road is clogged with empty cars. An evacuation frozen in time. The streets are empty of people, but scattered possessions linger as testament to the chaos and panic that created this scene.
The beat stops.
A red title appears over the scene: VIRUS 19.
Fade out:
Yeah, I might be a little bit obsessed with B-grade post-apocalyptic movies. I’m not sure what it is. Maybe there’s a bit of a primal thing about cutting out the trivialities of modern life and just getting back to basics while protecting loved ones from zombies, scavengers or warring factions while building up a fortified base, a vege garden and a small kombucha brewing operation. Yes, I’ve given this a lot of thought. One thing I never considered though was the run on toilet paper in apocalyptical times. I guess it’s important, I just didn’t realise it was brawl-it-out-with-other-shoppers-important.
The thing is that I am pretty sure that this is not one of those times where we are all going to have to retreat to our underground bunkers. I don’t want to downplay Covid-19 and I’m not going to present a list of other things that are more likely to kill you than Covid-19 – a punch to the face over the last roll of toilet paper, for example – but I do think that hysteria can be a harmful thing in its own right. The way that we consume information has changed dramatically since the 2003 SARS outbreak and maybe the world is a lot smaller in a way and things are so much more acute in terms of how we read them. This is in no way meant to downplay the gravity of the situation and the fact that people are dying, but we really aren’t at the point where there’s any need to fight with anyone for any form of FMCG. It might seem a bit doom and gloom for a number of industries at the moment and the sharemarket as a side effect, but on the positive side, it’s times like this that create incredible opportunities for investors. Especially those with a long-term outlook. Speaking of investment opportunities, if anyone is interested in funding a B-grade movie, please let me know.
