Politicians, take note this Anzac Day: coronavirus is a pandemic. It is not a war | Paul Daley

Stand by for speeches conflating the Australian experience at Gallipoli with the mitigation of a health and economic threat

Our politicians have been insisting this Anzac Day will be “unlike any other”.

Yes, isolation will prevent most from attending traditional services. Commemoration, as with so much else today, will be largely virtual – a matter of mind over place, imagination over reality.

Related: How Spanish flu nearly ripped apart Australia's fledgling federation | Paul Daley

Where are the memorials to the dead of the last big pandemic, to those who saved so many and died in the process?

Related: Australia’s leaders, its media and some historians persist in talking up the big Anzac game | Paul Daley

Continue reading...