Are you and your loved ones protected? Is your household or family prepared for the event of a local outbreak in your town or region? The likelihood that a vaccine for the particular strain affecting your community can be produced in time to address the initial wave of sickness in your area is, unfortunately, slim. Therefore, the interim Government advises citizens to take all precautionary measures outlined in literature mailed to households, and in electronic messages on broadcast and narrowcast channels.

Symptoms

Early symptoms are difficult to identify, because easily confused with other extreme forms of behaviour, including psychosis, adolescence, drug use, antagonism, full-blown dissent, or adherence to fundamentalist beliefs or cults. Evidence is emerging these groups may be more susceptible than some others to contracting the condition – certainly it is known the young are more likely to succumb initially.

The most important diagnostic identifier in a subject is a significant and sudden change in character. Anyone fully compromised is unlikely to have access to long-term memory except in a flickering, unreliable form. Abilities and talents dependent on very fine motor skills and long-term muscle memory, as well as those founded on the accumulation of knowledge and experience over many years, are unlikely to function normally. A radical change in behaviour can often denote the beginning of the illness.

Those infected, aware their condition is irreversible, and their fate potentially dreadful and lonely, are prone to hiding their sickness from anyone they believe may properly go to the authorities. Family members and friends should be alert, therefore, to the sudden adoption of new and very different lifestyle choices that could represent an attempt to disguise the loss of normal faculties.

Cure

There is, as yet, no known cure, though Government is working with the pharmaceutical industry as rapidly as possible to this end. Of all those who have succumbed, none have been rehabilitated. Therefore neither the seriousness of the condition, or the importance of immediately contacting relevant Government service providers can be underestimated. Once begun, the tragic reality is that at the present time there is no reversal of the advance  in its insidious transformation. For this reason, it is imperative that instructions from authorities be observed without question or undue hysteria.

Election Postponed

In a free and transparent country like this one with an open, democratic system of Government, it is troubling to all when, at a time of general emergency, the normative, traditional course of our century-old political system must be temporarily superseded in the name of the security of the nation. Nonetheless, Sittings of the caretaker Parliament, both House of Representatives and Senate also, have unfortunately been suspended in the short term, until such a time as the safety of the people’s representatives can be assured.

Further details are emerging on the tragic outbreak  that has led to these unprecedented but necessary outcomes. A full public statement containing the detailed explnation of recent political events the public deserve, will be made by representatives of the interim Government as soon as is humanely possible. The Department of Interior Affairs assures citizens that the former Deputy Prime Minister, now caretaker Prime Minister, has the full confidence of the public service in conducting the affairs of State in a temporary fashion, during the interim, and for the foreseeable future.