On Thursday residents of Melbourne will pass the sombre milestone of having spent 200 days in lockdown since the country first shut down in March last year.

In Sydney, case numbers have remained persistently above 400 with multiple cases infectious in the community and today stricter lockdown measures came into place limiting people’s movement even further.

18 months after Coronavirus reared its ugly head, Australians who initially sailed through the pandemic as the envy of the global community now peer enviously overseas at successful vaccination programs, life returning to normal and a broadly effective management of living with the virus.

Today on Please Explain, Nathanael Cooper is joined by The Age’s city editor Bianca Hall to talk about lockdown fatigue and parochialism.