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It says something of Australia's cheerful parochialism that it was only when local sport leagues suggested matches could be played behind closed doors that the potential impact of coronavirus fully resonated with some.
The sick and the elderly dying at alarming rates in China, Japan, Italy and elsewhere from a disease with no known cure or inoculation and a startling rate of infection?
Entire countries in lockdown, some of them without even having had time for the compulsory pre-apocalyptic toilet paper purchases?
That sounds terrible.
But not being able to attend the Richmond versus Collingwood blockbuster at the MCG, or rub shoulders with your mates at the Eels in the NRL or a Sydney FC A-League match?
The threat is real!
So a worried nation turned its gaze to the Italian Serie A, the Indian Wells tennis tournament, various F1 Grands Prix (although, rather conveniently, not our own) and other postponed events.
The subsequent suspension of all NBA games only confirmed a reality we were trying hard to avoid: locked stadiums or abandoned games could — more than likely would — happen here.
The natural Australian reaction to just about anything short of a full-blown chainsaw massacre in a sports stadium is black humour.
So we laughed that a stadium lock-out would give the Gold Coast Suns an unfair advantage, given their experience in the conditions; we suggested Manly fans should be exempted because they have been in self-imposed quarantine on Sydney's North Shore for decades and we ventured that Melbourne City's average attendance wouldn't change.
Boom. Tish.
It is unlikely such bad jokes were being told around the boardrooms of Australia's major leagues, however, especially once it was realised insurance policies were unlikely to cover the loss in gate takings should fans be shut out.
For all the precautionary bans on players signing autographs or giving high-fives and despite clubs isolating their football departments, an ominous sense of dread hangs over Australian sport.
Indeed it would be not too dramatic to venture that not since World War II has the possibility that Australia's major sports could be heavily disrupted for a prolonged period been greater.
Yet — and this is why we have entered such a strange zone — there is also a possibility that not very much will change at all outside the precautions that have been taken in the past week.
Such uncertainty creates the vacuum in which panic thrives, as those who are now cautiously rationing their last roll of Sorbent three-ply will attest.
So as the NRL season begins and the AFL season approaches, we wait to see whether those who fearfully hoarded bog rolls, pasta and flour will avoid large and potentially infectious crowds.
Or, more bizarrely, will those whose panic purchases expressed a morbid fear of the virus blithely enter stadiums with all sorts of tactile facilities because they fear missing the footy more than contracting COVID-19?
The crowd figures for the opening weekends of the NRL and AFL will tell a tale — if matches go ahead.
Meanwhile, we continue to observe the impact the virus has had on international sport, including those blazer-wearing ostriches of the International Olympic Committee, who refuse to even consider the prospect that the Tokyo Games could be cancelled even as they abandon their own medical conference in Monaco.
In the US, sports teams that generally allow the media enviable access to players closed their locker rooms and gave American reporters a taste of what their less-entitled colleagues elsewhere experience.
Although not before LeBron James had said he would not play to an empty stadium, a statement he later recanted when it occurred to him the crowds would be banned for his own wellbeing.
James did not seem to realise it would only take one positive test from an active player to force the NBA's postponement — the fraught situation which now confronts our major sports.
AFL readying itself for coronavirus
Which brings us back to Australian sports' strange new philosophical dilemma: If Richmond plays Carlton at an empty MCG next Thursday night, does it make a sound?
Notionally you would think TV rightsholders would be unfazed, given those who don't attend matches would be likely to watch them at home.
But does a match without crowd atmosphere have the same viewing appeal as a frenzied blockbuster?
Worse, would the bellowing commentators quarantined in studios feel obliged to screech even more loudly to fill the silence — a frightening prospect for fans of Channel Seven's Friday night AFL coverage particularly.
Least affected will be betting agencies and fans of the ever-burgeoning fantasy leagues, who would still have the contests and the data that fuel their interests.
Meanwhile, a fan lockout or season postponement presents an even more shuddering prospect for the administrators of professional sport than short-term revenue loss.
What if the heavily addicted club membership-buying, merchandise-clad supporters use their free days to ride a bicycle, prune the rose bushes, watch their local team at a suburban park or — shudder — spend time with loved ones?
What if they find they quite enjoy their weekends without the stress and anxiety of a close game decided by a controversial decision and the ear-shattering noise of the "fan experience"?
What if they are somewhat relieved their viewing habits are no longer linked with the contemptible behavioural excesses of the type of player who uses a school visit to form a liaison with a teenage student?
Perhaps the worst result of a lockout would not be that fans cannot live without attending professional sport, but that they realise they can.
Topics: health, diet-and-nutrition, diseases-and-disorders, infectious-diseases-other, epidemics-and-pandemics, australian-football-league, rugby-league, nrl, basketball, sport, motor-sports, respiratory-diseases, australia
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