As retailers and other businesses call for a loosening of restrictions, Tom Petty sang it and we’re living it. Yep, the lead singer who used to front the well-named group called the Heartbreakers got it right when he sang “The Waiting is the Hardest Part!”

Overnight, US stocks fell as reporting season partly revealed what potential damage these Coronavirus containment policies might have on the economy. Clearly, specific businesses and industries are being affected differently.

This chart of Amazon over the past six months shows this company’s share price has actually risen during the Coronavirus crash of the stock market!

Amazon (AMZN)

That top of the hump was February 19, before the crash took out nearly all stocks, but look how Amazon has rebounded as a locked-up world learns to live and buy online! This chart also shows you why retailers want to get back in the game and why they want their customers freed from their houses and their online rivals.

This next chart shows that our waiting in our homes and maintaining our social distancing has brought great results. However, waiting for a release from home detention and heading down the track to work again is hard for a lot of people. And this is the great, next challenge for the Prime Minister — when does he ease up on the restrictions?

I’ve revealed it here before that Austria and Denmark have been opening up their economy this week and these countries haven’t been performing as well as us when it comes to infections and deaths. In fact, we’re right down there with China and South Korea in keeping a lid on the threat of the Coronavirus.

Another country that’s been doing well in Europe with the virus is Germany. It’s had worse results compared to Australia but it is loosening up on its restrictions.

Small shops in Germany will open next week but it won’t really be back to normal, with social distancing rules to be maintained and Chancellor Angela Merkel asking Germans to wear masks while shopping and maintain the 1.5 metre social distancing rule.

Going back to work and what it will really mean is bound to be a ‘suck-it-and-see’ or ‘trial-and-error’ job. But the Government has two reasons to be keen to let businesses reopen and allow workers to go back to work.

First, it will limit the damage to the economy. Second it will reduce the big budget hit to the country’s finances but it puts the pressure on the Morrison Government to think ‘outside the square’ to reduce the chances of there being a backfiring second wave of worrying infections.

What would thinking ‘outside the square’ mean? Rules baby! Rules, which a lot of Aussies aren’t always comfortable with.

Like what?

The Government accesses supplies of masks and in shopping centres and on public transport it’s insisted that shoppers and travellers have to wear them! Police keep fining dumb Aussies who don’t respect social distancing.

Why did Hong Kong beat the Coronavirus so professionally, while a country like Italy struggled? Hong Kong has learnt from their scary brush with SARS in 2003. Globally, SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome) infected over 8,000 and killed 774, including a huge 299 in Hong Kong.

The one positive from our excessive brush with the Coronavirus (and the overload of news coverage that we’ve learnt to live with) is that it should have made us wiser about how we have to change to beat this damn threat to life, our income and our sanity!

Everything I’m suggesting as impositions on Aussies to cope with the human and economic threats of the Coronavirus is so anti-P. Switzer but we’ve never had a threat like this before and extraordinary times calls for extraordinary responses.

Personally, I’d wear masks on a plane, in a shopping centre and on the beach to let my life start to approach normality. And thank God the virus doesn’t survive at sea, so I could swim at Bondi, Mt. Martha, Glenelg, Burleigh and Cottesloe like a normal Aussie. One day being a normal Aussie will apply to our life again but as Tom Petty and I would argue: “Waiting is the hardest part!”

And finally, waiting is a problem of Homer Simpson proportions: