This is well away from a city so he gets the insurance work. But otherwise you're right - from well before the virus. Here, the specialist antique book dealer, the electronics shop that could repair anything and had knowledgeable staff, the ABC bookshop that could order in anything and the jeweller who could repair anything.

Add the uniform and dress shop the catholic church knifed (waited until she bought over $100k worth of material for the catholic school uniforms, then told the parents they could only buy from the school shop), a computer shop closed by doubling the rent every six months, then vandalising the home it was run out of, for competing with one owned by a catholic, that closed anyway (a staffer would tell you about her love of the "patron saint of throats" and that she used to work at the abattoir... cutting animals throats), and the dry cleaners who were evicted for the most petty reason - it was thriving. But if catholicism seizes control of the businesses there's more tithes, to fund the priest who drove 30km every Wednesday to visit a woman who kept giving birth, and the monk who visited 'daddysearch' on the library computer. See! It's to the glory of God... This place has gone downhill in ways not immediately obvious. So it is for the country - and here comes a war.

On that note, I know the vast sums in Australia's bank accounts are the subject of geopolitical considerations, as they can fund a British Commonwealth war effort, and what various countries might do about it. Proof we are sleepwalking into war is that we are doing nothing about it - reality conforms with fads within your favoured political group, if it calls itself a party or a religion.

There's no attempt at prohibiting future foreign investment and making buying out foreign shareholders attractive for a company, thereby moving some of that money (a third will make us a much smaller target, and if the yanks want to use inflation to reduce vast numbers of their people to poverty, that's where it can come from), giving government emergency control of production without threats to security; no attempt at reinstating protective tariffs, so all supply lines are within the borders, despite any naval officer able to show you pictures of civilian container ships with a 40' container whose roof lifts up and there's one or two missiles, and what looks like a stack of containers houses anti-satellite missiles, again for what look like cruise ships, and all ships can give false ID - it doesn't matter if there's 4-5 thousand people on board - they will be sunk without warning. So will all super yachts, as both the yanks and Russians offer their elites torpedoes and anti-shipping missiles. Yes, on private yachts, that can also carry special forces. The same goes for what looks like civilian aircraft. Nothing will be imported.