Canberra architect Philip Leeson has a raging anger against politicians whom he accuses of rushing to relax the rules and putting old people - like his father who died of COVID last week - even more at risk.
"Our governments were mad keen to throw caution to the wind - to relax rules about checking in; allowing people to go back to bars and nightclubs," Mr Leeson said on the day of his father's funeral.
"They didn't understand the seriousness of allowing normal activity to resume.
"All of a sudden, the definition of 'close contact' changed overnight. Talk about confusing.
"That sudden shift really stunned me. There was also the delay about getting booster shots.
"All these things frustrated me."
His father, Ashley, died in a nursing home in Griffith on January 20. The last days of his life were a desperately sad journey through a health system stretched to the limit (and perhaps beyond) by the rising numbers of infections.
The son does not blame staff members but he does blame "governments".
He reserves his greatest anger for the government of NSW under the leadership of Dominic Perrottet.
On December 15, Mr Perrottet announced the relaxation of restrictions. The ACT government also relaxed restrictions but later.
The drive from leaders was to open the economy by moving away from the toughest rules of lockdown.
But the other side of that decision, according to Mr Leeson, resulted in making vulnerable people more vulnerable.
He said that people like his parents in care homes might be visited by 10 different people through a day, and those visitors - cleaners and carers and the like - were out in the community where Omicron was on the rise.
Mr Leeson felt that the decision-makers only saw one side: "All politicians get a disinfected view of the world. They don't see what's going on."
The father, Ashley Leeson, lived with his wife Edna in a shared room in the home. He was diagnosed with COVID on January 13. She was diagnosed a few days later but had no symptoms. She is still alive.
The husband was taken to hospital and, according to his son, initially put on an intravenous drip because he was badly dehydrated.
That night, though, at 10pm, the patient was sent back to the nursing home where no intravenous drip was available. His health then declined.
The hospital said later that "the decision made to return the patient to his residential care was the most clinically appropriate decision and not COVID related or capacity issue".
Philip Leeson spent 26 hours with his father, the last 26 hours of the father's life.
"His head turned gently to the side and he shut his eyes," the son said.
Ashley Leeson was 96 and Philip Leeson accepts that his father "had a good innings".
But that doesn't alter the anger he feels at what he sees as the rush to relax the rules without accepting the consequences in terms of increased risk to more vulnerable people.
He thinks politicians wanted good headlines in December. They did not want a "Christmas cancelled" narrative.
"I feel frustrated because Christmas was coming and politicians wanted good news stories - but we know what COVID can do to people," he said.
Mr Leeson is also enraged by anti-vaxxers whom he thinks are clogging up COVID wards because of the choice they made not to get protection from the virus.
"How can we allow a hospital system to collapse because of idiots. This is stupid," the bereaved son said.
He says that a nurse told him that his father would be sent home from the hospital because of a shortage of beds in both the general and the COVID wards.
The detail of that is not known. It may have been a medical decision that Mr Leeson was in his last hours anyway so other, more endangered, patients should get priority. Doctors have to make these kinds of impossible calculations when resources are limited.
All the younger Mr Leeson knows is that his father went from a hospital which had top-of-the-range medical equipment back to his care home where the medical equipment was less sophisticated. At the end of his life, he was shuttled from his home to the hospital and back to the home.
In the end, Mr Leeson is relieved that his father did not die in hospital "with all the noise and distraction".
Mr Leeson's 92-year-old mother Edna is still in the nursing home, vaguely aware that she is now a widow.
Despite the end, the son is grateful for the life his father lived.
"He'd had a good life but I'll miss him," he said.
"I'll miss those chats I had with him. I'll miss sharing things with him.
"He was a lovely old fella."
