Outside a small neat house in the suburb of Lidcombe, a plastic bag over the door handle was the only sign of trouble within.

Knock. Knock. An old woman in a nightie and a face mask opened the door a crack.

Receiving the care package, she broke down in tears. The contagion mask muffled her words and sobbing breath.

"You're the lady on the poster," she said. "You brought the paracetamol?"

"And the long-life milk."

Lynda Voltz, the state MP for the seat of Auburn, has been dropping off care packages to over-75s in the electorate. Twenty yesterday, she said, and 20 more today. This morning they had 10 phone calls before 10am: Rice and beans for an El Salvadorian couple; Paracetamol and long-life milk for a Russian woman; toilet paper for a suspicious Serbian woman who lived at the top of a walk-up housing commission flat.

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Whatsapp Lynda Voltz delivering a care package.

"How much?" the Serbian woman asked after she'd opened the door. She wore an ancient-looking apron once striped with blue.

"It's free," Lynda said, and the woman's face creased with a broad smile.

To explain why she couldn't go shopping, she pointed to her leg, which was swollen and marbled with blue veins.

The El Salvadorian couple had not enough to eat. "Too many people, empty, no nothing," Rufino Hernandez said about the shops.

They'd immigrated to Australia in 1988, at the time of a war between guerilla rebels and the Pinochet government. Back in the car, Lynda explained, "Many here have come from war-torn countries or extreme hardship. They have a natural propensity to respond the way they normally would in hard times." The bare shelves and news of supermarket fist-fights might remind them of the places they fled many years ago.

In the disadvantaged communities of Western Sydney, charity workers and community leaders are worried inequality and alienation have made conditions perfect for the spread of coronavirus in the coming weeks and months.

Epidemics like COVID-19 are caused not only by the chance arrival of new pathogens, but also by the way we organise ourselves: by our social relations. In this sense, they show us what and who we value and judge to be important. In the case of coronavirus, research suggests its partly a disease of inequality. People at the bottom of society are more likely to get COVID-19, and more likely to die, as they're more likely to be in bad health.

Yale Professor Frank M. Snowden, who last year published a history on epidemics from the Black Death to the present, writes that epidemic diseases exploit a society's "own specific vulnerabilities".

"To study [epidemics] is to understand that society's structure, its standard of living, and its political priorities," he writes.

What are the specific social vulnerabilities coronavirus is exploiting in Australia? What does coronavirus tell us about what we value?

'People feel like they're being forgotten'

The state seat of Auburn, bordered by Parramatta and Lakemba, includes some of the most economically disadvantaged communities in the city of Sydney.

Lynda Voltz, its long-serving MP, rattles off the statistics: It's the second most diverse seat — mostly Chinese, Lebanese, Korean and Turkish. About three-quarters speak a language other than English at home. Unemployment is at 10 per cent and many are in low-skilled casual jobs that cannot be done with wifi and Zoom. Homelessness is the second-highest in the state. There's over 112,000 in the electorate, but only about half are enrolled.

Of those enrolled, about 4,000 are over 75.

Culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) communities have high numbers of older people. More than half in the Australian Greek, Italian and German communities are over the age of 70. Many have poor English. Some are illiterate.

This is a big worry, according to Federation of Ethnic Communities' Council of Australia (FECCA) chairperson Mary Patetsos.

"The risk we saw in early March was that some communities, like the Greek one, have very high numbers of older people with deteriorating English," she said on Sunday, March 22, after COVID-19 case numbers had spiked in NSW.

"Also, new and emerging communities may be socially isolated for other reasons."

Simply communicating with the Auburn electorate is a major issue for the local MP. Lynda's office has a Korean-speaking person on Monday, a Chinese-speaking person on Tuesday. Friday is the turn of Rafah Chalabi, who speaks Arabic.

"There's panic messaging on WhatsApp," Rafah told the non-Arabic staff.

"People are saying you'll be fined if you try to go outside."

Another staffer said, "I read a rumour that if you hold your breath for 10 seconds and don't cough, you don't have coronavirus."

A third said: "That rumour came via the Maronites, through the Greeks to the Italians."

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Whatsapp Rafah Chalabi at the Auburn MP Lidcombe office.

In Lynda's opinion, coronavirus had exposed the shortcomings of a decades-long policy of dismantling government services in communities. Nurses and outreach workers have been replaced with online portals, phone banks and waiting lists. Staff have retreated behind the perspex shields at Centrelink offices. Now that there's a real and urgent need to engage with the community, the mechanisms for doing this are not there. She scoffed at the idea that posters and websites would do the trick.

"People feel like they're being forgotten," she said.

"The Government should have sent a letter out weeks ago.

"We hear about quantitative easing on the news — that's good but who knows what that means? There's high-level bailouts but nothing at the community level."

But she also acknowledged that a letter would probably be obsolete by the time it was printed, and, in any case, that most people received their information from unofficial, unpoliced channels on social media. Despite her efforts to engage with the diverse electorate of 112,000, her Facebook page had about 700 followers. The sole post on COVID-19, from March 17, linked to an English-language Department of Health website.

'People are calling us who are hungry'

On a quiet street of subsidised aged care, Terry Boyle waited on his balcony for the the day to end and the NRL match to be broadcast from an empty stadium. He lived alone and had never received an official letter about the pandemic.

"By the time I get to the shops there they're all empty," the elderly retiree said.

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Whatsapp Terry Boyle at home.

The local Catholic club had a bus, but that arrived too late. Woolworths had priority online delivery, but stocks were low and unreliable anyway. Besides, he wasn't online. Though Terry couldn't buy pasta at the supermarket, he could catch a private bus from western Sydney to Star Casino in Pyrmont. The six-daily schedule had been unaffected and the service would continue, a man assured over the phone. COVID-19 measures included deactivating every second pokies machine. (The casino closed on Monday, by Government edict).

One after the other, hoped-for systems of care turned out to be mirages.

Lynda Voltz had sent a letter to over-75s telling them to phone Meals on Wheels for help with shopping. However, the manager of the Auburn service, Thanh Ho, said that was a mistake. Meals on Wheels only provided cooked meals.

"This letter has been a big problem for us," Mr Ho said.

"More than 10 people have called who are hungry and want to be picked up to be taken to the shopping centre."

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Whatsapp Thanh Ho at Auburn Meals on Wheels.

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Whatsapp Meals on Wheels Auburn.

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Whatsapp A former Baptist Care building.

Was any other organisation offering this service? "Maybe the Baptists," Mr Ho replied. He paged through an old address book but didn't have their number. The number listed on Google went through to the Benevolent Society. It listed a nearby address, but this turned out to be an abandoned building in the shadow of a construction site. The development advertised one-bed "lifestyle destination" units for half a million.

'The crisis pre-existed coronavirus'

Having found the correct number, I was put through to the general manager for BaptistCare Home Services, Sarah Newman. The government-funded charity organisation helps about 5,000 over-65s in Sydney with living independently at home, including driving them to the shops or buying groceries on their behalf, she said.

How were they going at buying essentials? "It's certainly a challenge," Sarah said.

"I'm hearing stories of our staff who have been buying up toilet paper when they find it and carrying it around in the boot of their car."

"There are clients who just can't go and do battle at Woolworths."

Are many calling up asking for help? That's not how the system works, Sarah said. To access BaptistCare services, including help with shopping, you need to go through the My Aged Care government website or phone line. You're then assessed. If you pass, you then have the option of contracting BaptistCare, so long as it has the capacity to provide the service at that time in your area. Often it doesn't, Sarah said.

"Certainly at the moment across the board the demand is exceeding every organisation's capacity to deliver," she said.

"Everyone needs more staff. This pre-existed the coronavirus."

She was referring to the aged care crisis. Figures released late last year showed more than 100,000 people were on the waiting list for the type of home care services provided by BaptistCare. The Royal Commission into Aged Care Quality and Safety hearings revealed that, in 2018, 16,000 older Australians died waiting for such a service.

Anyone calling My Aged Care hoping for help with doing battle at Woolworths is likely to be disappointed. "From what I understand My Aged Care is being flooded by calls for people needing more support," Sarah said.

"It's been well recognised there is an aged care funding crisis. The Royal Commission is telling that story very strongly.

"The corona crisis has come on top of that."

'It's been too little too late'

The Federal Government has committed $30 million to a national communications strategy, but most of it appears to be in English.

On Wednesday, March 18, almost two months into the outbreak in Australia, the Government rolled out a series of in-language COVID-19 guidelines for multicultural communities. These included advice in Chinese, Farsi, Korean and Italian on its website.

Though they welcomed the development, many CALD community leaders questioned whether this was enough.

FECCA had been calling for a community-language education campaign on coronavirus since early March, Mary Patetsos said.

"I think unfortunately it's probably been a little bit too little too late," she said.

Was government doing enough now, though? "We're all trying to be mutually supportive at this point," she carefully replied.

At the imposing Gallipoli Mosque in Auburn, Enver Yasar, the government relations adviser, was less diplomatic. He said people in the Turkish community were not getting accurate and trustworthy information. He wasn't aware of any Turkish or Arabic-language official public health messaging. The elderly generally got their information from the mosque, the ethnic newspapers, or through WhatsApp, he said.

"They rely on their kids for WhatsApp," he said.

"They get their news from Turkish national news. Sometimes they tell me things about Australia that they've heard from Turkish news."

"The flow and frequency of information from the Federal Government is not there."

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Whatsapp The youth centre connected to the Auburn Gallipoli Mosque.

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Whatsapp Auburn Gallipoli Mosque.

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Whatsapp Enver Yasar and Ergun Genel.

The mosque was doing what it could to communicate with the community, but it was constrained by social distancing. Usually 2,000 would gather beneath the twin minarets for Friday prayers and then mingle afterwards, exchanging news and gossip. The building had shut its gates to large congregations. Enver feared this has increased the vulnerability of people, especially the elderly, to misinformation and conspiracy.

Unlocking the padlock to let us out onto the street, the white-bearded gatekeeper Ergun Genel joked: "I feel like a prison guard today."

"We keep the masses out," he said.

"If we let them in we wouldn't be able to get them out."

Enver said: "There's been mixed messaging and now the horse has bolted. There are cases in the community. We don't know who gave it to them."