h/t James Delingpole; The Australian state of Victoria has all but declared Martial Law in an effort to contain a second wave Coronavirus outbreak. But many Australians support the brutal government actions to prevent the spread of the virus.
A group calling themselves “Sovereign Citizens” is defying the crackdown;
Police single out so-called ‘sovereign citizens’ for breaking Victoria’s coronavirus mask rules
UPDATED 4 DAYS AGO BY JARNI BLAKKARLY
Victoria Police say they have witnessed a concerning trend in the rise of so-called “sovereign citizens” who are refusing to follow coronavirus restrictions.
Chief Commissioner Shane Patton on Tuesday raised concerns about small groups refusing police directions.
“In the last week, we’ve seen a trend, an emergence if you like, of groups of people, small groups, but nonetheless concerning groups, who classify themselves as sovereign citizens, whatever that might mean,” he told reporters on Tuesday.
“People who don’t think the law applies to them. We’ve seen them at checkpoints baiting police, not providing a name and address.
“On at least four occasions in the last week, we’ve had to smash the windows of cars and pull people out to provide details because they weren’t adhering to the Chief Health Officer guidelines, they weren’t providing their name and address.”
…
Read more: https://www.sbs.com.au/news/police-single-out-so-called-sovereign-citizens-for-breaking-victoria-s-coronavirus-mask-rules
How do Australians feel about this level of government response? Obviously some groups such as Australia’s “Sovereign Citizens”, or people who have suffered because their industry collapsed, are pretty upset about the lockdowns. Many of my older friends are totally against any form of government Covid containment measures.
There is another side to this issue. Australia came within a hair of totally eliminating local Covid infections. New Zealand is still in that happy place of very few infections. Following an initial wave of infection, Australian states like West Australia, Tasmania, Queensland and the Northern Territory managed to all but eliminate local Covid cases. They are now doing everything in their power to keep it that way, by stopping people from hotspots like Victoria crossing state borders.
So long as Australians believe there is a hope of regaining control of the current outbreaks in Victoria and New South Wales, or preventing those outbreaks from spreading, harsh lockdown enforcement measures will enjoy significant and sustained public support.
“…Chief Health Officer guidelines…”
Now, I am still to find out if these “guidelines” are set out in the Public Health Act and are thus enforceable by the police. I am pretty sure this sort of police acts are unconstitutional.
Patrick
My observation is the police will bully who they can.
My son works for a very large civil construction company that has issued all employees with a permitted worker permit letter. The company can not afford to shut down.
Any police willing to issue a fine to this companies workers will have to be prepared for a long stint in court.
I worked for the NSW Police and my observations were they often got the sh!t end of the stick and little else support.
What if the corona end goal was to justify exactly that?
Make people afraid and end up with a police state, while criminal are freed from prison.
In the US and in France (only two countries I think I understand), it seemed to have failed spectacularly, like pretty much anything they try. (In the US globally… in NY it’s “special”.)
What if the virus is a first attack form an aliens race?
The fact you started with “what if” probably means you should have stopped the post right there.
So who created the virus?
And why?
I live in Melbourne, Victoria, where Dan Andrews is Premier with a leftist party in government. Nearing 80 y o, with 33 days in hospital last year with pericardial effusion, pleural effusion, pneumonia and lung scarring leaving me now short of breath, I believe the popular classification that I am in the very high risk group for Covid-19, which is NOT the same as just another annual ‘flu. So I read a lot and reject a lot about Covid-19.
My main fear is the ignorance and purposeful lawlessness of individuals and some community groups. These have repeatedly put me at greater risk by openly flaunting lock down measures, examples being the several thousand in early June who did a street protest for some vague thing named Black Lives Matter (but mine does not) and at a similar time, a couple of hundred unionists protesting on Toorak Road about a building industry dispute they concocted.
Soon after, we gained a new Chief Commissioner of Police, Shane Patton, who early declared he would be heavy against lawless conduct. His job is to help citizens obey the laws created by politicians and I welcome his thrust.
The Premier has form in giving favour to Unions, who help with votes and funding in ways that do not help me, more often dismay me. He has almost destroyed our honoured volunteer fire fighting service for no reason more obvious than favouring a union alternative. There are other examples of the Premier’s decisions being swayed like this. Favoured treatment of voting blocks is rumoured to have been behind concealment of early Covid-19 cases at Cedar Meats, which seems to be a religious Lebanese stronghold, in his poor effort to stop public demonstrations, in allowing other acts like withdrawing staff from a retirement home with no public disclosure of any plan to replace them. This required Federal intervention, a touchy act under our Constitution, which arose when the several States granted certain powers to the newly formed Commonwealth in 1901. The present Cwth government is nominally right leaning and so are political opposites. This has led the Victorian Premier to refuse or dilute Cwth offers of help, as with hotel hosted quarantine schemes for incoming international travellers. The failure of that quarantine was Central to the Covid-19 spread, if we can believe what we are told.
In summary, the management of the Covid-19 threat has been political when practical was better. Political life is like that, but this time there are large numbers of deaths and threats of many more future deaths. So, mistakes matter. Another mistake seems to have been allowing and then not discussing, a Ramedan get-together of a hundred or more who flaunted social distancing because to them, religion dominated.
I hope that I do not shortly join the growing list of mistakes.
Geoff , in your state of health, you should avoid attending public demonstrations, sports events and Ramadan celebrations.
Also, don’t take a job in a meat packing plant. Just a bit of advice.
Good one, Billy.
I shall take your advice, with PLEASURE.
Geoff S
“These have repeatedly put me at greater risk by openly flaunting lock down measures”
flouting
Geoff
I hope you stay healthy.
We also live in Melbourne.
My 16 yo daughter has lost her part time job, can’t play sport, can’t meet her peers and can’t go to school.
The lockdown is a benefit for you
The lockdown is a cost for my daughter
The lockdown which has been forced on my daughter has a very poor cost/ benefit ratio.
Any non emotional assessment of the pros and cons of lockdown will show it is a waste.
Greg,
Possibly you are making the modern mistake of not wanting to do novel acts until government approves of them, with the far better alternative of doing acts that you like and objecting to efforts of governments and others to stop you.
Freedom of speech, free enterprise, hallmarks of the libertarian approach, have long been shown as preferable to oppressive socialism. Geoff S
Australia and its population are in an utter state of delusion!! Because it did so well initially (and as much by chance as anything – warm weather, spread out populations, huge drop in international tourists in Jan and Feb due to bushfires), politicians and the gullible and non-critical thinking public believe this still can be achieved. Not only by closing its international borders indefinitely and by creating a constant fear of panic, information control (no other data other than new cases is discussed at press conferences), but with outrageous knee-jerk State restrictions, like Queensland closing its borders to the ACT, despite the ACT not recording one single case for 25 days (and counting)!!! I used to love my free, liberal and friendly country – but we’ve become a bona fide autocratic police state.
Not only that the ACT does not have a border with Qld given in is surrounded by NSW.
Qld has closed its borders to all ACTers, just in case there are some bad ACTers among them. Although, I’m sure there are exemptions for politicians, some of the worst ACTers of all.
I work with a friend whose family was coming back from a weekend trip. This is in the USA. They saw a sign for drive by Covid testing so decided to get tested. They filled out some forms and got their car in line. But line was moving to slow so they left. Then in few days they get letter in the mail stating they all Tested Positive for Covid ! They were never even tested.
Just recently in some beaches in Texas they kept the beaches opened but banned cars parking on beach and golf carts on beach. This is ridiculous government regulation ! How exactly does banning golf carts on beach do anything to prevent Covid ?
So, what is the long term plan for Australia and New Zealand with this isolation strategy?
Will they keep their borders closed for a few years, decades? How long? They will never be safe.
I live near-ish to the Airport in Sydney and I hear and see planes taking off all the time. Not all of them are domestic flights either. Then there are the truckies who cross borders every day. It’s a sc@m.
I don’t think they thought that through. They are just doubling down on WRONG and listening to the same experts who’s past predictions have been utter failures.
Quit flogging a dead horse and try riding one that is alive. There are lots of examples of countries that didn’t do lockdowns that are handling this fine. Learn from them.
That was also my question. How do Australians and New Zealanders feel about that? I mean, they got to realize that they can perhaps keep their islands clean, but would have to self-isolate for a very long time. It will be waiting for a vaccine, which may not arrive, may not work 100% and may not work indefinitely.
Note I’m seriously not saying Australia and New Zealand is wrong, as every country should decide their path, but do the people realize what this means. I mean, Hawaii did not, as they were about to loosen restrictions as tourism was hurting (duh!). They postponed that hilariously as they got an internal spike before this went active, but Hawaii did not realize the consequences of self-isolating from the mainland. Australia and New Zealand may be more self-contained though.
Whenever I see Dangerous Dan on the television for some reason I’m reminded of that old comment that “the lights are on but there’s no-one at home”.
Those who would give up essential liberty, to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty, nor safety… Benjamin Franklin. As true today, as it ever was!
According to the SMH, 68% of Australian Covid deaths are from nursing homes. I have spoken to people who thought the deaths were in the thousands or more due to the media fear mongering. It’s all very sad.
“As of Sunday 203 of the 290 COVID-19 deaths were residents of aged care – making up more than 68 per cent.”
https://www.smh.com.au/national/covid-19-has-exposed-australia-s-aged-care-sector-s-flaws-royal-commission-hears-20200810-p55k7p.html
That’s a refreshingly accurate article at the SMH.
Also , from the abc there is a useful piece of analysis of the situation in Victoria and elsewhere in Australia with information , so far as is known, of how, why and where the latest upsurge in cases originated and the influence of age and gender.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-03-17/coronavirus-cases-data-reveals-how-covid-19-spreads-in-australia/12060704?nw=0
Herd immunity is dependent on a lot of different factors. It looks like if your achieve in worse case condition a death rate comparable to New York you are at herd immunity. New York City had a death rate of about 2000 per million. But if you safeguard the old and sick you can achieve herd immunity at a much lower death rate. So how do you explain the higher the 3% death rate?
It can be explained by:
1) The number of people infected left out the majority of the infections. A lot of people get sick recover and never get tested.
2) Even if people share the same bed it seems like you have only about a 25% chance of infecting your partner. This might mean that these people have a natural resistance to the virus. Instead of assuming the virus is not very transmittable it might be more logical to think that a sizeable percent of the population has a natural immunity.
3) No effort made to safe guard the old.
4) Death rate when people are vitamin D deficient such as during winter in the northern hemisphere causes the death rate to go up.
If I can add some information to that of Geoff Sherrington and RickWill as Melbourne Victoria resident, Victoria was never a Police State – It did have an Attorney General of the same party as in political power and some years ago, he stacked the Judicial System with labor lawyers, they have been extremely liberal and progressive like American Democrats so our Judicial System became a revolving door every one gets bail and as Australia never had a Bill of rights it seemed like a good idea for the state to symbolically adopt the concept of the the UN Human rights and to those of progressive ilk, this has been fine window dressing, and politicians often use the Victorian Human Rights legislation as a reason NOT to do things i.e. an excuse. But there are those progressive citizens who see it as akin to your Constitutional Bill of basic rights.
I wont go into the depth and breadth of the actual legislation you can find all that on line on the internet. So when this present pandemic fear was promoted in early 2020, we had the Labor Premier Dan Andrews covering some bad political blunders by strong talking the initial efforts to flatten the curve of infections, and using the fears to cover up scandals that were developing in his side of politics. He really ramped up the fears and our Prime Minister formed a Federal Cabinet under the Australian Chief Health Officer working with the State Chief Health Officers who were by agreement given full authority in their States to issue State Health Directives to control and contain the Spread of the Corona virus, including local quarantine arrangements State by State. We did not find out till later that there were serious issues in the oversight and security of the Hotel lockdown there are stories of guards that allowed people to leave quarantine and at least 30% refused to be tested and left quarantine without testing,
Months later we had outbreaks Cedar meats and so forth. We went into Stage three state lockdowns and there were constant threats by the Premier Dan Andrews that people would be fined by Police, that went on for a long time and it was obvious Police were having problems in enforcement, and it wasn’t till it was revealed by the Victorian Chief Health Officer when he was queried as to why Covid positive tested people weren’t home where they should have been that he revealed. Under the Victoria Charter of Human Rights there was no power to compel infected people to remain in their homes, they must be allowed freedom to exercise and get fresh air and not be incarcerated, and this was after tacit allowance of Protest Marches and the draconian lockdown of some large public housing towers with a high migrant population.
Naturally the rest of the locked down community “doing the right thing” were rightly incensed at this and we also found that the virus had got into our aged care homes by the most predictable line of infection the use of staff that did part time work all across the Aged Care network – Covid was loose and running through those homes and our Hospital systems. The only way to control this was to put aside those adopted UN human rights and that is declare a State of Disaster invoke Emergency powers, something that should have been done back in February March, Police now had clear and legal powers to enforce the Premiers threats, fines that could be legally imposed under those Emergency Powers. And that is where we are today.
As to the fine points of responsibilities and errors, that may well be only established by an Overall Federal Royal Commission to ensure we never make those mistakes and put our most vulnerable Citizens in danger. Shades of Andrew Cuomo, maybe its the name Andrew that is the problem, but we too lost many lives by such mistakes.
thanks for your patience.
KenB,
Thank ou for your accurate summaty of what really happened. Geoff S
Thanks Geoff
While the main incompetence has been with the Victorian lack of attention to the security of the Hotel Quarantine – These sort of problems should have been addressed in the Federal Pandemic Plan and anticipated legal responses when you actually hand back to the State Premiers ultimate responsibility for the detail in their states, I would have liked to see contingency planning and planned use of Federally owned land in each state to establish quarantine arrangements- For instance in Victoria we have the Army Communications facility at Macleod and the Repatriation General Hospital at Heidelberg, Either could have been used in the quarantine process to either move people into quarantine in a locked patrolled perimeter covered by Federal Crimes Act There would be no questions who was legally in control and no release from Quarantine till cleared by a valid set of tests.
When the Elderly care facilities came under strain the RGH could have been turned into a similar Medical isolation and treatment unit, with an assessment section for those in the community that tested positive to remain separate from the general community in Hospital rest accommodation till tested and cleared for return to the community.
No mucking about and all Elderly Care facilities and staff tested (no floating casual staff, or Drs not tested frequently to control infection.
Even then there would be small issues and minor contingencies without draconian destruction of the wider economy
Ken
Another comment in moderation, can it be released please…
That’s an interesting article, but even more interesting is the Aussie news video about collating elderly people in senior residences, whether they want it or not. Whose idea was that? Might make more sense to putt all politicians into a similar single housing unit but with no separation, just to see who survives the Plague.
Oh, that was SO mean of me!
From https://www.redstate.com/brandon_morse/2020/07/31/swedens-covid-immune/
We here in Sweden no longer have any noticeable amount of excess mortality! – period!
I am getting a bit irritated over all these smart people, even some Swedes, saying that the strategy of Anders Tegnell was terrible. Dr. Tegnell used his knowledge objectively and his measures have been very successful in many ways:
Limited strain on societies freedom, self worth and general health.
Limited strain on business.
Limited strain on education.
Little chance of second wave.
A few things went bad as usual.
Nursing homes, in particular in the Stockholm area, were very poorly managed and protected. The same ignorance during every epidemic, dealing with elderly sick people.
There were back and forth regarding HQC.
I also feel it is wrong to condemn the Anders Tegnell strategy on ground that some have died or been badly ill due to COVID-19 and disregarding the death, hunger, suffering and unhappiness endured implementing CAGW style prolonged measures.
Personally I am so happy to live in Sweden these days.
I’ve been following Sweden very closely because as early as March I was imploring friends and family that I wish Australia had taken a leaf out of Swedens book. People just abused me here, saying that Sweden were doing it wrong and how dare I say we should do the same. I’ve stuck to my guns and continue to do so.
Australia had a lot going for it early (geographical isolation, summer, low pop density, recent bushfires causing drop in international tourists) and the ‘Swedish approach’ was ideal for Australia. An ideal opportunity to manage spread and gain some level of immunity in time for winter. But oh no, because unlike Sweden where your public health policy and strategy is detached from politics, our politicians have called the shots (and unions in Victoria) – and when our Prime Minister saw record approval ratings two weeks into the lockdown in early April, well the die was cast across the country. Australia (and NZ more so) is now slave to a vaccine that may never come.
We also have a small clique of about 6 or 7 ‘experts’ here who are sycophants to the politics – still deluded that elimination is the strategy we need. These are the deniers who still think the HIT for covid is 65-70%, not 15-20% that is showing on several models and starting to show in real cases (Sweden, Italy, NY, Sth Korea etc.).
Bravo, Carl and Cam. And we can take comfort knowing that we will be vindicated within a couple of years when all this is over.
The problem over these last 6 months has been that we have all (except Sweden) behaved like head-less chickens, making knee-jerk reactions to it all according to whatever advice we got from various “experts” – and according to how scared we were to catch a bit of a flu.
One cannot know anything for sure about a pandemic until it is all over, usually after a couple of years.
How is this not more widely known?
Because our unethical news media prefers publishing alarmist items rather than balanced and objective news.
It seems teh comment i was responding to has been removed by the mods