Is Australia teeming with COVID? Is the death toll soaring astronomically? No. None of that is happening. The level of infection is low, so are deaths. If you’ve read what is happening and such conditions were ever replicated here, there is no doubt civil war would erupt. Some things are eerily familiar. The lockdowns are being used as a political tool to get bailouts for states. The over-exaggeration of the threat. The political Left’s reaction to counterprotests to the lockdowns and the rollout of the vaccine being totally screwed up. If COVID was such a threat, why is it that the government has an ‘it’s not a race’ mentality towards vaccine distribution? Australia has that and as expected, vaccination rates are low. With new lockdowns in place over variants, you must read these new protocols. It’s insanity. A Wall Street Journal op-ed aptly noted how COVID caused Australia to revert to its historical roots as a prison:
Given this level of official hysteria, an outsider might imagine that Australia is a Covid charnel house. In fact, all of Australia is recording around 150 coronavirus cases a day. The current outbreak of 2,000 or so cases total over the past month has been associated with eight deaths so far, almost all of them people over 70.
This in a nation that records, on average, about 460 deaths a day from all causes. Cancer kills nearly 50,000 Australians a year. Shark attacks killed eight in 2020.
A good 18 months into the pandemic, the nation is still trapped in April 2020. Adelaide and Melbourne are hoping to come out of lockdown in some form this week; Sydney, the economic engine room of Australia, is likely to remain under restriction through at least August.
Australians need permission from the federal government to leave the country—applications succeed about half the time—and Australia’s states throw up their borders against one another at the slightest hint of trouble. Residents of Sydney may leave their homes only if it is “essential,” and not stray more than six miles when they do.
This is before discussing the economic fallout from the latest lockdowns. Billions will be spent by government or lost by businesses as a result. A restaurant-industry representative told me last week that many chefs and waiters are leaving for greener pastures. Many iconic restaurants will likely never reopen.
So how did Australia become a hermit kingdom? Geography plays a large part. By mistaking their good luck for brilliance in being able to pull up the drawbridge to the world at the start of the pandemic, Australians quickly became trapped in an “elimination” mindset that is now officially referred to as Covid Zero.
Politics, too, conspired to create this outcome. Labor state premiers (the equivalent of U.S. governors) quickly learned to play Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s center-right government like a fiddle, forcing the commonwealth to bail states out for the economic wreckage created every time they locked down their cities or shut their borders.
One Twitter account detailed the draconian measures, but his last tweet in the thread is one that just exposes the political nature of the lockdowns that has caused so many to shirk the advice of the so-called experts. The new measures are laughable when compared to the recent death toll and level of infection in Australia. By this ‘COVID ZERO’ standard, NO ONE can ever venture outside of Australia again.
It's July 2021, in what used to be Australia.
— ThinkingOutLoud (@AusThinkingGirl) July 22, 2021
My business has been forcibly closed. Everyone has been sent home without pay. We are banned from leaving our homes except for the 5 reasons given by the Government. We can go outside, but only within a 2.5km (1.5m) from our homes.
If we do not wear a mask when outside the home, we can be fined or arrested. The Government can force us submit to a covid test, if you refuse, you can be arrested. The Government is currently rounding up healthy people and forcing them into state run quarantine hotels.
— ThinkingOutLoud (@AusThinkingGirl) July 22, 2021
We are banned from seeing our family and friends. Multiple local police stations have been closed so that resources can be diverted into "covid compliance". Elective surgery has been cancelled again. The schools have been closed again.
— ThinkingOutLoud (@AusThinkingGirl) July 22, 2021
People who have been ordered to be tested by the Government face more than a 12 hour wait. It is the middle of winter and very cold. People have been forced to relieve themselves in parks. People are sleeping in their cars.
— ThinkingOutLoud (@AusThinkingGirl) July 23, 2021
The CHO makes jokes about this to the press
There is one person in hospital with covid-19 in the entire state.
— ThinkingOutLoud (@AusThinkingGirl) July 23, 2021
There are fourteen cases of covid.
That’s coming here if we’re not vigilant Yet one big difference, aside from our history is grounded in liberty and disobedience to tyranny, is that Americans have guns—lots of guns. Things could get messy if Biden ever tried to enact what Australia is doing as it should.
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