The Docility of Australians

 Covid-19 and our adherence to the restrictions, some of them over-reach, and some quite totally mad 

We are very obedient people in Australia. This has been demonstrated very clearly in the recent abrupt shutdown in South Australia.   (November, 2020)  

To start with, they had a few cases, leakage from Hotel Quarantine. Incredibly, after seeing the ghastly mess that Victoria had already made of their quarantine, they were using the same sort of casualised labour as Victoria did - hiring with 'diversity' in mind instead of competence.

The cases grew to around 17,  most of them from the same family.  And PANIC!  With barely any notice at all, the population was put under house arrest.  The population of the whole state!  

South Australia is a big state, and all of the cases were in Adelaide.  And yet everything in all of the regions were as shut as in the city.  The cases grew to maybe 25 - not a big figure!

People were to be allowed out, no more than 1 person from each household, and no more than once a day, to buy groceries.  You were not allowed out to exercise, not allowed out to walk the dog.  

 It was a very strict lockdown,  and absolutely, totally overkill even in the city where there were a score of cases.  A very few excuses were permitted, eg medical appointments.

The lockdown was supposed to last six days, and was based on the belief that this particular strain of the Virus was incredibly infectious, more so than anywhere else in the world - ever.

But then it was discovered that it was no more infectious than anywhere else. They had believed the lie of a casual worker, that he had merely been a takeaway customer of a Pizza place, when actually he worked there.

So the lockdown was cancelled - not entirely and not immediately.  But people were largely freed to go about their business. 

A quick roundup for the episode can be seen in the link below:  

https://www.spiked-online.com/2020/11/20/covids-pizzagate/?fbclid=IwAR37-TJtBQ-nWRqbTUUBoqsRo8P6a6md5TcwgFFDw4K-OiU_ZyVsS6R35eE

But so much damage was done, and so unnecessary.  There is an argument for a lockdown of the area where an outbreak occurs, even some argument for a lockdown of the whole city. But South Australia is around the size of  Egypt.  Around the size of France and Germany combined. 

There is no argument for a lockdown of country areas. It is punishment without reason. It is lunacy.

The town of Edithburgh was closed down along with all of the other towns, villages and households.  I think there is only one pub in that small town, so many miles from Adelaide.  Ridiculous!  

(Particularly good meals there, if I remember correctly.)  

The Yorke Peninsula with all of its tiny towns like Kadina, Moonta and Wallaroo - in lockdown.  

How absurd to do that to all of these country people for a score of cases in Adelaide!

What seems incredible to me is that South Australians were so compliant. They closed up their shops and their businesses without fuss and went home - except for those who spent hours and hours waiting for a Covid test.  

Weddings and funerals cancelled.  Imagine how many months go into the planning of a wedding, and for so little reason, or no reason at all, it has to be cancelled.

And funerals. People travel miles when there is a funeral to attend.  Does the body just have to wait?  Even if you are in Ceduna, say, 777 kms from Adelaide?  There is a lot of refrigeration needed in the heat of summer in Ceduna!   

And face-masks. There is an argument for the wearing of face-masks in crowds and on public transport.  In SA, they started to make face-masks compulsory - any time you were outside, the same as the lunatic rules in Victoria, until they realised there was a shortage of masks.  They then made it only 'strongly advised.'   

The lockdown was the most severe and the most abrupt almost anywhere in the world. They outdid Victoria, who at least allowed an hour of exercise each day.

Victoria's lockdown lasted months, but there was more to justify it.  That was the 'second wave' lockdown, which started in July, (a few weeks after a BLM protest.)  Even now, after weeks of no new infections, there are still strict restrictions. At least the mandatory wearing of face-masks has been somewhat eased and the curfew in Melbourne dropped. 

Face-masks.  It was always ridiculous to try and enforce the wearing of masks when outside, even if no-one was near. 

I cannot imagine Victorian farmers wearing face-masks when going about their work, but the rule was that they had to whenever outside. A $200 fine if found not to be wearing one.  

                     Picture right,

                      near Castlemaine,
                       Western Victoria.  

There were an enormous number of fines issued in Victoria over things like being ten minutes out after curfew and not wearing a mask.

There were few objections by Victorians, but rather, most citizens were condemning of those who did not comply with every last ridiculous and ineffective rule. There was a lot of 'dobbing,' (informing)  which is characteristic of a population living under dictatorial rule.  The premier had a lot of support, and still has, even after his pathetic performance during an inquiry into the escape of the Virus from quarantine.  Andrews 'could not remember' who decided how to staff the Quarantine Hotels, and oddly, no-one else could, either. 

Victorians had thousands of cases and over 800 dead. They do seem to have eradicated the Virus from their state now, and have resumed taking in travellers from overseas, putting each in Hotel Quarantine for 14 days. The authorities should be running the quarantine a lot better this time around, but since they never admitted  responsibility last time, the same things could happen all over again.

The total compliance and even approval of most citizens is what puzzles me.  The premiers of those states which closed their borders to other states long after it was reasonable, were given very high approval ratings, even when businesses suffered so greatly.  Even when families suffered so greatly.  Parents not permitted to see their children who happened to be in boarding schools in a different state.  A woman barred from going to help nurse her dying father. A mother separated from her dying three-year-old son.  A daughter denied permission to visit her dying father, and then denied permission even to go to his funeral.  

So many tales of tragedy, and yet no-one seemed to blame the premiers.  So many seemed to think that 'keeping them safe' from the Virus was so much more important than the heartbreak of individuals.  

 It was widely understood that the prolonged closure of borders in Queensland was political rather than to do with the health advice.  Politically, it seemed to work. Annastacia Palaszczuk, premier of Queensland,  was comfortably re-elected in October.  

Most of the compliance appears voluntary, although probably some have in mind the absolutely ruthless policing that Victorian police have become known for.   

I suspect that the harsh treatment of obviously harmless and law-abiding people is to send a message - do exactly as you are told or you will find yourself in trouble.  When obvious criminals are seen being arrested, most of us do not relate it to ourselves, who have never been criminal.  But when ordinary people doing ordinary things are harassed, then we do think that it could be us.  

So the message is OBEY OR ELSE!    Totalitarian, authoritarian.  A police state. 

September, 2020. 

Two elderly women were sitting on a park bench in Melbourne, Victoria.  They were surrounded by five police, one of whom snatched a phone from one of the women.  



https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8704435/Police-officer-snatches-phone-elderly-threaten-arrest-Melbourne.html

There was an elderly lady sitting alone, reading. She was told to move on.

We saw people relaxing in a park, no-one sitting too close together, although there were family groups.  Mounted police were riding among them, far too close. It was a heavy-handed reminder of  restrictions.  This was not merely overly zealous, it was dangerous to those people sitting on the grass.  Any horse can be spooked, and that could have meant innocent people being trampled.  

There is the notorious example of a pregnant woman arrested and handcuffed in her own home and in front of her small children. 


https://www.breitbart.com/asia/2020/09/02/watch-pregnant-aussie-mother-arrested-for-allegedly-inciting-coronavirus-lockdown-protest/

A law professor.  Professor Barnett needs to go for regular walks in order to stay fit in spite of her cerebral palsy. Her mother has had a double hip replacement. They were walking together, and stopped for a rest and a coffee.  That is when the police demanded they move on.  'You're not allowed to stop walking,'  they said.  So I guess they hobbled on. 

https://www.news.com.au/world/coronavirus/australia/coronavirus-victoria-police-order-law-professor-and-elderly-mother-to-keep-walking/news-story/d367e6c4e05b48b45b673fdc5b9f0cec

There have been a very few small anti-lockdown protests in Australia, ruthlessly suppressed.  But the great majority of people seem to simply assume that the threat is from without, and our divinely appointed rulers know best.  There were supposed to be 4,000  'close contacts' in that South Australian cluster of not much more than a score, nearly all of them from the same family. 4,000 'close contacts.' It does not sound believable.  It is not believable.

But people lined up for testing in their thousands, even when it meant standing out in the heat for several hours. Few complained, that I saw or heard of.  They all seemed to think it was for the safety of all, even when there are so many thousands not within a hundred kilometres of the nearest case. 

Human Rights Watch  September, 2020.

Human Rights organisations, usually so avid to find anyone in breach of human rights when it relates to illegal immigrants and the like, have been almost silent on human rights when it involves Covid law. 

At least they did say something when it was proposed that police should have even more powers than they had under Victoria's State of Emergency and State of Disaster declarations, both of them still current. Human Rights Watch  advised against it and said that 'Victoria’s police have used harsh measures during the Australian state’s Covid-19 lockdown that threaten basic rights.' 

https://www.hrw.org/news/2020/09/24/australia-harsh-police-response-during-covid-19

In other countries, people are beginning to rebel.

There are lockdown protests in Europe, in Britain and in America.  I guess they are not as obedient as we Australians are. 

  

Some business are simply refusing to comply with restrictions.  The usual result is a crippling fine. 

https://www.dailywire.com/news/watch-ny-business-owners-kick-out-health-dept-sheriffs-civil-disobedience-starts-now?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=benshapiro&fbclid=IwAR3o_6iVPIrj7MzheSCJIo_JhxJ5-KAAYfQEmz41eanxR_tpI4iydYIdiR0

Covic-19 has given an excuse for most governments in all of the world to become more authoritarian.  Citizens are losing their privacy.

Lost privacy:  Early in the Pandemic, we were all being strongly urged to put an ap on our phones that would recognise the proximity of another phone, 'like a virtual handshake,' they said, and that would help track the spread of infection.  

A lot of people downloaded the ap as so strongly advised, although there were others who didn't like the idea they were being tracked wherever they went.  There were emphatic assurances that the ap was there for that single purpose and the data would be erased after 28 days. 

Anyway, the ap didn't work very well, and is no longer spoken of.  

The next thing is that people signed in at restaurants and pubs (once they were opened.)  Just a name, address and phone number on a sheet of paper.  And this, too, was supposed to be destroyed after 28 days. People were assured of that  'for privacy reasons.'   

I expect most were destroyed. People don't bother keeping lots of paper.  

But the thing now, to replace the paper notes, is computer check in.  What they call 'QR codes' are now mandatory in NSW and will probably be adopted in other states.  

'QR codes are a common of electronic check-in system. QR codes operate like barcodes, with information that can be read by a smartphone camera. Some phones may require a free QR code reader app, which are available from the Android or iPhone stores.

Some businesses are already using QR codes to collect customer details as they are convenient for businesses and customers. They provide a hygienic, contactless way of signing into a venue.'

https://www.nsw.gov.au/covid-19/covid-safe/customer-record-keeping/qr-codes

So now details are computerised.  We are already so well trained in obedience and so accustomed to being tracked, that I have seen no objection to this idea, and the government has not considered it necessary to assure us that the data will be erased in 28 days,  nor have they bothered to assure us that other data will not be collected. 

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Conspiracy theories

The clamping down on freedoms is providing fodder for conspiracy theories - that the restrictions have more to do with getting us into the habit of total obedience and docility than it has to do with a nasty contagious virus.  

There is the one that 'nanoparticles' or maybe simply microchips will be injected with the coming vaccines. 

There is the one that the vaccine will render its victims infertile or simply dead because the world is over populated.  (which it is.)

Or maybe it is all to do with the 'Green New Deal,'  'Agenda 21' or 'The Great Reset.'   Who knows?  What I do know is that unthinking docility can be a lot more dangerous than a nasty flu virus. 

A brief and basic history of Covid-19 in Australia. 

We are very obedient people in Australia. We are told what to do, and nearly all of us do it.  To begin with, what we were told to do sounded reasonable. March 2020, and we were told a terrible new Virus was spreading and had to be controlled at all costs. We had to  'flatten the curve' of the 'exponential' growth in Covid cases (then called a 'Novel Coronavirus,')  so that hospitals would not be overwhelmed, and there would be enough ICU beds and ventilators for any person who needed them.

The shutdown of so much was very sudden and people were scared. There was a drastic shortage of face-masks for nurses and doctors, and that was when we were told the general population should not bother with them because they did more harm than good.   In any case, no-one could buy face masks, no-one could buy hand sanitiser or even basic disinfectants.  'Panic buying' was blamed, although it turned out that a lot of the shortages were due to organised gangs buying up goods in demand in order to send them to China.  (That was proven, so don't call me xenophobic.)  

Disused hospitals were brought back into use and temporary hospitals set up.  Recently retired nurses were asked to return to work.   

But the cases reduced, and we discovered that the Virus was not as bad as was first thought.  Covid-19 is not Bubonic Plague, it is not Ebola, it is not even as lethal as the Spanish Flu.

Some people died, of course, mostly very old and sick people in Nursing Homes that were not given the protection they should have had.  

Several states closed their borders, and international borders were closed quite early on.

There were still arrivals from overseas, and once it was discovered that some of those arrivals were not adhering to the 14 days required home quarantine, then they were put into compulsory Hotel Quarantine, guards and all.

By May, Australia had successfully controlled the Virus and people were beginning to relax.

The authorities were so relaxed that when thousands of people decided to march for 'Black Lives Matter,'  (large gatherings were prohibited, of course)  no-one interfered with the protesters. In Victoria, they were even assured that that there would be no fines issued.  

But by then, in Victoria, the Virus had escaped from Hotel Quarantine because of some very poor organisation of security.  

Four of the protesters in the BLM march later tested positive to the Virus,  and since the same sort of casualised workers who were security guards also worked in Nursing Homes, it quickly spread. This was the 'Second Wave' that happened in Victoria,  and could very easily have happened in other states. 

It was controlled by such a severe and lengthy lockdown that luckless Victorians could claim to be the most locked down people in all of the world.

By November, the harsh restrictions were successful, and by December, 2020, there had been 28 days of no new infections in Victoria.  The collateral damage, of course, has been enormous.  And yet, the premier, the one responsible for the escape of the virus in the first place, and then for the gross over-reaction, may still win the next election. His approval rating is still high. 

Yes, we are very obedient people in Australia.

 

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