If governments all had a permanent monopoly on violence we would all be forever living under the eternal dynasty of God-Emperor Hammurabi CCCXXIVI in the all-kingdom stretching from the Euphrates to all the sun has ever touched.
Sometimes you have to break the rules to make long-term positive changes.
Armed rebellion is not always needed to make changes. However just letting the state do what it wants without push back certainly is not going to change things.
The first being obvious enough in its abhorrence, and the second being a violation of human rights as defined by the UN. Unfortunately it seems like a large amount of Australians are eager for even more of this authoritarianism. By the time they learn their lesson it will be too late.
Australia is already a failed state. That happened the second they decided to imprison their populace and started talking about the "New world order." The state has failed its people, and the only thing left is for it to crumble.
It was the chief health officer of New South Wales, Dr. Kerry Chant.
Dr. Chant said: “We will be looking at what contact tracing looks like in the New World Order…yes it will be pubs and clubs and other things if we have a positive case there.”
There is nothing wrong with contact tracing during a pandemic. It's been used by many countries in the past including the US.
Let's go back a long way to 1854 during the cholera epidemic in London when Dr John Snow found that the Broad Street pump was its cause and he located it by contact tracing those who contacted cholera and worked backwards to the source. This case is famous for the very fact it shows that contact tracing and isolating saves lives (please ensure that you look at the map he used to trace the pump):https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1854_Broad_Street_cholera_ou...
I can attest to this, contact tracing put a quick end to the COVID outbreak near where I live and I'm very thankful for the work those tracers did under very arduous circumstances.
In principle, contact tracing during a pandemic has nothing to do with the general increase in surveillance that's gripping the planet at the moment - it is an entirely separate matter.
The fact that we have sleezebag governments prepared to subvert a decent legitimate process is - again - a separate and serious problem for democracy.
Australia is already on its way to being a failed state by now. Police and military patrol the streets to enforce rules, “papers please” tyranny is required to live, and soon they’ll demand complete surveillance and control in your own house.
“NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian yesterday announced freedoms for fully vaccinated people once 70% of the state’s eligible population are double dosed. These include being able to go to hospitality venues, hairdressers and gyms, and have five people to your home.”
They are even now trying to limit how many people you can have over in your own home. It is a failed state. Wake up before you are enslaved.
I would rather anti-vaxers leave the country than continue to hang around, yes.
Do I think that it will be acceptable if lockdowns continue in Australia past the point at which the various state governments have agreed they will stop (i.e.: the 70% and 80% population vaccinated marks)? No.
Do I think the reason why those targets are harder to meet than necessary is because of unscientific fearmongering idiots refusing to get the vaccine? Yes.
In a way, I blame this more on you than on the government.
If you think you need a vaccine for a disease with a median age of death that's 84 you've badly failed at basic risk analysis and you've been massaged by the machine.
The government is moving to vaccinate younger and younger kids even though the risk to them from covid is much much less than the risks from the vaccines.
In the UK the scientists specifically came out against vaccinating kids because the evidence is not there, but the UK govt is 'ignoring The Science' and moving ahead anyway.
Not only is the evidence not there, but there is new evidence as of a few days ago that it may actually be riskier for them to get the Pfizer jab than to get covid.
To be fair, the UK government is not ignoring the scientific consensus that children are more likely to be harmed than benefit from the vaccine, as it knows full well the consequences of its policy. Instead, the government is ignoring the ethics of coercing the young (who can't vote for them) into undergoing a medical procedure which mostly protects the old (who do vote for them).
Do you believe covid is dangerous enough to justify turning Australia into a totalitarian regime where you need to show papers to go anywhere and have constant surveillance even in your own home? Did you know they’re even dangling how many people can visit your home as a carrot?
“NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian yesterday announced freedoms for fully vaccinated people once 70% of the state’s eligible population are double dosed. These include being able to go to hospitality venues, hairdressers and gyms, and have five people to your home.”
Wake up now before it is too late. You’re falling for their us-them division tactic where they get you to hate the “anti vax” until you build the systems of your own enslavement.
> Do you consider people with immunity from past infections to be antivaxers?
In Australia, for all intents and purposes, yes.
Thanks to the terrible "totalitarian regime", less than one percent of our population has yet to catch COVID. We've had even less deaths! It's fuckin' awesome that we've managed to come out of this so well, almost entirely thanks to lockdown.
The route out of lockdown, without massively increasing the numbers of preventable deaths, is vaccination.
It's simpler and more expedient for me, and the government, to treat all Australians who refuse to get vaccinated (as opposed to being unable to get vaccinated, of course) as either idiots, petulant children, or misled and out of touch with reality.
Either way, I appreciate that the carrot & sometimes the stick is necessary to force people to abide by the laws of their society. Just like it's not your choice to drink and drive, it's not really your choice not to get vaccinated while participating in Australian society. These are the norms that the majority of our country believe in.
If you don't want to get vaccinated, don't participate. Go find a community of like-minded rugged individualists somewhere. Move to Texas, maybe. (Sorry, Texans.)
> You’re falling for their us-them division tactic where they get you to hate the “anti vax” until you build the systems of your own enslavement.
Nah, I already harboured a great deal of spite for anti-vax idiots prior to COVID, didn't need any help from the government.
...
And all that said, if the government doesn't remove restrictions once we reach 80% vaccinated and more, I will be fighting those governments tooth and nail. But we're not there yet.
The law of gravity isn't different in Australia, and neither is 2+2. People with immunity from past covid have excellent protection, maybe even better than that from vaccination. To treat them as "antivaxers"..."in Australia, for all intents and purposes" and to then later label these people as "idiots, petulant children, or misled and out of touch with reality" is one hop and a skip away from dehumanizing them and justifying even worse.
You need to say what you are typing out loud because you are caught up in the feel-good tribalism of debating partisan issues online. When in reality, there are multiple legitimate reasons to not bend the knee including past infection.
It's interesting that you chide others for being out of touch with reality and yet you ignore the reality that past infection offers equal or better protection as mentioned by that source I gave you in the parent post.
But in any case, the very last sentence of your post is both refreshing AND alarming. You said:
"And all that said, if the government doesn't remove restrictions once we reach 80% vaccinated and more, I will be fighting those governments tooth and nail. But we're not there yet."
Refreshing because at least you still seem to have some amount of reason left, but alarming because you don't seem to realize that by then, it's going to be too late. You'll end up enslaved because you fell for the "hate the antivaxers" ploy and picked it as your tribal narrative of choice so you could feel good while arguing with people online. Even though the science is unequivocal that immunity from past infection is excellent.
You may also be interested in this information that is emerging:
"US researchers say teenagers are more likely to get vaccine-related myocarditis than end up in hospital with Covid"
What now? You really think people reading this information are petulant children for choosing caution and simultaneously not wanting a totalitarian regime monitoring them and building systems of enslavement?
Realize that power consolidates. They will not need to remove these restrictions once you reach some threshold. Who will make them and how? By then more people will be trained to hate others and defend more. Realize that giving a government that kind of power is dangerous.
The entire first half of your comment is hilariously uninformed. You have absolutely no idea about the impacts of COVID on Australia and it bleeds out of everything you're saying. You arguing that past infections should mean something to me is the "out of touch with reality" bit.
> It's interesting that you chide others for being out of touch with reality and yet you ignore the reality that past infection offers equal or better protection
This is completely meaningless to Australia. Just 0.002% of the Australian population has had COVID. Past-infection protection is not an area of interest to me or the government of my country, because as a cohort, those people just don't really exist here... Mostly because of our wacky policies of trying to make sure our populace doesn't get infected by doing things like hotel quarantine.
As for the second bit, about children possibly having issues with the vaccine: It might be worth pointing out here that children in that study aren't a part of the current Australian government push for vaccination. The target is for over-16s only.
Should we wait before pushing for the under-16s to get vaccinated? Absolutely! Does that prove you right in absolutely any way? Nope!
You might as well start telling me that Australia shouldn't introduce gun control.
That reminds me of an old web-based puzzle game, where you had to carry around CCTV cameras to make sure you are always being recorded.
At one point, the protagonist, in a moment of self-awareness, says something very profound that has stuck with me ever since: "If I am complicit in my own surveillance, does that mean I'm hiding from myself?"
Looks like you fell for it. In many countries blaming that covid still exists is an easy scapegoat. So many people are falling for this line of thinking because everyone needs to blame someome.
With two doses you can go out 3 times to every 1 time someone with no shots can.
Blame the foolish who think because they are 2 dose vaxxed that they can continue their lives as normal. You can't.. stay home.
The equation has changed. Basically everybody is going to get COVID sooner or later, the vaccine just makes it much less likely that you'll get seriously ill from it.
> I would rather anti-vaxers leave the country than continue to hang around, yes
Those supposed 'anti-vaxers' are more or less guaranteed to be vaccinated for nearly all diseases just like I assume you (and others who insist on calling anyone who is not toeing the party line by that epithet) are.
Some people have natural immunity from having had SARS2.
Some people are being advised by their doctors not to take the current crop of vaccines.
Some people deem their risk from contracting SARS2 lower than the risk of side-effects from the current crop of vaccines.
Bodily autonomy is an essential part of a liberal democracy.
If you are vaccinated you are mostly protected so why worry over those who do not get vaccinated? They run a higher risk of contracting SARS2, they have a higher risk of ending up in a hospital, they run a higher risk of needing intensive care and they have a higher risk of succumbing to the disease compared to vaccinated people in their own age and risk group. These are all risks to their own health, something you might find stupid and unreasonable but... it is their own choice. The only possible argument you might have in a country with socialised health care (like Oz) is that they may run up health care costs due to their refusal to take the vaccine. Those same people might respond that they do not want the vaccines because they fear potential side effects somewhere down the line. Given the limited amount of long-time experience with mRNA vaccines in humans this is not an unfounded risk, although most side effects seem to occur within 6 months of vaccination and as such should have already become visible.
Have you seen the movie 'Babe', the one about the pig which acted like a dog? Do you remember how the sheep in that movie called anything which they deemed to be a threat a 'wolf', leading to a field full of sheep bleating 'wolf' in sheep-speak to each other and to the supposed wolf? Calling anyone who shows the slightest hesitancy towards these rather new vaccines 'anti-vaxxers' (the word seems to be mostly spelled with two 'x'-es) is comparable to how those sheep reacted.
Don't be a sheep, Australia has enough of them already.
Approximately no one in Australia has 'natural immunity', because approximately no one here has had COVID.
Those people who are advised by their docotrs not to get vaccinated are few and far between, but it turns out the current vaccine push takes those figures into account.
The people who deem the risk of COVID lower than the vaccine are just straight up incorrect. They're either misled or just deliberately contrarian, and I don't care what they think.
All autonomy is important, except where that autonomy would endanger others in society.
> If you are vaccinated you are mostly protected so why worry over those who do not get vaccinated?
If they also opt-out of taking up hospital care necessary for treating those people who didn't refuse a vaccine, honestly, I'd be okay with it. But we both know that won't happen. It'll end up like the US where there are people dying in the ER because there's no room due to COVID cases, and I do not want Australia to end up like the US.
> Have you seen the movie 'Babe', the one about the pig which acted like a dog? [...] Don't be a sheep, Australia has enough of them already.
All of this is very ironic, given that the group you are implying are the wolves are the ones taking livestock medication.
Do you drink, smoke, drive a car, are you overweight, do you participate in high-risk sports, eat a lot of processed food, red meat, fatty fish from polluted waters, drink sugared carbonated water, keep dangerous pets? If so, do you voluntarily opt out of any hospital care related to these activities or habits? The list can be made much longer.
On the subject of people supposedly taking 'livestock medication'... really? I assume you mean those people are taking Ivermectin [1], a popular antihelmintic which also happens to demonstrate antiviral activity, preparations containing it being used both in veterinary as well as human applications? Are those people eating horse dewormers or taking Ivermectin tablets (Stromectol [2] et al)? If they're taking the latter, why call it 'livestock medication'?
Stop labelling people who happen to disagree with 'your' opinion. Just accept that not everybody agrees with 'your' standpoint or before you know it you'll find 'your' opinion to be in the crosshairs of the authoritarians - and then what do you do?
[1] As to the efficacy of Ivermectin for SARS2 prophylaxis or treatment the verdict is still out. It is unfortunate that this subject has been politicised to such an extreme that it has become a black/white issue, 'either you are with us or against us'.
> people supposedly taking 'livestock medication'... really?
Yes. Really. And then apparently shitting their pants in the supermarket. Appalling, I know.
> If they're taking the latter, why call it 'livestock medication'?
Because a lot of them are not, they are taking livestock medication bought from agricultural stores, because their doctor won't prescribe them what they want. You and I both know this is the case, so please don't bother pretending it isn't.
And to be clear. the people who are taking literal horse dewormer as opposed to getting vaccinated are doing a stupid thing. It is the wrong answer to COVID, no matter which way you look at it. Even if Ivermectin -- formulated for humans, qua Stromectol -- is actually a useful treatment against COVID, there's another more useful prophylactic against COVID: A vaccine.
This isn't an opinion, it's a bald-faced fact. You don't need to be given Ivermectin to treat severe COVID if you never end up with severe COVID in the first place.
Should hospitals be administering Ivermectin clinically? I dunno, jury is still out and I'm not a doctor, but an alternative to the vaccine it is not.
What rights? Australia does not have a bill of rights. It has a very limited number of fundamental rights outlined in the Constitution but other than that you seem to be pretty much screwed, which explains why these draconian measures always seem to land in Australia first.
Rights exist by what people demand and exercise and do.
A "bill of rights" is a piece of paper. A piece of paper which is ruled upon by a court that was granted its power by the very same collection of papers.
For example, the right to keep and bear arms (obviously not for hunting but for war and security) has been infringed upon many times, but constitutional courts have decided that actually despite the bill of rights, some infringement is allowed. (EDIT: And this doesn't even address the problem of governments creating unconstitutional laws or executing unconstitutional actions which de facto strip your rights for some possibly significant time until it can be overturned by a court, but without much redress or punishment or deterrent)
In the end the people are the ultimate arbiters and deciders of what rights they are willing to give up and what powers they are willing to be governed under. This plays out the same way in USA and Australia and Afghanistan and Libya.
If society is violent, divided, and less trusting of one another, there is more willingness to turn to the state for protection.
Unfortunately this creates a strong incentive for all governments to actually create such societies and increase division and mistrust in order to gain power.
But Australia isn’t violent, divided, and less trusting of one another. Neither are most of the western-style developed countries that turn to the state for protection.
> Unfortunately this creates a strong incentive for all governments to actually create such societies and increase division and mistrust in order to gain power.
Have you actually been to Australia before? Or Europe for that matter? Or Japan? Your claims don’t make much sense with the current examples. All we have is a developed country that heavily values the right to bear arms and has a horrible crime rate, while the other countries are the exact opposite.
> But Australia isn’t violent, divided, and less trusting of one another. Neither are most of the western-style developed countries that turn to the state for protection.
I didn't say they were.
> Have you actually been to Australia before? Or Europe for that matter? Or Japan?
Yes, yes, yes. Worthless rhetorical questions.
> Your claims don’t make much sense with the current examples.
What claims?
> All we have is a developed country that heavily values the right to bear arms and has a horrible crime rate, while the other countries are the exact opposite.
I'm not sure what you're getting at, but Europe is not a country. And there are more countries than your examples with differences in crime rates and gun ownership, so I suspect whatever point you are trying to prove with selective data points wouldn't actually hold up.
We have tons of examples of states where the government takes responsibility for protecting the people and are safer than the one example where a second amendment exists to keep people "safe". If you want to split hairs between western and eastern europe, yes, countries like the Ukraine is not as safe as the USA, but that in no way proves your point.
What examples? How do they demonstrate that? Clearly not all available examples were used!
And nowhere did I say that that is the only reason a society would be willing to turn to the state for protection, so spare me the false counter examples dressed up breathlessly to look like some incredible gotcha.
I gave the examples in my first comment, you didn’t refute them but claimed their were some bad countries in Europe, which I agreed with (Ukraine, Russia, etc…).
Even in a system with a bill of rights those laws are there as a last resort, to deal with complete failure states. They are the limits, not standard operating procedures.
There is always going to be capacity for doing better, society is always what we make of it, even without hard legal limits (not to suggest imposing limits of state power is bad).
We just had hundreds of thousands of people go to the beach yesterday ignoring lockdown orders, I was worried about my country having read things like Gulag Archipelago, but the general population have shown where their line is. Still we're now a police state and the general population doesn't seem to give a shit about that.
Better throw out the politicians together with the policies. Now that they've shown their true colours it would be foolhardy to expect them to restrain their authoritarian instincts come the next emergency - and if there is one thing easily come by these days it seems to be emergencies.
Kick 'm out, elect a new batch and keep their feet to the fire.
Both major parties are authoritarian. Australia has a good electoral system but people have to stop believing in major parties, or that it doesn't matter, and vote in droves for independents and minor parties (who, if unelected, give their votes to the party they prefer).
Dude that organised the last protest got 8 months prison. 75% of the population agrees with some of the totalitarian laws. Still a great country, but I'm looking at other places to live, Senior Engineer so it won't be hard to get sponsorship. Thinking about USA where people really understand the importance of their constitution, and the tech sector is the strongest in the world.
Appreciate the kind words about America, friend. Even with our constitution it's still be a fight. Unconstitutional laws are passed regularly here, until they're challenged in court. Sometimes they fall, sometimes they stay.
What kind of insanity have we collectively tolerated that “you can pay to be locked up in a ‘hotel’ tor two weeks” is seen as some kind of evidence that there is no compulsion?
That’s like saying people aren’t forced to vaccinate since you don’t “need” to work at that particular job and you don’t “need” to exercise in a gym or watch a movie in a theater.
Everything in history shows the slope is slippery. They will pass this on to everyone. It’s a blatant power grab. They want to spy on you and track you. They don’t care about your health.
It can be a law for ten years. Doesn't make it less of a shitty law.
And I think the outrage is useful. It will mobilize people until it boils over into action, if enough people do it when it actually counts. This is when it actually counts. Everyone has spent all their Outrage Points on useless shit some actor or celebrity said about something no one will care about on their deathbed, but so few are saying anything about this totalitarian nightmare.
But the App that is the subject of the article serves to reduce the severity of that law and thus reduces government overreach. To be upset about the App, rather than the original quarantine law, is to be focusing attention in the wrong place.
Tell me what about this reduces government overreach and the severity of the law.
Returning travelers quarantining at home will be forced to download an app that combines facial recognition and geolocation. The state will text them at random times, and thereafter they will have 15 minutes to take a picture of their face in the location where they are supposed to be. Should they fail, the local police department will be sent to follow up in person. “We don’t tell them how often or when, on a random basis they have to reply within 15 minutes,” Premier Steven Marshall explained. “I think every South Australian should feel pretty proud that we are the national pilot for the home-based quarantine app.”
It's a reduction in government overreach that you have a "choice" between one of their quarantine "hotels" or in-home surveillance? Is the part that is the lesser government overreach, the part where if you fail to address one of their random pings they'll send officers to your house to conduct an in-person check?
The app isn't the problem in itself. The problem is the enslavement. This is a system of enslavement.
Up until now you had no choice, when returning to Australia you had to pay to stay in a 2 week quarantine hotel.
Creating an alternative solution for home quarantine gives people more options.
You could argue that there was a better way to implement home quarantine. You could argue that the 2 week quarantine is goverment overreach. You could even argue that this option helps the government keep the 2 week quarantine in place longer by tempering its severity.
I don't see those sorts of rational arguments. I see a bunch of people making an irrational or uninformed argument that this extends government overreach by making the 2 week quarantine rule more severe.
I don't think you can argue with this subset of americans on this. I tried when this came up on hacker news last week, and they were adamant this was worse that going into a hotel, and that australians citizens were sleep walking into a totalitarian state for allowing this to happen. (And also that they only had second amendment rights like the USA this would never be allowed to happen).
It was a bit of a wake up call actually - the level of conversation was starting to feel more like reddit than what I'd always (until now i guess) expected from hacker news.
If you decided to travel during the quarantine, you already agreed to this. If you were already stuck out of country when the quarantines were added, then you have a point. However, it makes sense if they want to control transmission and either lack vaccines or have a bunch of people who don’t want to get vaccinated.
> It’s a blatant power grab. They want to spy on you and track you. They don’t care about your health.
Wow. It’s like the twilight zone over there. I’m quite concerned at the lengths governments are going to take away our rights. All in the name of “the good of others”.
Couldn't agree more - the fact that my request to go on a stabbing rampage was declined due to "the good of others" is a travesty against human rights and the freedoms that come with them.
But then I'd have to go on a stabbing spree, when simply complaining about it online is a much safer - and more importantly comfortable - if ultimately pointless endeavor.
Believing what you see on the news about covid is like believing the USSR's growth numbers. It's the terminally online and politicians who push the narrative, the rest don't care, including the police.
In Australia it's under 20% of people that have gone insane. The rest have checked out and completely ignored it. It's like a long holiday where you get paid to pretend you work.
But you can't say that in polite company so you just have ~40 percent compliance with whatever insanity is going on now. Hilariously enough the compliance from police is lower than from the general population so basically we have politicians and the terminally online talking about masks, jabs and sign ins and the people who are supposed to enforce it not being bothered with it.
Standing in front of the super market something like one in three pull out their phone, unlock it, point it at the check in qr code and not log in.
I'm reminded of the latter days of the USSR where no one took anything the government said seriously and just did whatever they felt like. Which does not bode well for the current incarnation of Australia long term.
"... following a selective tender process in November"
Remarkably slow process given that we are dealing with a pandemic.
Worth pointing out that "Australian gov to use" should read "South Australian gov to use" (South Australia being a state of Australia).
EDIT: As this thread is attracting attention from people who have views different from my own I'd just like to make it clear that I'm in favour of controlling the actions of people who choose to endanger public health and nothing I said above is meant to suggest otherwise.
We're dealing with an endemic disease that is going on its third year. At some point, people and governments need to recognize that fact: it's not controllable and it will spread eventually no matter how dystopian you get.
But we have not tried putting people into individual cages yet. We should do it for their own good. After all, COVID is terrible for grandma Suzi. If we space the cages at 10 feet rather than 6 it should totally work to stop the spread of COVID and it will all be good!
This is tongue in cheek but there are absolutely people even in tech who are either stupid enough to go along with that or secretly want that because they are full of hate towards the “unvaxxed.”
Which makes the media fearmongering about the “unvaxxed” even more dangerous. They never mention immunity from past infection which is now known to be superior protection.
Preferably that point is once we’ve reached suitable vaccination, and the presence of covid in the community no longer puts excess pressure on our hospital system.
As it stands, neither of those things have happened yet.
It's hilariously slow. They started talking about this South Australian trial over three months ago. It's like how governments would plan a new train station, except it's in response to a fast-moving pandemic.
Health departments are supposed to be prepared for a pandemic, they've been happening for all of recorded history and it's in the job description to be alert and ready to manage it. Today is lockdown day 224 in Melbourne and here we are wondering how to eventually open up retail and manage international arrivals.
No, no, no. This is HN. We are, like, possible COVID restrictions are good thing! Violate quarantine?! Beat them all up! It is for the children! And grandma! Google tracking you to place an ad in front of you for a better set of headphones than the ones you are currently shopping for that you can simply not buy? Now that's a violation of human rights!
This might be an unpopular opinion! But there are some really bad people out there. The situation is getting out of hand here in Melbourne and there are people like this family who're Covid positive and still out and about in the community. We should blame selfish people like these for such measures from the government.
I think people like these deserve to be locked up! Either that or put a tracker on these people. I'm not saying that about all Covid positive people but just some of these extremely selfish pricks.
> Downloading and using the G2G app is voluntary in WA, but the Government encourages people to use it, claiming it “keeps you safe and the rest of the community safe while freeing up more police resources that would otherwise be undertaking more regular physical checks”.
Where is the overreach in a voluntary app that people are encouraged to use to save the government resources?
So we’re supposed to just sit around and let infectious people roam around the community (putting everyone’s health and safety at risk) because they didn’t do as politely asked?
We had Katie Hopkins here earlier in the year bragging about how she was going to deliberately break quarantine etc etc.
If people aren’t going to follow a reasonable precaution, this far into a pandemic, then I have little sympathy when harsher measures are employed.
Take a step back and think critically about what you are saying and what kind of system you are building. You are building a system of enslavement. You will not be able to go anywhere or do anything except without the arbitrary permission from authorities who don’t care about you.
This pandemic is nowhere near that dangerous to justify this. Where do you draw the line? When you can’t shop in the grocery store unless you accept public health treatments without question? When they’ve dehumanized people enough that you tolerate surveilling them in those quarantine “hotels” “until they choose to comply with public health safety laws?”
The slope is slippery and you are sliding into hell. Time to stop being tribal or partisan about sticking it to the “anti vaxers” and start thinking about the system that is being built.
Is the number after your throwaway name a counter of all the accounts you’ve had to create because they keep getting removed for saying silly stuff like this?
I have never had an account here removed or reprimanded, and I’ve always lurked. I’ve made a single-digit number of accounts over the years, but hardly post(ed).
I am posting far outside my comfort zone because the alarm bells are ringing. Everything about this situation is getting more and more terrible the longer it is allowed to continue.
I hate this and it's gross government overreach but it's those few bastards who've deliberately and surreptitiously defied quarantine that's given the government the excuse it needs to so act.
Unlike the US, COVID was essentially controlled in Australia until some very specific violations of quarantine happened - and the outbreak traced to these violators. These outbreaks weren't of iffy origin, they were clearcut linked to these perpetrators.
In an era where governments everywhere are going authoritarian it only takes something like this to be used as an excuse. The trouble is there'll be little complaint from the public as everyone is aware of the causal link to the outbreaks - and the Australian public, like bloody-minded sheep, is too easily spooked when governments crack the whip.
Unfortunately, Australia is a very conservative country and the vast majority of its citizens do what they're told without question even when government makes crazy decisions, so we've a double-whammy problem/excuse when a few people go feral.
Totally agree with you on this one. Nobody really wants the govt to abuse their power to implement such measures. However, those few bastards are the reason why we all are having to suffer! If we all could agree and limit our movements until the vaccines targets are met, the death and hospitalisation rates should drop, statistically speaking! Violations like this are quite rampant in some suburbs/communities! One of my mates was at a takeaway food place in Craigieburn and an entire family of 5 with no masks had gathered behind him and were almost within a few centimetres. The guy got quite aggro when confronted by my mate! This is just getting mental!
At what point do you kill those that dare live their lives? This happened a generation ago to my people, they said we carried typhus and needed to be cleansed for the public health. Never again, huh?
That's not a good argument or a fair comparison, mate! One is a highly infectious disease that is spreading through contact and via air and the other is history! Covid has killed more than a million people and is continuing to do so as it mutates to get deadlier and deadlier. Please don't tell me that it's a lie and a conspiracy theory as I've lost family members to this engineered microscopic monstrosity!
'Viruses generally mutate to be less deadly, not more.'
Some might do but cholera, polio and smallpox and many, many other diseases are still just as virulent as they ever were down through the ages. (I know, smallpox only exists in labs but the last known case was a lab worker who died).
That argument is essentially a non sequitur, it's attempting to justify a position that doesn't really exist - and even if it did then it'd be by the very slimest of margins (apply with very strict constraints).
Even in cases where certain viruses have mutated to weaker strains - and given the high stakes involved (gambling with human life), then you would not only have to be extremely specific but also provide soild/reputable scientific evidence to backup your assertions (i.e.: for specific viruses/strains, etc.).
The new app is part SA of creating an alternative to mandatory 2 week hotel quarantines. The app is only required for those who would rather do their 2 week quarantine in their own home.
People are naturally scared of COVID and the 'unknown', they've never experienced anything like this in their lifetime so they don't really know what the limits should be and when to say no.
So it's hard to ask whether the people support it in such a state.
We should be very very careful relying on crisis moments to make major decisions. Which is always going to be a drawback in democracy (all systems have flaws). There will always be long term consequences as these things never have time limits. Any new capability adopted should be assumed to be permanent.
I'd say that in general Australians are more trusting of their government than our American friends. I often see poeple on Twitter like Joe Rogan and friends expressing total shock about how compliant Aussies are with what seems like draconian lockdown rules, but I think that misses the point. When our government says we can only go outside for an hour a day, there's a general sentiment that this is a shame but we understand these kind of things are necessary to get a handle on the pandemic. We don't assume this is an effort from our government to exert control, and believe this is a temporary measure in our best interests.
That being said, each time I read a headline like this I get slightly more concerned that if one day this trust is ever abused, it'll be all the worse because we never fought hard against these measures.
That trust will be abused. It is just a matter of time. History is full of examples. Why build this machine in the first place and then hope that whoever drives it is nice enough to not abuse the power? Why risk it? The pandemic is not dangerous enough to justify this blind faith.
As for the why, I think being able to trust your government is a great thing. It has allowed us to basically eleminate guns in our society except for recreation/farming, and as a result of our lockdowns we have only 1000 deaths. We should have 45,000 if you assume the same per-capita rate as the USA. So there are benefits for this kind of faith in your Government.
I think Americas emphasis on individual freedoms comes at the cost of some of these things, but there are other benefits of course and I do admire America's philosophy quite a lot. I don't have a crystal ball and I'm not sure what's better in the long run. As an Aussie though I'm happy with the trade-offs so far.
I would love to trust a government and have it take care of everything.
But unfortunately government is run by humans who are susceptible to delusions like the consolidation of power over other humans. And if it is ever run by an AI, well, that AI may decide to just destroy everyone. So while trusting a government would be great, they have not earned that and Australia's governing bodies are clearly driving off a cliff with everyone still in the car. Why trust that anymore?
They're arresting people for making Facebook posts against lockdowns. Source:
“NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian yesterday announced freedoms for fully vaccinated people once 70% of the state’s eligible population are double dosed. These include being able to go to hospitality venues, hairdressers and gyms, and have five people to your home.”
They can arbitrarily lock you in your apartment building for up to weeks, no one allowed to leave. Source:
Where will you draw the line? And when? When it's too late, and when you have to pretend to be "happy with the trade-offs so far" because they're monitoring your posts on HN and arresting you if you are not happy with the trade-offs so far? That's not far off from how they arrested that pregnant woman for making a Facebook post. Wake up.
And you celebrate that you can't defend yourself with firearms, but now you have police and military patrolling your streets to enforce these covid laws and check papers.
Some of these I won't defend, I think the arrest for the protest post and the Melbourne Towers lockdown were not ok. Both of those have been widely criticized, including by branches of the government. I wouldn't be surprised if there's legal action from these events and I'd be in favour of the victims.
The number of people in the home thing doesn't bother me, again because I'm happy to accept this as a temporary restriction that reduces deaths until our vaccination rates allow us to go back to normal life.
I understand your perspective, and these events do concern me. However I personally don't see them as an authoritarian government making efforts to reduce our freedoms, I see them as a generally well-meaning government misstepping in an unprecedented situation, and I expect those missteps to be accounted for via legal action.
What good is it to me or to you or to the people of Australia that the protest post arrest and the Melbourne Towers lockdown were "widely criticized?" That says nothing even if branches of government did it. That's controlled opposition at best until there's clear evidence that they're relenting from these practices. Instead I see just evidence of more power consolidation.
The number of people in the home thing doesn't bother me, again because I'm happy to accept this as a temporary restriction that reduces deaths until our vaccination rates allow us to go back to normal life.
It's been two years. These things are clearly not intended to be temporary. They will normalize it as much as possible. The frog boiling in the pot is an apt analogy here.
I understand your perspective, and these events do concern me. However I personally don't see them as an authoritarian government making efforts to reduce our freedoms, I see them as a generally well-meaning government misstepping in an unprecedented situation, and I expect those missteps to be accounted for via legal action.
What would it take you to consider that it is turning into a totalitarian regime, and that those are not missteps, but steps that were done perhaps too soon and they should've given the frog in the pot a little more time? I mean, I'm not here to waste my weekend arguing for nothing, I'm genuinely asking - what would it take for you to see that it's a bad situation? What else could Australia do that gets you thinking "we should take a step back" and will it be too late by then?
I truly hope that it's a generally well-meaning government misstepping in an unprecedented situation. I truly do. Is that realistic given a study of history and the nature of Power?
If we reach 80% vaccination rates (which we're on track to do in the next 1/2 months) and these measures don't disappear quickly, I would start to be very concerned.
I understand I probably seem like a naive optimist, and I self-confess that I am (although most of my Aussie friends are even less concerned than me). At least we will find out soon whether that's misplaced.
> military patrolling your streets to enforce these covid laws
This is not happening. It's a complete beat-up and it's utterly false. The military has been engaged to provide labor, not enforcement. They have no enforcement powers. Parking inspectors have greater powers to enforce civil laws.
As for the inflammatory "checking papers" trope: many countries in all parts fo the world have had lockdowns, including in the U.S. Why single out Australia for condemnation when it is doing the same thing as so many others have done?
That aside, on the ground, there is really not much enforcement of the restrictions - less and less as each week passes and everyone accepts that the virus is here to stay.
Yes, mostly they do support to varying degrees. The current SA state government has increased in popularity over their handling of the pandemic. Popularity doesn't make something right of course and there are people who disagree but I would argue it isn't a failure of democracy at least as far as local state politics go here.
Covid is a fact of life elsewhere but we have no cases so to sell opening up the state to more visitors the government has to show they are able to control the transition and keep our hospitals working well. We still have comparatively low vaccination rates here as we have been supply constrained so we are going to lag behind what is happening elsewhere.
In a small state like SA people care more about their own families than the rights of people to freely spread an infectious disease. A few days of enforced isolation for someone with a highly infectious disease isn't all that contentious for most people. The alternative to home detention with an app for verification would be putting them in a secure hotel which does not scale or home isolation with spot police checks which wastes a lot of resources. Things will change as we catch up on vaccination rates and see what the real health impacts are.
This headline is misleading ... "Australian gov" sounds like the Australian Federal government, but the government in question is the South Australian government, which is a State gov.
It is the article's headline, and there wasn't enough space to edit in the specific state. But is it actually a meaningful distinction as far as these policies being constrained permanently to just one part of Australia? Will this spread everywhere or is there a reason why this would only be constrained to a really small town no one really notices?
> It is the article's headline, and there wasn't enough space to edit in the specific state.
Sure - I noticed that and wasn't implying that you modified the article title. The article title is incorrect, at least in the way it reads at first glance - yes the South Australian government is "an Australian government", but it's not "The Australian Government".
> But is it actually a meaningful distinction as far as these policies being constrained permanently to just one part of Australia? Will this spread everywhere or is there a reason why this would only be constrained to a really small town no one really notices?
It's too early to tell - but it's worth noting that the main revenue generating states with the lion's share of attention in Australia are New South Wales and Victoria and so they usually set the tone of state policy countrywide. IMHO this is unlikely to spread to those states.
More importantly:
1) the article indicates that its use will be voluntary anyway;
2) Australia has a long track record of paying millions of dollars for technology like this that actually never works properly.
Returning travelers quarantining at home will be forced to download an app that combines facial recognition and geolocation. The state will text them at random times, and thereafter they will have 15 minutes to take a picture of their face in the location where they are supposed to be. Should they fail, the local police department will be sent to follow up in person. “We don’t tell them how often or when, on a random basis they have to reply within 15 minutes,” Premier Steven Marshall explained. “I think every South Australian should feel pretty proud that we are the national pilot for the home-based quarantine app.”
And are you comfortable remaining "not too concerned" as a Victorian when you admit that it's too early to tell if this idiocy will spread? Because idiocy it is, and spread it very well might. How long will you wait to call it out? Where will you draw the line in the sand? Power consolidates.
> Returning travelers quarantining at home will be forced to download an app
Interesting .. how exactly will they "force" people to download an app if they said person doesn't have a smart phone, or refuses to unlock it? Are they going to buy them one?
The police aren't going to see this as a useful use of their time and resources; and the public isn't going to put up with it either. There's one thing to make an announcement like this in Australia; and another thing completely to make it stick. Governments here have a habit of backing down completely when it's clear their re-election is at stake.
The proposal wouldn't fly in Victoria; but if it was attempted, I'm pretty sure it would be rolled back pretty quickly. Let's wait and see before getting too up in arms about it - the app isn't even written yet.
Did you post this article primarily so you could respond to everyone here touting your own opinions and disagree with anyone else’s? I get things are frustrating at the moment, but that’s pretty narcissistic.
Before you jump on your outrage high horse, it would be worth your time to investigate the details.
This is about South Australia adopting a new quarantine at home option for those who are entering the country. Allowing people to quaratine at home with an App rather than at designated quarantine hotels is a REDUCTION in government overreach.
In Western Australia where something similar is in use, this is a voluntary part of a similar program that saves officers having to make more house calls.
If you don't bother to do basic research before you get outraged, your outrage will eventually be discounted as "crying wolf" and won't be as effective the next time you need to push back against real government overreach.
Ssshhhh, you’ll interrupt all the people who are desperate for an excuse to screech about their favourite topics of “failed states” and “taking up arms against the government”.
“It’s not government overreach, you have a choice of ‘temporary’ in-home facial recognition and GPS surveillance or staying at a quarantine hotel.”
Not only is this a laughable “choice”, the kind of manipulative choice you’d expect a tech manager to pretend to offer you when all his projects suck but he wants you to feel like you “picked” a project, it’s also naive to present it as a choice. You don’t wait until it’s mandatory for everyone to say something. You say it now when the machine is rearing its ugly head and you can see the writing on the wall.
Keep in mind you are writing this in defense of a gov that presumes itself to be in charge of how many people you can have over. Source:
“NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian yesterday announced freedoms for fully vaccinated people once 70% of the state’s eligible population are double dosed. These include being able to go to hospitality venues, hairdressers and gyms, and have five people to your home.”
Seems more than NECESSARY to cry wolf right now. The slope is slippery. We all know they will push these systems as far as they can if they are allowed to. Cry wolf when the wolf is coming, not when it has eaten your chickens already.
“NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian yesterday announced freedoms for fully vaccinated people once 70% of the state’s eligible population are double dosed. These include being able to go to hospitality venues, hairdressers and gyms, and have five people to your home.”
That's not the same government at all. You've quoted a decision by the NSW government, and this article is about South Australia.
My mistake. Are they not unified into a single Australian government? I'm not Australian, I'm observing from across the pond.
More importantly though, that distinction does little to make it feel more right. What controls exist to keep the idiocy contained to only one part of Australia? How do you know they won't make that the policy everywhere? Could that happen?
There is a federal government, but these articles (OP and above link) are talking about the South Australian and New South Wales state governments respectively.
> How do you know they won't make that the policy everywhere? Could that happen?
This would require the state governments to collectively agree on something (unlikely) or for Scott Morrison (the Prime Minister) to get his act together and actually do something for once in his ineffectual life, so equally unlikely.
> Keep in mind you are writing this in defense of a gov that presumes itself to be in charge of how many people you can have over.
I'm not defending any government here. I am pointing out that people are getting outraged without even understanding what they are being outraged about. When you do that, you undermine your own credibility and potential impact and make it easier for people in power to brush aside your outrage when you do know what you are talking about.
If you really care about these issues it behooves you to inform yourself as well as possible and be as accurate as possible so that you don't do more harm than good for your cause.
The opening paragraph of the article describes what is actually happening and it's far less ominous that what the comments here suggest.
"In an official statement, the State Government announced a contract to a Western Australian (WA) company for $1.1 million to develop a new smartphone app that uses facial recognition and GPS tracking technology to monitor people who are ordered to self-quarantine at home, reported InDaily."
So this isn't an app meant to enforce state-wide quarantines or to enforce any additional restrictions or controls on the general public. This app is to enable those who are specifically ordered to self-quarantine (e.g. arriving from a Covid-hotspot, or close contacts of Covid-positive cases) to be able to check-in so that they can self-quarantine at home instead of at a managed isolation facility.
Read out loud what you are saying. You are saying that government ordering you to quarantine in your house, with facial recognition and GPS tracking in your own home, is less oppressive than being forced to stay in one of their quarantine hotels. And you're saying that in response to all the "freaking out" about this.
Keep in mind that when quarantined this way, if you fail to respond to their random, RANDOM, pings...they will send police officers to your house to do an in-person quarantine check. And not only that, but these so-called leaders of Australia are celebrating it and rubbing it in Australian faces. Source:
Returning travelers quarantining at home will be forced to download an app that combines facial recognition and geolocation. The state will text them at random times, and thereafter they will have 15 minutes to take a picture of their face in the location where they are supposed to be. Should they fail, the local police department will be sent to follow up in person. “We don’t tell them how often or when, on a random basis they have to reply within 15 minutes,” Premier Steven Marshall explained. “I think every South Australian should feel pretty proud that we are the national pilot for the home-based quarantine app.”
> Read out loud what you are saying. You are saying that government ordering you to quarantine in your house, with facial recognition and GPS tracking in your own home, is less oppressive than being forced to stay in one of their quarantine hotels. And you're saying that in response to all the "freaking out" about this.
A slightly different reading of what they're saying is:
"The government ifs offering to allow you to quarantine in your home instead of the otherwise mandatory 2 week stay in a sealed room in quarantine hotel, if you agree to download and use this app."
And given that, rightly or wrongly, many Australian states are charging several thousand dollars for hotel quarantine, it's clearly a choice many people might choose to make.
It is not a choice no matter how often the people defending it insist it's a choice. It's no more a choice than someone holding a gun to your head and asking you which poison you'd like to drink.
On what planet do we live, where all of a sudden that statement even in your version of the reading is in ANY way more palatable or reassuring? The government is offering you these choices:
1) Quarantine in a guarded quarantine hotel for two weeks in a sealed room
or
2) Quarantine in your home with facial recognition and GPS tracking and random pings that send the police to your home if you do not respond within 15 minutes
This is not a choice. This is the government giving you a false dilemma because it's tricking people into tolerating its massively expanded surveillance systems that it wants to build, and the normalization thereof. These things will not go away, just like the narrative until now has constantly shifted to keep the situation ongoing while power continues to consolidate.
These systems will be used for worse once they exist.
> On what planet do we live, where all of a sudden that statement even in your version of the reading is in ANY way more palatable or reassuring? The government is offering you these choices:
> 1) Quarantine in a guarded quarantine hotel for two weeks in a sealed room
Where I am (Australia, the place where this is happening), right now that is current reality on the planet we live on, and is the _only_ choice offered. I cannot leave Sydney for any reason, without being required to spend two weeks in a sealed room at my own expense. It's not just state or federal borders, it's travel within the state of NSW - I cannot go further than maybe 30-40km in any direction from my house without a "permissible reason" which pretty much means "essential work". Bereavement, family visits, or wanting to stab all my household and neighbours in the face do not count as "permissible reasons". That is, as you rightly allude to, in now way palatable or reassuring. But is is in fact the ground truth where I live.
As much as I despise option #2, I would seriously consider making that choice for myself - in spite of the acknowledged normalisation of massive surveillance overreach it would represent.
> 1) Quarantine in a guarded quarantine hotel for two weeks in a sealed room
or
> 2) Quarantine in your home with facial recognition and GPS tracking and random pings that send the police to your home if you do not respond within 15 minutes
> This is not a choice.
What's your alternative? Just let sick people loose into the country, exponentially infecting everyone? I'm in the US, and that strategy did not work out very well. 660K deaths and counting. Quarantine has historically been a sensible, effective way to deal with deadly communicable diseases. I wish the US took it as seriously as Australia and NZ did.
EDIT: Crap, I just realized I responded to the article's submitter, someone who's already posted the same ax-grind 30 times to the article's threads. Guess I've been had.
It is a choice. You choose to submit to two weeks of quarantine in either hotel quarantine (that you pay for) or at home; OR you choose to stay outside of Western Australia and accept the risk of getting Covid from places where community spread is rife. No one is forcing you to return.
In fact, there are few return slots available and many people can't get a flight back to Australia from places like the UK or the US. And yet they still try, because comparatively our life out here in the state of Western Australia (bigger than Texas mind you) is FULL OF FREEDOMS BECAUSE WE'RE COMPLETELY OPEN AND FREE OF COMMUNITY SPREAD.
i read out loud what i said. it still sounds reasonable to me, and given the choice between quarantining at home with app-based check ups and quaranting in a quarantine facility, i'd choose to stay at home.
when you disagree with somebody, please make an attempt to believe that the person you disagree with has actually thought about what they said. assuming that the only reason somebody might disagree with you is becauase they don't understand an issue as well as you do is a really insulting way to attempt to join a conversation.
Do you understand that Western Australia hasn't opted for the 'let rip deaths be damned' strategy that the US has and has instead had zero community transmission for the vast majority of the pandemic? Your comments read like you've got little understanding of the situation here full stop.
Moreover, it appears to be an optional way of allowing returned travellers to serve out their quarantine period at a place of their choosing rather than in a state-run, guarded, hotel room, or without regular police visits to their home. I would have thought HN would regard this as a sensible and efficient use of technology.
Quarantine has been used in all kinds of societies for thousands of years during times of infectious outbreak. It’s described in the Bible, and it was used in the USA during the Spanish Flu. What is the point of quarantine without systems to ensure it is obeyed?
Exactly, for the life of me I cannot understand why some people just don't understand that. It's tragic really because many people have lost their lives through the bloodyminded actions of those who who've callous regard for others.
Your post could word for word be used for the opposite narrative too. Many people have lost their lives through the bloodyminded actions of those clamoring for a totalitarian regime and its systems of enslavement.
Nobody is using it for the opposite narrative. Quarantine has nothing to do with enslavement. You’re being histrionic, but also inconsistent when worrying about loss of life through totalitarianism but not loss of life through preventable illness. You’ve said elsewhere that the pandemic is not deadly enough to justify the actions we’re seeing, and I somewhat agree (population-wide lockdowns have been excessive), but hospital systems everywhere, including in Australia, have been pushed to beyond capacity. Australians can accept some limits to their freedoms to keep the medical system functioning. They won’t accept it forever, and regardless of any malicious intentions, governments can’t afford it forever.
You have no power over them if they choose to keep it this way forever. Especially in Australia. What are you going to do to the contrary? And how can you guarantee they won't choose to keep it this way forever?
The quaranting itself is not the enslavement. It's how they are going about it and what kinds of systems they want to build.
> It's how they are going about it and what kinds of systems they want to build.
You don’t seem to be well informed on how they’re going about it and what kind of systems “they” want to build. Who are “they”? Which of the multiple levels of government, several states and territories and multiple political parties who all have different policies and priorities do you mean? What do you mean by “enslavement”? None of it makes sense, and you’re making giant extrapolations from exaggerated and inaccurate headlines and reports in a media that you probably wouldn’t trust or believe on most other topics.
Yes they can. Especially in Australia where people don’t have means to defend themselves and are falling for the “vaxed vs unvaxed” narrative. Pit sides against each other and they’ll clamor for the state to protect the peace and establish order. And that it will do with increasingly invasive measures like arresting pregnant women for making anti-lockdown Facebook posts or locking residents of an entire apartment complex in their homes with no one allowed to leave.
Imagine being told in 2018 this would happen a short time later - the government there arresting or locking people in that way. Would you have believed it could happen?
Could you see it becoming worse, particularly if the media narrative about us-them continues until one side gets dehumanized?
Why rest in this blind faith about how much they can sustain? When they have already been sustaining this stuff for going on two years with no signs of letting up. If anything it seems to be getting worse per the OP, with even more idiotic systems being built “because of the antivaxers” or whatever convenient justification is peddled by media to divide the people and consolidate power towards the top of the top.
Every possible scenario would have been alarming. 50000 deaths and a collapsing hospital system would have been unthinkable too. Australia has chosen to avoid that nightmare, and has chosen a different, also highly undesirable but marginally preferable path.
People are getting whipped up into a frenzy about all this, based on mental models of government and population relations that may apply elsewhere but don’t apply in Australia.
In truth:
- there is heavy pushback on government by the media and population, acceptance of lockdowns is in rapid decline, and governments are being forced to change their polices week by week.
- We don’t have a heavily militarized and hostile relationship between police, military and the population, it has always been egalitarian and cohesive, like pretty much everything else in the country.
- Australia has been ranked in/near the top 10 freest countries in the world for a long time, and little of what has happened during the pandemic would warrant that changing.
> When they have already been sustaining this stuff for going on two years with no signs of letting up.
For what it's worth (you've revealed in another comment that you're not Australian, so you might not be aware,) in the period between the 2020 lockdown and the delta outbreak this year (approx. October 2020 to June 2021) things had almost returned to normal. I was back at work and at sport. Beaches and shopping centres were packed. State borders were open (a friend went on a camping trip to Queensland.) It was remarkable how quickly things returned to normal once the number of new cases dropped to zero, and it was surreal to watch international news and see that not everyone was able to live like us. This outbreak is more severe, but I have no reason to believe things won't be like that again once case numbers drop.
"Facebook posts or locking residents of an entire apartment complex in their homes with no one allowed to leave."
This IS the correct procedure during a disease pandemic. To halt the process of a disease it's been a common and effective practice throughout the centuries and across many countries to isolate those infected along with their close contacts for a period of time until the disease is over/can no longer propagate.
What do you specially find wrong with it and why? Sure it's inconvenient for those involved but it's the least harmful action for everyone - all of society benefits this way.
Clearly you don't know your history or you'd realize it was common practice. For example, until quite recently Sydney had a quarantine station at North Head for well over a century until the Government stupidly shut it down and turned it into a hotel: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Head_Quarantine_Statio...
Clearly, isolating people like this is new to you. Get used to the fact that it's not a new practice and the fact that you'll likely see it again in the future.
The same goes for the vaccinated versus the unvaccinated. Unvaccinated people are threat to the life and health of others so society has the right to isolate them for its own safety. This practice is not new either, it's been practiced ever since vaccination became common practice.
The them and us problem is simply solved by 'them' not being so damned selfish and getting vaccinated like the rest of society.
Please note: the matter of coercion with respect to public health matters is NOT like other forms of government coercion or government surveillance for political reasons. They are two completely separate matters - or they ought to be. If any of these COVID measures are later abused by Government then the citizenry has full rights to object in every way possible. Government has absolutely no right to take advantage of this tragic heath problem and it is incumbent on citizens to ensure that it does not.
* If any of these COVID measures are later abused by Government then the citizenry has full rights to object in every way possible. Government has absolutely no right to take advantage of this tragic heath problem and it is incumbent on citizens to ensure that it does not.*
It is naive to think this way. By then it will be too late. They are building tyrannical systems of enslavement in the name of public health because obviously they wouldn’t openly say they want to enslave you.
Waiting for them to build the systems before you evaluate if they’re abusing their power must be some kind of preemptive Stockholm Syndrome from a citizenry that deep down can sense what is happening but finds itself powerless or too afraid to speak up. And so they just eat their own by failing to be critical and cautiously paranoid at the right time.
Used in the US and around the world for cholera and typhoid as well. For many years. There are a lot ruins of old quarantine facilities and several islands around New York were used for the purpose.
People don't understand how isolated some states of Australia are, even from the other states. Some parts of this country were barely touched by covid. It was just about the least dystopian life you could imagine apart from driving through the Mad Max landscape.
The borders are closed so it's a choice you have made to enter the country and require quarantine, you know what you signed up for it is made abundantly clear.
I think if you asked the majority of Australians they would say that they are happy people have to quarantine at the hotels and that they be guarded, since most of our outbreaks have been from quarantine breaches. So as far as a democracy goes that's right on track. Democratic doesn't mean individuals can do what they want, it means the whole community is involved in setting the rules for the community.
They weren't guarded by police at the start, but non-compliance and malpractice from the regular security guards had the community complaining about having such lax security.
So you're okay with increasingly stricter subversion of freedom, because you've consumed media fear-mongering about the pandemic. The pandemic is not deadly enough to justify building a totalitarian regime.
What would have been the case if you asked the majority of Germans what they thought about certain restrictions in the 1930s?
Democracy is more than the "whole community setting the rules for the community." It is the rule of law in preserving the rights to life, liberty, and justice for all people. In the form of negative rights and the freedom to live as an individual unfettered by a mob of the majority. What you are describing and proposing is mob rule that subjects the 49% or fewer to tyranny.
And actually, what you're describing will subject 99.99% to tyranny because you are building a system of enslavement that will serve just the cream of the crop and crush everyone else.
Say it out loud. "They should have listened and the regular security guards should have been complaint! Now we need to use military officers to patrol and enforce." Say it out loud so you can hear what you're actually saying.
"The pandemic is not deadly enough..." I'm curious to know how many more deaths would be required, in your opinion, for it to be considered deadly enough?
Right, 'The pandemic is not deadly enough' argument quickly degenerates into a 'how much is a human life worth in dollars?' one. This then leads us down the slippery slope to us losing our humanity.
It seems to me that much of human misery down through the ages can be put down to a small percentage of humanity who thinks this way and we'd all be better off if they had bigger more highly tuned amygdalas to boost their empathy for other human beings.
(This question has always intrigued me, it would be very informative to see sets of normal distributions for given dollar amounts for the population.
Also, given that we're living in COVID times, distribution figures for a virus's infection/replication rate vs death rate per capita, etc. would be informative. Knowing when fear gripped everyone to such an extent that say 95+% of the population would be clambering for vaccinations would be useful if for no other reason than to put vaccination resources to best use. For example, if the death rate for COVID or any virus were one in three as it was for the Plague/Black Death in the Middle Ages, would we then reach a figure of 95+% vaccination rate? Surely such figures would be of great interest to medical professionals and behavioral psychologists.)
>So you're okay with increasingly stricter subversion of freedom, because you've consumed media fear-mongering about the pandemic. The pandemic is not deadly enough to justify building a totalitarian regime.
How dangerous do you think covid is? Is it just a common cold like the recipient of the highest civilian award in the US said? [1] Or just a flu like Fox News kept saying[2]?
Are these scenes in Russia[3] and India[4] made up, or are those acceptable when only a fraction of people were infected, and no lockdowns would mean a much worse situation?
> So you're okay with increasingly stricter subversion of freedom
Yes. Simple as that. Most of us are happy with the trade off of freedoms in this scenario.
Your viewpoint of what defines totalitarianism or miscarriages of liberty are fine, and you’re welcome to keep them or even share them. But you don’t get to don’t get to dictate to others why your fiercely individualistic ideals are definitively are better than the community trade offs being made.
Thanks, I appreciate you care about us. Australia has been on this path for a while now but similar changes are happening everywhere. It does feel like a frog being slowly cooked. I would still choose an app at home compared to paying for hotel quarantine though. There are more serious and permanent changes happening with surveillance (every phone number is attached to a government ID, metadata is saved for years, number plates are scanned and logged at state borders etc), indirect crimes (you did something a criminal might do, so that's a crime) or extremely petty things like the defamation law or carrying a 'sharp object' or even not being able to pull the tab when you fill gas to needing an ID to buy a knife from the supermarket. It's not just that they seem to be able to pass whatever weird or overreaching laws but there seem to be little to no legal safe guards or limitations about what they can be used for or when they can be used. There are limited means to civilly object as things instantly become crimes. Is Australia really considered a 'very free' country.
To be part of a society there needs to be a compromise. I agree not to not to steal things in exchange for knowing people aren't allowed to steal things from me.
That I understand, and the same for the quarantine rules. But things have been getting really complicated lately. As you have pointed out, these agreements aren't feeling like community decisions and technology has been making the application of law humanless and arbitrary.
If I forget to pay for a loaf of bread, walk out the store, and then go back to pay immediately, it would just be a human misunderstanding nd everyone would be happy with that outcome. Societal dues paid.
But if instead a facial recognition camera tracked me leaving and the security gate detected the item unpaid then the matter goes into an automated system and even if I realise my mistake and pay my societal dues the system doesn't care. If we aren't careful it could elevate the system above the society, and lose its original purpose of helping resolve social conflits. Instead it would just apply law without the capacity to fully appreciate it's role of societal mediation.
There are things in Australia that are already like that. Expired registration cameras for example. A police officer can suss out the situation and see if you just forgot to do it this morning, or if you are constantly driving without insurance. The camera can't figure that out, so a simple mistake can cost you.
You're extrapolating the pandemic situation out to the rest of societies problems and rules and we just can't have a good discussion like that.
There are ways in which I agree with you about Australia's future and reducing freedoms, especially around technology and tracking. But the pandemic is not trivial, look at countries like India and America that essentially had it run free, that is a lot of death, and it wasn't just covid patients. A health system full of covid patients can't help anyone else either.
The thing is that we have a plan and a path out of this, and it relies on controlling outbreaks until we are all vaccinated. To make that happen, people have to quarantine for 14 days. People thought their happiness was more important than the community and the community disagrees so we had to enforce it.
The community also thinks you can't let rodents live in your restaurant kitchen, and that you can't drive while drunk, etc. Laws often protect the community from the selfish and that is what happened here too. We tried to let people be adults but they left the hotel and caused untold damage to the community, so now they get babysat.
People need to look alot closer to the data in America before they simply blame individual freedom for the deaths
A HUGE percentage of the deaths in the US are from people institutionalized in government facilities. They had no freedom..
Another HUGE percentage of the deaths were people that were already unhealthy, and what I know about Australia you guys do not have them levels of general unhealthy people.
America also has a much high percentage of the population over 65, a group that makes up the majority of COVID Deaths
There is more to the story than simply "American did not impose enough tyranny on the citizens to combat COVID"
I do agree, the last paragraph wasn't quite what I was suggesting. I honestly doubt you could ever have controlled American citizens enough to curb the spread anyway, much like India had no hope either. I feel it was inevitable. But for whatever reason it was able to spread, the result was that it was deadly to hundreds of thousands of people.
I don't think we gain anything by trying to qualify exactly who it killed, since over 65s are still people, as are institutionalized individuals.
> So you're okay with increasingly stricter subversion of freedom, because you've consumed media fear-mongering about the pandemic. The pandemic is not deadly enough to justify building a totalitarian regime.
FFS. So you're ok with hundreds of thousands (660,000 so far in the US) of people dying for your freedoms compared to the 9 (YEP, NINE) deaths we've had in Western Australia from Covid?
Democracy isn't some mask off individualist system where your perceived individual rights trample the rights of the wider community to stay alive, despite the deep throated bellowing coming from a media more concerned about stirring controversy to drive revenue.
You keep your freedoms. You freedoms to shoot each other rampantly with all your guns; your freedoms to have your police shoot and kill you without repercussion. Your freedoms to not get vaccinated and die from a virus that has an easily sourced vaccine readily available.
We'll take our sane approach to zero community spread of Covid and our two years of billions of budget surpluses. Who would have thought that having no community spread and a wide open economy would result in such financial windfalls? /s
All this app does is allow for people to self-quarantine without the cops being required to physically check that you're doing so. It's voluntary and allows the police to actually focus on their job instead of constantly checking on self-quarantining returned travellers. You can take you tyrannical Nazi German hot takes elsewhere, we're 100% not listening with our community free of Covid.
Hey, can you please stop posting flamewar comments? You've been flaming up a storm in the last few hours and we ban accounts that do that. I'm not going to ban you right now because everyone goes on tilt sometimes, but please stop now and please don't do it again. It's not what this site is for, and it destroys what it is for.
Stop rationalizing it? So we should make rules based on our feelings instead? Of course it matters why. There is no freedom at all costs, because at all costs would be a lawless badlands. You're already knee deep in a society full of rules that you willingly follow and benefit from every day, now society has a new problem and we're navigating how to figure it out, that's going to take some rationalizing.
A lot of people on the Internet aren't so much pro-democracy as anti-government. Strong competent democratic government must be a challenge to their view of the world. Personally I would prefer a competent democracy to mob rule or the dictators that inevitably follow.
Returning travelers quarantining at home will be forced to download an app that combines facial recognition and geolocation. The state will text them at random times, and thereafter they will have 15 minutes to take a picture of their face in the location where they are supposed to be. Should they fail, the local police department will be sent to follow up in person. “We don’t tell them how often or when, on a random basis they have to reply within 15 minutes,” Premier Steven Marshall explained. “I think every South Australian should feel pretty proud that we are the national pilot for the home-based quarantine app.”
Ahhhhh joy, the choice between a state-run guarded hotel room, or in-home surveillance with random pings that send the police to your house if you don't respond within 15 minutes.
That is a false choice / false dilemma. "Which poison would you rather take" is not a meaningful choice.
And what comfort? Facial recognition in your home? GPS tracking? RANDOM pings that send police officers to your house for an in-person quarantine check fi you don't respond within 15 minutes?
Stop pretending to think about what most people would choose, and wake up to the reality staring you in the face.
Not sure where you live, but here in NZ we have similar systems and approach to Covid as Australia. Lots of people have been calling for a system to be implemented to allow people to self-isolate at home instead of a managed isolation facility. So when I say that most people would choose the option to isolate at home, I'm not pretending to think on others' behalf - I'm basing that statement on my experiences here in NZ and in discussion with others here in NZ which is fairly similar to Australia.
Having an app on your phone that lets authorities check if you're self-isolating sounds totally reasonable to me. When you've finished your two weeks isolation, you just uninstall the app and move on with your life. No big deal.
Mate, it is clear you are not Australian by your other comments and you are projecting fears about "most people" with little to no idea what you are talking about.
Yes, we have less individual freedoms in Australia than places like the USA. Some of them are trade offs that have been pretty widely accepted, even though they might have been unpopular at various points. Australian's generally have more trust in our institutions than other countries, and the handling of the pandemic in 2020 is a good example as to why that might be. This is an app provided by a state (not federal) gov, that is open source, and there are various other gov mechanisms to verify how the data is being used. If it ends up being poorly implemented/used/abused, very likely it will be found out and become politically unpopular to the point where it will be quickly dumped.
Do you think they'd roll out tyranny in broad daylight without trying to find a convenient excuse with which to fool the gullible? Of course they'll say it's to save lives. Just like the "think of the children" laws are always supposedly about protecting children. Like Apple and CSAM being obvious surveillance tools being introduced in the name of protecting children.
Deaths per capita in Australia is at 10% of the US. If the US had managed to keep things as low as Australia, there would be just under half a million less deaths.
Seriously. Half a million. And for that, you won't stay inside your house for two weeks, because you're worried it's a slippery slope of some sort.
What need for me to be gullible to think "I'd rather five hundred thousand less of my countrymen had died this year", and not go out?
What need for me to be gullible to think that you should do it to? What need for me to be gullible to look at my government forcing you to do it too and saying "that's a good move"?
The quarantine system is quite literally saving lives, and the things that we can do to improve that system should be done.
This is not trusting the government, and it's not "ignoring tyranny". It's how society ought to work.
We did stay in our house for two weeks. We locked down, and things were pretty locked down around where I'm at. Also, masks work and are freely given anywhere you go to shop. And vaccines are available. And natural immunity works. All these things in conjunction help without authorities building surveillance machines that will never go away.
The approach you are taking can be used to justify complete control and arbitrary lockdowns whenever N cases or N deaths for any virus happen. Or for anything that can be construed as a public health crisis, including things not related to viruses. Don't you see that?
My heart breaks for any death anywhere. Including the death of a free and normal life. Suicides and depression have skyrocketed. The evidence shows this:
There are no easy answers, and it is not appropriate to beat someone over the head with the numbers of death in response to them calling out the systems of enslavement you are building in Australia. It's clear that your approach is not good for people's mental health, especially for young people. Presumably you still have lockdowns where you can't go more than 5km from your home? And restrictions on what you can be outside for?
Do these pandemic deaths justify the emergence of a totalitarian state? No.
> The approach you are taking can be used to justify complete control and arbitrary lockdowns whenever N cases or N deaths for any virus happen. Or for anything that can be construed as a public health crisis, including things not related to viruses. Don't you see that?
Yeah, I do see that! In fact it's almost like Australia wrote an act about this stuff like 80 years ago that define the criteria and rights and responsibilities of the commonwealth during national emergencies. And it's almost like the pandemic meets those criteria and then we used the powers as written in the act.
Almost like this isn't the emergence of a totalitarian state but was the state we lived in all along, or something.
> My heart breaks for any death anywhere. Including the death of a free and normal life. Suicides and depression have skyrocketed. [...
> ...] And it is not appropriate to beat someone over the head with the numbers of death in response to them calling out the systems of enslavement you are building in Australia.
You've unfortunately been posting tons of flamewar comments lately, including personal attacks. We ban accounts that do that. I don't want to ban you, so would you please stop?
To prevent misunderstanding: I'm not siding against your views. I've just noticed that you've repeatedly been breaking the site guidelines lately, often egregiously - and this is not something we can allow, regardless of how right you are or feel you are - because it destroys HN for its intended purpose.
The Australian federal government has introduced wide ranging warrantless powers that allow for a lot of potential abuse of computers and communications. These have had bi-partisan support and been rushed through parliament with very little debate or discussion from the complicit mainstream media. This stuff is likely pushed by our large allies and it isn't going away and likely allows Australia to be used as a backdoor to spy on our allies citizens as well. This is potentially really serious long term problem and gets almost no debate in Australia.
Meanwhile these localised state based measures aimed at fighting this pandemic are another thing entirely. Our state governments are not part of five eyes and aren't under pressure to maintain any of these measures indefinitely. They want to keep local businesses active by avoiding lockdowns and keep their tightly budgeted public health systems working.
Our less populated states here managed to get through the pandemic basically virus free without much in the way of restrictions within their states. I don't think people understand how good we have had this.
Our vaccines supply was delayed but now that has improved all the states are opening up once vaccine targets are reached and the state want to ease into the change. We still have very low vaccination rates compared to many countries where vaccinations were expedited as the only real viable solution. To reopen state borders and allow more potentially infected people in we need to be able to quarantine infectious people without locking them up and an app is a cheap solution. Once covid is endemic and as vaccination rates climb there won't be any point to quarantining people and the app will be discarded. It isn't for surveilling the entire population but for individuals for the relatively short time they might be shedding virus.
People are right to be vigilant but you all have the wrong target here. The right target is the Australian federal government's mass surveillance laws. An app that will be used for a week or two by a sick person then discarded isn't the real problem.
This probably doesn’t come across to an international audience but Australia is in a really weird state at the moment.
On one hand you have QLD/SA/WA which are probably the places least effected in the world by COVID. QLD for example with a population of 5.2 million has had a total of 7 deaths from COVID over the entirety of the pandemic. Schools, shops and workplaces have all been pretty much running as normal the last 18 months in these states.
On the other hand you have the South East states which have large active delta outbreaks and have gone through long lockdowns, especially Victoria. These states have given up eliminating COVID and are planning on letting COVID spread as vaccination rates meet targets.
Residents from the SE states are effectively locked out from the rest of Australia. State borders are shut and have been on and off for much of the pandemic. Thus Australia is in some ways operating as two countries at this stage.
What’s more international travel to Australia is effectively shutoff. The only people allowed back are Australians and there is a wait list and you better be planning on moving back to live permanently.
Obviously no one wants to split the country in half. No one wants suspend international travel indefinitely. In particular the federal government views its reelection chances as effectively riding on getting things to a semblance of normality by Christmas.
Yet residents of places like SA and WA obviously do not want to give up their COVID free status.
Hence you see the search for solutions like this. The app does address a genuine problem. In particular, hotel quarantine was introduced in Australia after home quarantine failed due to wide spread non-compliance. Yet it is expensive
, capacity is limited and hotels aren’t great quarantine facilities in the first place. Sealed windows and shared ventilation systems in particular are problematic.
Whether or not the trade off in tracking people for two weeks is worth it, I’m not sure.
I don’t think these measures will be around permanently though. The slightest suggestion of permanent measures has been slapped down hard so far.
This is an interesting choice of article of the many on this matter.
The title is wrong (it’s state government, not federal. You wouldn’t post “US government” when Florida enacts something).
The intent of this program is as a trial to see if this improves things or not.
I suspect a lot of the readers here are lacking any real knowledge of Australia’s treatment of COVID-19 beyond the odd random news article and are looking through their own localised lenses. Before criticising, it may be worth taking some time to research and understand.
Our death toll in total in 18 months is about the same as the current daily death toll in the US. We have achieved this via means that simply would not work in the US due to dissension between states and differing views on the practically of temporarily giving up freedoms for the greater good.
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[ 4.4 ms ] story [ 228 ms ] threadAustralia would essentially become a failed state with your suggestion, and I don't exactly think the government is just going to let that happen.
Sometimes you have to break the rules to make long-term positive changes.
Dr. Chant said: “We will be looking at what contact tracing looks like in the New World Order…yes it will be pubs and clubs and other things if we have a positive case there.”
https://www.independent.co.uk/tv/news/new-world-order-austra...
Let's go back a long way to 1854 during the cholera epidemic in London when Dr John Snow found that the Broad Street pump was its cause and he located it by contact tracing those who contacted cholera and worked backwards to the source. This case is famous for the very fact it shows that contact tracing and isolating saves lives (please ensure that you look at the map he used to trace the pump): https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1854_Broad_Street_cholera_ou...
I can attest to this, contact tracing put a quick end to the COVID outbreak near where I live and I'm very thankful for the work those tracers did under very arduous circumstances.
In principle, contact tracing during a pandemic has nothing to do with the general increase in surveillance that's gripping the planet at the moment - it is an entirely separate matter.
The fact that we have sleezebag governments prepared to subvert a decent legitimate process is - again - a separate and serious problem for democracy.
Wake up before it is too late.
https://theconversation.com/vaccine-passports-are-coming-to-...
“NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian yesterday announced freedoms for fully vaccinated people once 70% of the state’s eligible population are double dosed. These include being able to go to hospitality venues, hairdressers and gyms, and have five people to your home.”
They are even now trying to limit how many people you can have over in your own home. It is a failed state. Wake up before you are enslaved.
Australia is done, I'm making plans to leave.
And judging by the downvotes people think this stuff is acceptable?
Do I think that it will be acceptable if lockdowns continue in Australia past the point at which the various state governments have agreed they will stop (i.e.: the 70% and 80% population vaccinated marks)? No.
Do I think the reason why those targets are harder to meet than necessary is because of unscientific fearmongering idiots refusing to get the vaccine? Yes.
In a way, I blame this more on you than on the government.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/sep/10/boys-more-at-r...
https://www.science.org/content/article/having-sars-cov-2-on...
Do you believe covid is dangerous enough to justify turning Australia into a totalitarian regime where you need to show papers to go anywhere and have constant surveillance even in your own home? Did you know they’re even dangling how many people can visit your home as a carrot?
https://theconversation.com/vaccine-passports-are-coming-to-...
“NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian yesterday announced freedoms for fully vaccinated people once 70% of the state’s eligible population are double dosed. These include being able to go to hospitality venues, hairdressers and gyms, and have five people to your home.”
Wake up now before it is too late. You’re falling for their us-them division tactic where they get you to hate the “anti vax” until you build the systems of your own enslavement.
In Australia, for all intents and purposes, yes.
Thanks to the terrible "totalitarian regime", less than one percent of our population has yet to catch COVID. We've had even less deaths! It's fuckin' awesome that we've managed to come out of this so well, almost entirely thanks to lockdown.
The route out of lockdown, without massively increasing the numbers of preventable deaths, is vaccination.
It's simpler and more expedient for me, and the government, to treat all Australians who refuse to get vaccinated (as opposed to being unable to get vaccinated, of course) as either idiots, petulant children, or misled and out of touch with reality.
Either way, I appreciate that the carrot & sometimes the stick is necessary to force people to abide by the laws of their society. Just like it's not your choice to drink and drive, it's not really your choice not to get vaccinated while participating in Australian society. These are the norms that the majority of our country believe in.
If you don't want to get vaccinated, don't participate. Go find a community of like-minded rugged individualists somewhere. Move to Texas, maybe. (Sorry, Texans.)
> You’re falling for their us-them division tactic where they get you to hate the “anti vax” until you build the systems of your own enslavement.
Nah, I already harboured a great deal of spite for anti-vax idiots prior to COVID, didn't need any help from the government.
...
And all that said, if the government doesn't remove restrictions once we reach 80% vaccinated and more, I will be fighting those governments tooth and nail. But we're not there yet.
You need to say what you are typing out loud because you are caught up in the feel-good tribalism of debating partisan issues online. When in reality, there are multiple legitimate reasons to not bend the knee including past infection.
It's interesting that you chide others for being out of touch with reality and yet you ignore the reality that past infection offers equal or better protection as mentioned by that source I gave you in the parent post.
But in any case, the very last sentence of your post is both refreshing AND alarming. You said:
"And all that said, if the government doesn't remove restrictions once we reach 80% vaccinated and more, I will be fighting those governments tooth and nail. But we're not there yet."
Refreshing because at least you still seem to have some amount of reason left, but alarming because you don't seem to realize that by then, it's going to be too late. You'll end up enslaved because you fell for the "hate the antivaxers" ploy and picked it as your tribal narrative of choice so you could feel good while arguing with people online. Even though the science is unequivocal that immunity from past infection is excellent.
You may also be interested in this information that is emerging:
"US researchers say teenagers are more likely to get vaccine-related myocarditis than end up in hospital with Covid"
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/sep/10/boys-more-at-r...
What now? You really think people reading this information are petulant children for choosing caution and simultaneously not wanting a totalitarian regime monitoring them and building systems of enslavement?
Realize that power consolidates. They will not need to remove these restrictions once you reach some threshold. Who will make them and how? By then more people will be trained to hate others and defend more. Realize that giving a government that kind of power is dangerous.
> It's interesting that you chide others for being out of touch with reality and yet you ignore the reality that past infection offers equal or better protection
This is completely meaningless to Australia. Just 0.002% of the Australian population has had COVID. Past-infection protection is not an area of interest to me or the government of my country, because as a cohort, those people just don't really exist here... Mostly because of our wacky policies of trying to make sure our populace doesn't get infected by doing things like hotel quarantine.
As for the second bit, about children possibly having issues with the vaccine: It might be worth pointing out here that children in that study aren't a part of the current Australian government push for vaccination. The target is for over-16s only.
Should we wait before pushing for the under-16s to get vaccinated? Absolutely! Does that prove you right in absolutely any way? Nope!
You might as well start telling me that Australia shouldn't introduce gun control.
That reminds me of an old web-based puzzle game, where you had to carry around CCTV cameras to make sure you are always being recorded.
At one point, the protagonist, in a moment of self-awareness, says something very profound that has stuck with me ever since: "If I am complicit in my own surveillance, does that mean I'm hiding from myself?"
Can anyone remember the name of this game?
With two doses you can go out 3 times to every 1 time someone with no shots can.
Blame the foolish who think because they are 2 dose vaxxed that they can continue their lives as normal. You can't.. stay home.
Those supposed 'anti-vaxers' are more or less guaranteed to be vaccinated for nearly all diseases just like I assume you (and others who insist on calling anyone who is not toeing the party line by that epithet) are.
Some people have natural immunity from having had SARS2.
Some people are being advised by their doctors not to take the current crop of vaccines.
Some people deem their risk from contracting SARS2 lower than the risk of side-effects from the current crop of vaccines.
Bodily autonomy is an essential part of a liberal democracy.
If you are vaccinated you are mostly protected so why worry over those who do not get vaccinated? They run a higher risk of contracting SARS2, they have a higher risk of ending up in a hospital, they run a higher risk of needing intensive care and they have a higher risk of succumbing to the disease compared to vaccinated people in their own age and risk group. These are all risks to their own health, something you might find stupid and unreasonable but... it is their own choice. The only possible argument you might have in a country with socialised health care (like Oz) is that they may run up health care costs due to their refusal to take the vaccine. Those same people might respond that they do not want the vaccines because they fear potential side effects somewhere down the line. Given the limited amount of long-time experience with mRNA vaccines in humans this is not an unfounded risk, although most side effects seem to occur within 6 months of vaccination and as such should have already become visible.
Have you seen the movie 'Babe', the one about the pig which acted like a dog? Do you remember how the sheep in that movie called anything which they deemed to be a threat a 'wolf', leading to a field full of sheep bleating 'wolf' in sheep-speak to each other and to the supposed wolf? Calling anyone who shows the slightest hesitancy towards these rather new vaccines 'anti-vaxxers' (the word seems to be mostly spelled with two 'x'-es) is comparable to how those sheep reacted.
Don't be a sheep, Australia has enough of them already.
Those people who are advised by their docotrs not to get vaccinated are few and far between, but it turns out the current vaccine push takes those figures into account.
The people who deem the risk of COVID lower than the vaccine are just straight up incorrect. They're either misled or just deliberately contrarian, and I don't care what they think.
All autonomy is important, except where that autonomy would endanger others in society.
> If you are vaccinated you are mostly protected so why worry over those who do not get vaccinated?
If they also opt-out of taking up hospital care necessary for treating those people who didn't refuse a vaccine, honestly, I'd be okay with it. But we both know that won't happen. It'll end up like the US where there are people dying in the ER because there's no room due to COVID cases, and I do not want Australia to end up like the US.
> Have you seen the movie 'Babe', the one about the pig which acted like a dog? [...] Don't be a sheep, Australia has enough of them already.
All of this is very ironic, given that the group you are implying are the wolves are the ones taking livestock medication.
On the subject of people supposedly taking 'livestock medication'... really? I assume you mean those people are taking Ivermectin [1], a popular antihelmintic which also happens to demonstrate antiviral activity, preparations containing it being used both in veterinary as well as human applications? Are those people eating horse dewormers or taking Ivermectin tablets (Stromectol [2] et al)? If they're taking the latter, why call it 'livestock medication'?
Stop labelling people who happen to disagree with 'your' opinion. Just accept that not everybody agrees with 'your' standpoint or before you know it you'll find 'your' opinion to be in the crosshairs of the authoritarians - and then what do you do?
[1] As to the efficacy of Ivermectin for SARS2 prophylaxis or treatment the verdict is still out. It is unfortunate that this subject has been politicised to such an extreme that it has become a black/white issue, 'either you are with us or against us'.
[2] https://www.rxlist.com/stromectol-drug.htm
Yes. Really. And then apparently shitting their pants in the supermarket. Appalling, I know.
> If they're taking the latter, why call it 'livestock medication'?
Because a lot of them are not, they are taking livestock medication bought from agricultural stores, because their doctor won't prescribe them what they want. You and I both know this is the case, so please don't bother pretending it isn't.
And to be clear. the people who are taking literal horse dewormer as opposed to getting vaccinated are doing a stupid thing. It is the wrong answer to COVID, no matter which way you look at it. Even if Ivermectin -- formulated for humans, qua Stromectol -- is actually a useful treatment against COVID, there's another more useful prophylactic against COVID: A vaccine.
This isn't an opinion, it's a bald-faced fact. You don't need to be given Ivermectin to treat severe COVID if you never end up with severe COVID in the first place.
Should hospitals be administering Ivermectin clinically? I dunno, jury is still out and I'm not a doctor, but an alternative to the vaccine it is not.
A "bill of rights" is a piece of paper. A piece of paper which is ruled upon by a court that was granted its power by the very same collection of papers.
For example, the right to keep and bear arms (obviously not for hunting but for war and security) has been infringed upon many times, but constitutional courts have decided that actually despite the bill of rights, some infringement is allowed. (EDIT: And this doesn't even address the problem of governments creating unconstitutional laws or executing unconstitutional actions which de facto strip your rights for some possibly significant time until it can be overturned by a court, but without much redress or punishment or deterrent)
In the end the people are the ultimate arbiters and deciders of what rights they are willing to give up and what powers they are willing to be governed under. This plays out the same way in USA and Australia and Afghanistan and Libya.
I've never understood why America puts of with basically being a police state, with the level of police brutality and incarceration that they have.
And here in aussieland, we don't have that, but we do nothing to protect our liberties.
Unfortunately this creates a strong incentive for all governments to actually create such societies and increase division and mistrust in order to gain power.
> Unfortunately this creates a strong incentive for all governments to actually create such societies and increase division and mistrust in order to gain power.
Have you actually been to Australia before? Or Europe for that matter? Or Japan? Your claims don’t make much sense with the current examples. All we have is a developed country that heavily values the right to bear arms and has a horrible crime rate, while the other countries are the exact opposite.
I didn't say they were.
> Have you actually been to Australia before? Or Europe for that matter? Or Japan?
Yes, yes, yes. Worthless rhetorical questions.
> Your claims don’t make much sense with the current examples.
What claims?
> All we have is a developed country that heavily values the right to bear arms and has a horrible crime rate, while the other countries are the exact opposite.
I'm not sure what you're getting at, but Europe is not a country. And there are more countries than your examples with differences in crime rates and gun ownership, so I suspect whatever point you are trying to prove with selective data points wouldn't actually hold up.
Patently false from all available exemples.
And nowhere did I say that that is the only reason a society would be willing to turn to the state for protection, so spare me the false counter examples dressed up breathlessly to look like some incredible gotcha.
There is always going to be capacity for doing better, society is always what we make of it, even without hard legal limits (not to suggest imposing limits of state power is bad).
Kick 'm out, elect a new batch and keep their feet to the fire.
You can instead spend 2 weeks locked up in a hotel at your expense.
That’s like saying people aren’t forced to vaccinate since you don’t “need” to work at that particular job and you don’t “need” to exercise in a gym or watch a movie in a theater.
Everything in history shows the slope is slippery. They will pass this on to everyone. It’s a blatant power grab. They want to spy on you and track you. They don’t care about your health.
And I think the outrage is useful. It will mobilize people until it boils over into action, if enough people do it when it actually counts. This is when it actually counts. Everyone has spent all their Outrage Points on useless shit some actor or celebrity said about something no one will care about on their deathbed, but so few are saying anything about this totalitarian nightmare.
But the App that is the subject of the article serves to reduce the severity of that law and thus reduces government overreach. To be upset about the App, rather than the original quarantine law, is to be focusing attention in the wrong place.
Returning travelers quarantining at home will be forced to download an app that combines facial recognition and geolocation. The state will text them at random times, and thereafter they will have 15 minutes to take a picture of their face in the location where they are supposed to be. Should they fail, the local police department will be sent to follow up in person. “We don’t tell them how often or when, on a random basis they have to reply within 15 minutes,” Premier Steven Marshall explained. “I think every South Australian should feel pretty proud that we are the national pilot for the home-based quarantine app.”
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/09/pandemic-a...
It's a reduction in government overreach that you have a "choice" between one of their quarantine "hotels" or in-home surveillance? Is the part that is the lesser government overreach, the part where if you fail to address one of their random pings they'll send officers to your house to conduct an in-person check?
The app isn't the problem in itself. The problem is the enslavement. This is a system of enslavement.
Creating an alternative solution for home quarantine gives people more options.
You could argue that there was a better way to implement home quarantine. You could argue that the 2 week quarantine is goverment overreach. You could even argue that this option helps the government keep the 2 week quarantine in place longer by tempering its severity.
I don't see those sorts of rational arguments. I see a bunch of people making an irrational or uninformed argument that this extends government overreach by making the 2 week quarantine rule more severe.
It was a bit of a wake up call actually - the level of conversation was starting to feel more like reddit than what I'd always (until now i guess) expected from hacker news.
> It’s a blatant power grab. They want to spy on you and track you. They don’t care about your health.
That sounds like a conspiracy theory.
In Australia it's under 20% of people that have gone insane. The rest have checked out and completely ignored it. It's like a long holiday where you get paid to pretend you work.
But you can't say that in polite company so you just have ~40 percent compliance with whatever insanity is going on now. Hilariously enough the compliance from police is lower than from the general population so basically we have politicians and the terminally online talking about masks, jabs and sign ins and the people who are supposed to enforce it not being bothered with it.
Standing in front of the super market something like one in three pull out their phone, unlock it, point it at the check in qr code and not log in.
I'm reminded of the latter days of the USSR where no one took anything the government said seriously and just did whatever they felt like. Which does not bode well for the current incarnation of Australia long term.
Thanks for this refreshing update!
Remarkably slow process given that we are dealing with a pandemic.
Worth pointing out that "Australian gov to use" should read "South Australian gov to use" (South Australia being a state of Australia).
EDIT: As this thread is attracting attention from people who have views different from my own I'd just like to make it clear that I'm in favour of controlling the actions of people who choose to endanger public health and nothing I said above is meant to suggest otherwise.
#trustthescience
Which makes the media fearmongering about the “unvaxxed” even more dangerous. They never mention immunity from past infection which is now known to be superior protection.
Here’s a recent source:
https://www.science.org/content/article/having-sars-cov-2-on...
That they insist on vaccinated vs unvaccinated in the media narrative is worrisome because it is going to lead to dehumanization and division.
As it stands, neither of those things have happened yet.
Health departments are supposed to be prepared for a pandemic, they've been happening for all of recorded history and it's in the job description to be alert and ready to manage it. Today is lockdown day 224 in Melbourne and here we are wondering how to eventually open up retail and manage international arrivals.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/melbourne/article-9964173/M...
Where is the overreach in a voluntary app that people are encouraged to use to save the government resources?
We had Katie Hopkins here earlier in the year bragging about how she was going to deliberately break quarantine etc etc.
If people aren’t going to follow a reasonable precaution, this far into a pandemic, then I have little sympathy when harsher measures are employed.
This pandemic is nowhere near that dangerous to justify this. Where do you draw the line? When you can’t shop in the grocery store unless you accept public health treatments without question? When they’ve dehumanized people enough that you tolerate surveilling them in those quarantine “hotels” “until they choose to comply with public health safety laws?”
The slope is slippery and you are sliding into hell. Time to stop being tribal or partisan about sticking it to the “anti vaxers” and start thinking about the system that is being built.
I am posting far outside my comfort zone because the alarm bells are ringing. Everything about this situation is getting more and more terrible the longer it is allowed to continue.
I would prefer to lurk and not talk. Like before.
Unlike the US, COVID was essentially controlled in Australia until some very specific violations of quarantine happened - and the outbreak traced to these violators. These outbreaks weren't of iffy origin, they were clearcut linked to these perpetrators.
In an era where governments everywhere are going authoritarian it only takes something like this to be used as an excuse. The trouble is there'll be little complaint from the public as everyone is aware of the causal link to the outbreaks - and the Australian public, like bloody-minded sheep, is too easily spooked when governments crack the whip.
Unfortunately, Australia is a very conservative country and the vast majority of its citizens do what they're told without question even when government makes crazy decisions, so we've a double-whammy problem/excuse when a few people go feral.
And it is a fair comparison because both were used as excuses by governments for overreach.
Clearly that's not the case with Covid!
And even if it wasn't, it would be true in the long run.
Some might do but cholera, polio and smallpox and many, many other diseases are still just as virulent as they ever were down through the ages. (I know, smallpox only exists in labs but the last known case was a lab worker who died).
That argument is essentially a non sequitur, it's attempting to justify a position that doesn't really exist - and even if it did then it'd be by the very slimest of margins (apply with very strict constraints).
Even in cases where certain viruses have mutated to weaker strains - and given the high stakes involved (gambling with human life), then you would not only have to be extremely specific but also provide soild/reputable scientific evidence to backup your assertions (i.e.: for specific viruses/strains, etc.).
>Downloading and using the G2G app is voluntary in WA [Western Australia], but the Government encourages people to use it
So not enforced, right...?
(EDIT: my bad, this refers to an existing app; the new app sounds like it would be a mandated download)
So it's hard to ask whether the people support it in such a state.
We should be very very careful relying on crisis moments to make major decisions. Which is always going to be a drawback in democracy (all systems have flaws). There will always be long term consequences as these things never have time limits. Any new capability adopted should be assumed to be permanent.
That being said, each time I read a headline like this I get slightly more concerned that if one day this trust is ever abused, it'll be all the worse because we never fought hard against these measures.
I think Americas emphasis on individual freedoms comes at the cost of some of these things, but there are other benefits of course and I do admire America's philosophy quite a lot. I don't have a crystal ball and I'm not sure what's better in the long run. As an Aussie though I'm happy with the trade-offs so far.
But unfortunately government is run by humans who are susceptible to delusions like the consolidation of power over other humans. And if it is ever run by an AI, well, that AI may decide to just destroy everyone. So while trusting a government would be great, they have not earned that and Australia's governing bodies are clearly driving off a cliff with everyone still in the car. Why trust that anymore?
They're arresting people for making Facebook posts against lockdowns. Source:
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-54007824
Australia presumes to say how many people can visit your home. Source:
https://theconversation.com/vaccine-passports-are-coming-to-...
“NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian yesterday announced freedoms for fully vaccinated people once 70% of the state’s eligible population are double dosed. These include being able to go to hospitality venues, hairdressers and gyms, and have five people to your home.”
They can arbitrarily lock you in your apartment building for up to weeks, no one allowed to leave. Source:
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-53316097
So what is there to trust?
Where will you draw the line? And when? When it's too late, and when you have to pretend to be "happy with the trade-offs so far" because they're monitoring your posts on HN and arresting you if you are not happy with the trade-offs so far? That's not far off from how they arrested that pregnant woman for making a Facebook post. Wake up.
And you celebrate that you can't defend yourself with firearms, but now you have police and military patrolling your streets to enforce these covid laws and check papers.
Source:
https://www.reuters.com/video/watch/idP8sX
Why trust this?
The number of people in the home thing doesn't bother me, again because I'm happy to accept this as a temporary restriction that reduces deaths until our vaccination rates allow us to go back to normal life.
I understand your perspective, and these events do concern me. However I personally don't see them as an authoritarian government making efforts to reduce our freedoms, I see them as a generally well-meaning government misstepping in an unprecedented situation, and I expect those missteps to be accounted for via legal action.
The number of people in the home thing doesn't bother me, again because I'm happy to accept this as a temporary restriction that reduces deaths until our vaccination rates allow us to go back to normal life.
It's been two years. These things are clearly not intended to be temporary. They will normalize it as much as possible. The frog boiling in the pot is an apt analogy here.
I understand your perspective, and these events do concern me. However I personally don't see them as an authoritarian government making efforts to reduce our freedoms, I see them as a generally well-meaning government misstepping in an unprecedented situation, and I expect those missteps to be accounted for via legal action.
What would it take you to consider that it is turning into a totalitarian regime, and that those are not missteps, but steps that were done perhaps too soon and they should've given the frog in the pot a little more time? I mean, I'm not here to waste my weekend arguing for nothing, I'm genuinely asking - what would it take for you to see that it's a bad situation? What else could Australia do that gets you thinking "we should take a step back" and will it be too late by then?
I truly hope that it's a generally well-meaning government misstepping in an unprecedented situation. I truly do. Is that realistic given a study of history and the nature of Power?
I understand I probably seem like a naive optimist, and I self-confess that I am (although most of my Aussie friends are even less concerned than me). At least we will find out soon whether that's misplaced.
This is not happening. It's a complete beat-up and it's utterly false. The military has been engaged to provide labor, not enforcement. They have no enforcement powers. Parking inspectors have greater powers to enforce civil laws.
As for the inflammatory "checking papers" trope: many countries in all parts fo the world have had lockdowns, including in the U.S. Why single out Australia for condemnation when it is doing the same thing as so many others have done?
That aside, on the ground, there is really not much enforcement of the restrictions - less and less as each week passes and everyone accepts that the virus is here to stay.
Covid is a fact of life elsewhere but we have no cases so to sell opening up the state to more visitors the government has to show they are able to control the transition and keep our hospitals working well. We still have comparatively low vaccination rates here as we have been supply constrained so we are going to lag behind what is happening elsewhere.
In a small state like SA people care more about their own families than the rights of people to freely spread an infectious disease. A few days of enforced isolation for someone with a highly infectious disease isn't all that contentious for most people. The alternative to home detention with an app for verification would be putting them in a secure hotel which does not scale or home isolation with spot police checks which wastes a lot of resources. Things will change as we catch up on vaccination rates and see what the real health impacts are.
Plus it's been done already by the Western Australian state government
https://www.wa.gov.au/organisation/department-of-the-premier...
Sure - I noticed that and wasn't implying that you modified the article title. The article title is incorrect, at least in the way it reads at first glance - yes the South Australian government is "an Australian government", but it's not "The Australian Government".
> But is it actually a meaningful distinction as far as these policies being constrained permanently to just one part of Australia? Will this spread everywhere or is there a reason why this would only be constrained to a really small town no one really notices?
It's too early to tell - but it's worth noting that the main revenue generating states with the lion's share of attention in Australia are New South Wales and Victoria and so they usually set the tone of state policy countrywide. IMHO this is unlikely to spread to those states.
More importantly:
1) the article indicates that its use will be voluntary anyway;
2) Australia has a long track record of paying millions of dollars for technology like this that actually never works properly.
So as a Victorian I'm not too concerned.
This other source does not say that it is voluntary.
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/09/pandemic-a...
Returning travelers quarantining at home will be forced to download an app that combines facial recognition and geolocation. The state will text them at random times, and thereafter they will have 15 minutes to take a picture of their face in the location where they are supposed to be. Should they fail, the local police department will be sent to follow up in person. “We don’t tell them how often or when, on a random basis they have to reply within 15 minutes,” Premier Steven Marshall explained. “I think every South Australian should feel pretty proud that we are the national pilot for the home-based quarantine app.”
And are you comfortable remaining "not too concerned" as a Victorian when you admit that it's too early to tell if this idiocy will spread? Because idiocy it is, and spread it very well might. How long will you wait to call it out? Where will you draw the line in the sand? Power consolidates.
Interesting .. how exactly will they "force" people to download an app if they said person doesn't have a smart phone, or refuses to unlock it? Are they going to buy them one?
The police aren't going to see this as a useful use of their time and resources; and the public isn't going to put up with it either. There's one thing to make an announcement like this in Australia; and another thing completely to make it stick. Governments here have a habit of backing down completely when it's clear their re-election is at stake.
The proposal wouldn't fly in Victoria; but if it was attempted, I'm pretty sure it would be rolled back pretty quickly. Let's wait and see before getting too up in arms about it - the app isn't even written yet.
I posting now because of necessity. All the alarm bells are firing. Too few are paying attention to the alarms.
Fuck Covid. Fuck extreme over reactions to it and Fuck Joe Biden.
This is about South Australia adopting a new quarantine at home option for those who are entering the country. Allowing people to quaratine at home with an App rather than at designated quarantine hotels is a REDUCTION in government overreach.
In Western Australia where something similar is in use, this is a voluntary part of a similar program that saves officers having to make more house calls.
If you don't bother to do basic research before you get outraged, your outrage will eventually be discounted as "crying wolf" and won't be as effective the next time you need to push back against real government overreach.
Not only is this a laughable “choice”, the kind of manipulative choice you’d expect a tech manager to pretend to offer you when all his projects suck but he wants you to feel like you “picked” a project, it’s also naive to present it as a choice. You don’t wait until it’s mandatory for everyone to say something. You say it now when the machine is rearing its ugly head and you can see the writing on the wall.
Keep in mind you are writing this in defense of a gov that presumes itself to be in charge of how many people you can have over. Source:
https://theconversation.com/vaccine-passports-are-coming-to-...
“NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian yesterday announced freedoms for fully vaccinated people once 70% of the state’s eligible population are double dosed. These include being able to go to hospitality venues, hairdressers and gyms, and have five people to your home.”
Seems more than NECESSARY to cry wolf right now. The slope is slippery. We all know they will push these systems as far as they can if they are allowed to. Cry wolf when the wolf is coming, not when it has eaten your chickens already.
Source: https://theconversation.com/vaccine-passports-are-coming-to-...
“NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian yesterday announced freedoms for fully vaccinated people once 70% of the state’s eligible population are double dosed. These include being able to go to hospitality venues, hairdressers and gyms, and have five people to your home.”
That's not the same government at all. You've quoted a decision by the NSW government, and this article is about South Australia.
More importantly though, that distinction does little to make it feel more right. What controls exist to keep the idiocy contained to only one part of Australia? How do you know they won't make that the policy everywhere? Could that happen?
> How do you know they won't make that the policy everywhere? Could that happen?
This would require the state governments to collectively agree on something (unlikely) or for Scott Morrison (the Prime Minister) to get his act together and actually do something for once in his ineffectual life, so equally unlikely.
I'm not defending any government here. I am pointing out that people are getting outraged without even understanding what they are being outraged about. When you do that, you undermine your own credibility and potential impact and make it easier for people in power to brush aside your outrage when you do know what you are talking about.
If you really care about these issues it behooves you to inform yourself as well as possible and be as accurate as possible so that you don't do more harm than good for your cause.
"In an official statement, the State Government announced a contract to a Western Australian (WA) company for $1.1 million to develop a new smartphone app that uses facial recognition and GPS tracking technology to monitor people who are ordered to self-quarantine at home, reported InDaily."
So this isn't an app meant to enforce state-wide quarantines or to enforce any additional restrictions or controls on the general public. This app is to enable those who are specifically ordered to self-quarantine (e.g. arriving from a Covid-hotspot, or close contacts of Covid-positive cases) to be able to check-in so that they can self-quarantine at home instead of at a managed isolation facility.
Keep in mind that when quarantined this way, if you fail to respond to their random, RANDOM, pings...they will send police officers to your house to do an in-person quarantine check. And not only that, but these so-called leaders of Australia are celebrating it and rubbing it in Australian faces. Source:
Returning travelers quarantining at home will be forced to download an app that combines facial recognition and geolocation. The state will text them at random times, and thereafter they will have 15 minutes to take a picture of their face in the location where they are supposed to be. Should they fail, the local police department will be sent to follow up in person. “We don’t tell them how often or when, on a random basis they have to reply within 15 minutes,” Premier Steven Marshall explained. “I think every South Australian should feel pretty proud that we are the national pilot for the home-based quarantine app.”
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/09/pandemic-a...
You see that? South Australians should feel pretty proud that they're the national pilot for this. What an honor.
A slightly different reading of what they're saying is:
"The government ifs offering to allow you to quarantine in your home instead of the otherwise mandatory 2 week stay in a sealed room in quarantine hotel, if you agree to download and use this app."
And given that, rightly or wrongly, many Australian states are charging several thousand dollars for hotel quarantine, it's clearly a choice many people might choose to make.
On what planet do we live, where all of a sudden that statement even in your version of the reading is in ANY way more palatable or reassuring? The government is offering you these choices:
1) Quarantine in a guarded quarantine hotel for two weeks in a sealed room
or
2) Quarantine in your home with facial recognition and GPS tracking and random pings that send the police to your home if you do not respond within 15 minutes
This is not a choice. This is the government giving you a false dilemma because it's tricking people into tolerating its massively expanded surveillance systems that it wants to build, and the normalization thereof. These things will not go away, just like the narrative until now has constantly shifted to keep the situation ongoing while power continues to consolidate.
These systems will be used for worse once they exist.
> 1) Quarantine in a guarded quarantine hotel for two weeks in a sealed room
Where I am (Australia, the place where this is happening), right now that is current reality on the planet we live on, and is the _only_ choice offered. I cannot leave Sydney for any reason, without being required to spend two weeks in a sealed room at my own expense. It's not just state or federal borders, it's travel within the state of NSW - I cannot go further than maybe 30-40km in any direction from my house without a "permissible reason" which pretty much means "essential work". Bereavement, family visits, or wanting to stab all my household and neighbours in the face do not count as "permissible reasons". That is, as you rightly allude to, in now way palatable or reassuring. But is is in fact the ground truth where I live.
As much as I despise option #2, I would seriously consider making that choice for myself - in spite of the acknowledged normalisation of massive surveillance overreach it would represent.
What's your alternative? Just let sick people loose into the country, exponentially infecting everyone? I'm in the US, and that strategy did not work out very well. 660K deaths and counting. Quarantine has historically been a sensible, effective way to deal with deadly communicable diseases. I wish the US took it as seriously as Australia and NZ did.
EDIT: Crap, I just realized I responded to the article's submitter, someone who's already posted the same ax-grind 30 times to the article's threads. Guess I've been had.
In fact, there are few return slots available and many people can't get a flight back to Australia from places like the UK or the US. And yet they still try, because comparatively our life out here in the state of Western Australia (bigger than Texas mind you) is FULL OF FREEDOMS BECAUSE WE'RE COMPLETELY OPEN AND FREE OF COMMUNITY SPREAD.
when you disagree with somebody, please make an attempt to believe that the person you disagree with has actually thought about what they said. assuming that the only reason somebody might disagree with you is becauase they don't understand an issue as well as you do is a really insulting way to attempt to join a conversation.
Ah yes these are totally normal things for a democratic country to do
The quaranting itself is not the enslavement. It's how they are going about it and what kinds of systems they want to build.
You don’t seem to be well informed on how they’re going about it and what kind of systems “they” want to build. Who are “they”? Which of the multiple levels of government, several states and territories and multiple political parties who all have different policies and priorities do you mean? What do you mean by “enslavement”? None of it makes sense, and you’re making giant extrapolations from exaggerated and inaccurate headlines and reports in a media that you probably wouldn’t trust or believe on most other topics.
Imagine being told in 2018 this would happen a short time later - the government there arresting or locking people in that way. Would you have believed it could happen?
Could you see it becoming worse, particularly if the media narrative about us-them continues until one side gets dehumanized?
Why rest in this blind faith about how much they can sustain? When they have already been sustaining this stuff for going on two years with no signs of letting up. If anything it seems to be getting worse per the OP, with even more idiotic systems being built “because of the antivaxers” or whatever convenient justification is peddled by media to divide the people and consolidate power towards the top of the top.
sigh
I don’t want to be right. I want to be WRONG.
Every possible scenario would have been alarming. 50000 deaths and a collapsing hospital system would have been unthinkable too. Australia has chosen to avoid that nightmare, and has chosen a different, also highly undesirable but marginally preferable path.
People are getting whipped up into a frenzy about all this, based on mental models of government and population relations that may apply elsewhere but don’t apply in Australia.
In truth:
- there is heavy pushback on government by the media and population, acceptance of lockdowns is in rapid decline, and governments are being forced to change their polices week by week.
- We don’t have a heavily militarized and hostile relationship between police, military and the population, it has always been egalitarian and cohesive, like pretty much everything else in the country.
- Australia has been ranked in/near the top 10 freest countries in the world for a long time, and little of what has happened during the pandemic would warrant that changing.
For what it's worth (you've revealed in another comment that you're not Australian, so you might not be aware,) in the period between the 2020 lockdown and the delta outbreak this year (approx. October 2020 to June 2021) things had almost returned to normal. I was back at work and at sport. Beaches and shopping centres were packed. State borders were open (a friend went on a camping trip to Queensland.) It was remarkable how quickly things returned to normal once the number of new cases dropped to zero, and it was surreal to watch international news and see that not everyone was able to live like us. This outbreak is more severe, but I have no reason to believe things won't be like that again once case numbers drop.
This IS the correct procedure during a disease pandemic. To halt the process of a disease it's been a common and effective practice throughout the centuries and across many countries to isolate those infected along with their close contacts for a period of time until the disease is over/can no longer propagate.
What do you specially find wrong with it and why? Sure it's inconvenient for those involved but it's the least harmful action for everyone - all of society benefits this way.
Clearly you don't know your history or you'd realize it was common practice. For example, until quite recently Sydney had a quarantine station at North Head for well over a century until the Government stupidly shut it down and turned it into a hotel: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Head_Quarantine_Statio...
Clearly, isolating people like this is new to you. Get used to the fact that it's not a new practice and the fact that you'll likely see it again in the future.
The same goes for the vaccinated versus the unvaccinated. Unvaccinated people are threat to the life and health of others so society has the right to isolate them for its own safety. This practice is not new either, it's been practiced ever since vaccination became common practice.
The them and us problem is simply solved by 'them' not being so damned selfish and getting vaccinated like the rest of society.
Please note: the matter of coercion with respect to public health matters is NOT like other forms of government coercion or government surveillance for political reasons. They are two completely separate matters - or they ought to be. If any of these COVID measures are later abused by Government then the citizenry has full rights to object in every way possible. Government has absolutely no right to take advantage of this tragic heath problem and it is incumbent on citizens to ensure that it does not.
It is naive to think this way. By then it will be too late. They are building tyrannical systems of enslavement in the name of public health because obviously they wouldn’t openly say they want to enslave you.
Waiting for them to build the systems before you evaluate if they’re abusing their power must be some kind of preemptive Stockholm Syndrome from a citizenry that deep down can sense what is happening but finds itself powerless or too afraid to speak up. And so they just eat their own by failing to be critical and cautiously paranoid at the right time.
Wake up.
People don't understand how isolated some states of Australia are, even from the other states. Some parts of this country were barely touched by covid. It was just about the least dystopian life you could imagine apart from driving through the Mad Max landscape.
I think if you asked the majority of Australians they would say that they are happy people have to quarantine at the hotels and that they be guarded, since most of our outbreaks have been from quarantine breaches. So as far as a democracy goes that's right on track. Democratic doesn't mean individuals can do what they want, it means the whole community is involved in setting the rules for the community.
They weren't guarded by police at the start, but non-compliance and malpractice from the regular security guards had the community complaining about having such lax security.
What would have been the case if you asked the majority of Germans what they thought about certain restrictions in the 1930s?
Democracy is more than the "whole community setting the rules for the community." It is the rule of law in preserving the rights to life, liberty, and justice for all people. In the form of negative rights and the freedom to live as an individual unfettered by a mob of the majority. What you are describing and proposing is mob rule that subjects the 49% or fewer to tyranny.
And actually, what you're describing will subject 99.99% to tyranny because you are building a system of enslavement that will serve just the cream of the crop and crush everyone else.
Say it out loud. "They should have listened and the regular security guards should have been complaint! Now we need to use military officers to patrol and enforce." Say it out loud so you can hear what you're actually saying.
It seems to me that much of human misery down through the ages can be put down to a small percentage of humanity who thinks this way and we'd all be better off if they had bigger more highly tuned amygdalas to boost their empathy for other human beings.
(This question has always intrigued me, it would be very informative to see sets of normal distributions for given dollar amounts for the population.
Also, given that we're living in COVID times, distribution figures for a virus's infection/replication rate vs death rate per capita, etc. would be informative. Knowing when fear gripped everyone to such an extent that say 95+% of the population would be clambering for vaccinations would be useful if for no other reason than to put vaccination resources to best use. For example, if the death rate for COVID or any virus were one in three as it was for the Plague/Black Death in the Middle Ages, would we then reach a figure of 95+% vaccination rate? Surely such figures would be of great interest to medical professionals and behavioral psychologists.)
How dangerous do you think covid is? Is it just a common cold like the recipient of the highest civilian award in the US said? [1] Or just a flu like Fox News kept saying[2]?
Are these scenes in Russia[3] and India[4] made up, or are those acceptable when only a fraction of people were infected, and no lockdowns would mean a much worse situation?
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/feb/25/rush-limbaug...
[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NAh4uS4f78o
[3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3kbNGR7XjrY
[4] https://youtube.com/watch?v=D0Y1YakG60s
Yes. Simple as that. Most of us are happy with the trade off of freedoms in this scenario.
Your viewpoint of what defines totalitarianism or miscarriages of liberty are fine, and you’re welcome to keep them or even share them. But you don’t get to don’t get to dictate to others why your fiercely individualistic ideals are definitively are better than the community trade offs being made.
That I understand, and the same for the quarantine rules. But things have been getting really complicated lately. As you have pointed out, these agreements aren't feeling like community decisions and technology has been making the application of law humanless and arbitrary.
If I forget to pay for a loaf of bread, walk out the store, and then go back to pay immediately, it would just be a human misunderstanding nd everyone would be happy with that outcome. Societal dues paid.
But if instead a facial recognition camera tracked me leaving and the security gate detected the item unpaid then the matter goes into an automated system and even if I realise my mistake and pay my societal dues the system doesn't care. If we aren't careful it could elevate the system above the society, and lose its original purpose of helping resolve social conflits. Instead it would just apply law without the capacity to fully appreciate it's role of societal mediation.
There are things in Australia that are already like that. Expired registration cameras for example. A police officer can suss out the situation and see if you just forgot to do it this morning, or if you are constantly driving without insurance. The camera can't figure that out, so a simple mistake can cost you.
There are ways in which I agree with you about Australia's future and reducing freedoms, especially around technology and tracking. But the pandemic is not trivial, look at countries like India and America that essentially had it run free, that is a lot of death, and it wasn't just covid patients. A health system full of covid patients can't help anyone else either.
The thing is that we have a plan and a path out of this, and it relies on controlling outbreaks until we are all vaccinated. To make that happen, people have to quarantine for 14 days. People thought their happiness was more important than the community and the community disagrees so we had to enforce it.
The community also thinks you can't let rodents live in your restaurant kitchen, and that you can't drive while drunk, etc. Laws often protect the community from the selfish and that is what happened here too. We tried to let people be adults but they left the hotel and caused untold damage to the community, so now they get babysat.
A HUGE percentage of the deaths in the US are from people institutionalized in government facilities. They had no freedom..
Another HUGE percentage of the deaths were people that were already unhealthy, and what I know about Australia you guys do not have them levels of general unhealthy people.
America also has a much high percentage of the population over 65, a group that makes up the majority of COVID Deaths
There is more to the story than simply "American did not impose enough tyranny on the citizens to combat COVID"
I don't think we gain anything by trying to qualify exactly who it killed, since over 65s are still people, as are institutionalized individuals.
FFS. So you're ok with hundreds of thousands (660,000 so far in the US) of people dying for your freedoms compared to the 9 (YEP, NINE) deaths we've had in Western Australia from Covid?
Democracy isn't some mask off individualist system where your perceived individual rights trample the rights of the wider community to stay alive, despite the deep throated bellowing coming from a media more concerned about stirring controversy to drive revenue.
You keep your freedoms. You freedoms to shoot each other rampantly with all your guns; your freedoms to have your police shoot and kill you without repercussion. Your freedoms to not get vaccinated and die from a virus that has an easily sourced vaccine readily available.
We'll take our sane approach to zero community spread of Covid and our two years of billions of budget surpluses. Who would have thought that having no community spread and a wide open economy would result in such financial windfalls? /s
All this app does is allow for people to self-quarantine without the cops being required to physically check that you're doing so. It's voluntary and allows the police to actually focus on their job instead of constantly checking on self-quarantining returned travellers. You can take you tyrannical Nazi German hot takes elsewhere, we're 100% not listening with our community free of Covid.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/09/pandemic-a...
Ahhhhh joy, the choice between a state-run guarded hotel room, or in-home surveillance with random pings that send the police to your house if you don't respond within 15 minutes.
What a sensible and efficient use of technology!
And what comfort? Facial recognition in your home? GPS tracking? RANDOM pings that send police officers to your house for an in-person quarantine check fi you don't respond within 15 minutes?
Stop pretending to think about what most people would choose, and wake up to the reality staring you in the face.
Having an app on your phone that lets authorities check if you're self-isolating sounds totally reasonable to me. When you've finished your two weeks isolation, you just uninstall the app and move on with your life. No big deal.
Yes, we have less individual freedoms in Australia than places like the USA. Some of them are trade offs that have been pretty widely accepted, even though they might have been unpopular at various points. Australian's generally have more trust in our institutions than other countries, and the handling of the pandemic in 2020 is a good example as to why that might be. This is an app provided by a state (not federal) gov, that is open source, and there are various other gov mechanisms to verify how the data is being used. If it ends up being poorly implemented/used/abused, very likely it will be found out and become politically unpopular to the point where it will be quickly dumped.
"Sir, if we make the general public use this, it will save 24% more lives"
Oh no saving lives! What a terrible use of tech.
Would it make you feel better if I told you that if we save their lives we can serve them more ads?
Seriously. Half a million. And for that, you won't stay inside your house for two weeks, because you're worried it's a slippery slope of some sort.
What need for me to be gullible to think "I'd rather five hundred thousand less of my countrymen had died this year", and not go out?
What need for me to be gullible to think that you should do it to? What need for me to be gullible to look at my government forcing you to do it too and saying "that's a good move"?
The quarantine system is quite literally saving lives, and the things that we can do to improve that system should be done.
This is not trusting the government, and it's not "ignoring tyranny". It's how society ought to work.
The approach you are taking can be used to justify complete control and arbitrary lockdowns whenever N cases or N deaths for any virus happen. Or for anything that can be construed as a public health crisis, including things not related to viruses. Don't you see that?
My heart breaks for any death anywhere. Including the death of a free and normal life. Suicides and depression have skyrocketed. The evidence shows this:
https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/wr/mm7024e1.htm
https://www.tribuneindia.com/news/ludhiana/covid-led-to-spik...
There are no easy answers, and it is not appropriate to beat someone over the head with the numbers of death in response to them calling out the systems of enslavement you are building in Australia. It's clear that your approach is not good for people's mental health, especially for young people. Presumably you still have lockdowns where you can't go more than 5km from your home? And restrictions on what you can be outside for?
Do these pandemic deaths justify the emergence of a totalitarian state? No.
Yeah, I do see that! In fact it's almost like Australia wrote an act about this stuff like 80 years ago that define the criteria and rights and responsibilities of the commonwealth during national emergencies. And it's almost like the pandemic meets those criteria and then we used the powers as written in the act.
Almost like this isn't the emergence of a totalitarian state but was the state we lived in all along, or something.
> My heart breaks for any death anywhere. Including the death of a free and normal life. Suicides and depression have skyrocketed. [... > ...] And it is not appropriate to beat someone over the head with the numbers of death in response to them calling out the systems of enslavement you are building in Australia.
Cognitive dissonance getting to you, yet?
If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.
To prevent misunderstanding: I'm not siding against your views. I've just noticed that you've repeatedly been breaking the site guidelines lately, often egregiously - and this is not something we can allow, regardless of how right you are or feel you are - because it destroys HN for its intended purpose.
I will do my best to be more kind.
Meanwhile these localised state based measures aimed at fighting this pandemic are another thing entirely. Our state governments are not part of five eyes and aren't under pressure to maintain any of these measures indefinitely. They want to keep local businesses active by avoiding lockdowns and keep their tightly budgeted public health systems working.
Our less populated states here managed to get through the pandemic basically virus free without much in the way of restrictions within their states. I don't think people understand how good we have had this.
Our vaccines supply was delayed but now that has improved all the states are opening up once vaccine targets are reached and the state want to ease into the change. We still have very low vaccination rates compared to many countries where vaccinations were expedited as the only real viable solution. To reopen state borders and allow more potentially infected people in we need to be able to quarantine infectious people without locking them up and an app is a cheap solution. Once covid is endemic and as vaccination rates climb there won't be any point to quarantining people and the app will be discarded. It isn't for surveilling the entire population but for individuals for the relatively short time they might be shedding virus.
People are right to be vigilant but you all have the wrong target here. The right target is the Australian federal government's mass surveillance laws. An app that will be used for a week or two by a sick person then discarded isn't the real problem.
On one hand you have QLD/SA/WA which are probably the places least effected in the world by COVID. QLD for example with a population of 5.2 million has had a total of 7 deaths from COVID over the entirety of the pandemic. Schools, shops and workplaces have all been pretty much running as normal the last 18 months in these states.
On the other hand you have the South East states which have large active delta outbreaks and have gone through long lockdowns, especially Victoria. These states have given up eliminating COVID and are planning on letting COVID spread as vaccination rates meet targets.
Residents from the SE states are effectively locked out from the rest of Australia. State borders are shut and have been on and off for much of the pandemic. Thus Australia is in some ways operating as two countries at this stage.
What’s more international travel to Australia is effectively shutoff. The only people allowed back are Australians and there is a wait list and you better be planning on moving back to live permanently.
Obviously no one wants to split the country in half. No one wants suspend international travel indefinitely. In particular the federal government views its reelection chances as effectively riding on getting things to a semblance of normality by Christmas.
Yet residents of places like SA and WA obviously do not want to give up their COVID free status.
Hence you see the search for solutions like this. The app does address a genuine problem. In particular, hotel quarantine was introduced in Australia after home quarantine failed due to wide spread non-compliance. Yet it is expensive , capacity is limited and hotels aren’t great quarantine facilities in the first place. Sealed windows and shared ventilation systems in particular are problematic.
Whether or not the trade off in tracking people for two weeks is worth it, I’m not sure.
I don’t think these measures will be around permanently though. The slightest suggestion of permanent measures has been slapped down hard so far.
The title is wrong (it’s state government, not federal. You wouldn’t post “US government” when Florida enacts something).
The intent of this program is as a trial to see if this improves things or not.
I suspect a lot of the readers here are lacking any real knowledge of Australia’s treatment of COVID-19 beyond the odd random news article and are looking through their own localised lenses. Before criticising, it may be worth taking some time to research and understand.
Our death toll in total in 18 months is about the same as the current daily death toll in the US. We have achieved this via means that simply would not work in the US due to dissension between states and differing views on the practically of temporarily giving up freedoms for the greater good.