To my brothers and sisters in Australia, I can only offer you my heartfelt condolences. Being a prisoner in your own country is a sad reality and it looks like there is no end in sight. While the government just announced a new four-step plan to mark the “end” of Australia travel restrictions, in reality more burdens are coming and there is no relief in sight.
A Prisoner In Your Own Country: Australia Travel Restrictions To Continue…
Early on in the pandemic, I admired Australia for the way it handled the virus. COVID-19 was taken very seriously and I was amazed at how quickly Australians were able to return to their “normal” lives (at least within Australia) thanks to effective quarantine and contact tracing measures.
But nearly 1.5 years later, I do question why Australia seems to be reverting to its penal colony roots. Does Australia wish to replace North Korea as the new Hermit Kingdom?
I’m not even being facetious.
Prime Minster Scott Morrison has outlined a four-phase re-opening plan for Australia and it appears that foreign travelers like me won’t be able to visit for years to come. But it is so much more than that. For over a year now, Australians have been locked out of their own country due to absurd flight caps on incoming international flights and burdensome 14-day quarantine requirements for those few travelers who are allowed back (meanwhile, those who are well-connected can avoid such onerous requirements).
Those inside have not been allowed to leave without special permission (I can share all sorts of horror stories from Award Expert clients about obtaining “permission” to leave Australia…a chilling notion). As a result, families are separated and remain separated: families I know and love.
Think of the loved ones who have been cruelly separated. Think of those who have died alone or faced battles alone. The virus is cruel, but Australia’s response, at this point in the game, is arguably crueler. It is inhumane. It is wrong.
Easy for me to judge as a foreigner, you might say–particularly form a nation in which over 600,000 have died from the pandemic. But it increasingly seems like the Morrison government is simply extending restrictions to cover its own ineptitude in rolling out vaccinations.
Singapore took a similar approach to Australia, but has wisely realized it must learn to coexist with the virus, just like the flu, once everyone has been able to receive a vaccination.
Unless Australia really believes in an autarkic model, its latest plan will make the situation even worse. Amazingly, Australia now plans to slash the number of returning Australians allowed to half of current numbers. This despite the fact that all returning travelers must quarantine for 14 days.
Instead of cancelling travel, Australians should make more urgent efforts to vaccinate citizens, particularly those who are working in quarantine facilities.
The new four-phase plan formally includes these stages:
- Phase I: Vaccinate, prepare, and pilot
- Phase II: Minimize illness, hospitalization, and fatality
- Phase III: Consolidation
- Phase IV: Life as ‘normal’
Practically for travel, that means:
- Phase I: reduce inbound travel by 50%
- Phase II: obligatory hotel quarantine abolished in favor of home quarantine
- Phase III: no mandatory quarantine for travelers who are vaccinated, new travel bubbles with foreign nations
- Phase IV: allow uncapped arrivals, including from foreign visitors
There’s no specific timeline outlined for any of these steps, suggesting a full re-opening could be years away. It appears that international travel to Australia will continue to be but a dream. Meanwhile, the economic impact has been devastating for many sectors.
CONCLUSION
There is no end in sight to border closures in Australia. While I appreciate that the Australian Government has taken the virus seriously, keeping Australian citizens prisoners in their own country or locking them out seems like a truly unreasonable burden (unlike wearing a face mask or presenting a negative COVID-19 test). I hope Australians will hold their government accountable next time an election is called.
I’d welcome your thoughts below, particularly if you are Australian.
image: State Library of New South Wales
It’s not just Australia. Countries like Argentina have been locked down to only residents and citizens. And all of these lockdowns simply don’t work. Argentina has one of the highest per-capital infection rates in the world.
It’s a rather idiotic perspective to say “taken the virus seriously”. What country did not? Responses and successes have differed but other than totalitarian regimes what country did not take the virus seriously?
Arguably the US with warp speed took this virus most seriously, but others tried different approaches.
While the US did quite well with Operation Warp Speed, coronavirus progress was thwarted by an Executive who downplayed it from the start because he was afraid it would jeopardize his re-election bid. Ironically, had he taken it it seriously he likely would be enjoying his second term today.
It wasn’t Covid that cost him. It was his Twitter account. Had he not been on Twitter he’d 1000% been re-elected. His ability to be cruel, racist, and f%^nking plain stupid appealed to his base….but turned too many normal people off.
” an Executive who downplayed it from the start”…..Really going with that???? How about a President trying not create panic, unlike the MSM which was also instilling fear for something that has a cumulative survivability rate of over 99%.
600K died in the USA. I got it and lost my smell for six weeks. I knew EIGHT people personally who died from it. Had he just acknowledged it, he would have won. Had he just been humble after he himself got it, he would have won. He was an arrogant, bloated, dotard who forfeited a re-election victory handed to him on a silver platter. It has nothing to do with survivability stats and everything to do with competence and being a steady leader during a time of great uncertainty. Instead, he wanted to litigate how many attended his rallies or followed him on Facebook or Twitter. What a disgrace to the GOP.
“Had he just acknowledged it”…He did and closed travel from different regions around the world and people like you called him a racist. You called it a conspiracy when he talked about the virus coming from a lab in China. Gee, not such a conspiracy anymore from the media is it? SMH
You are damn right is has to do with survivability. People have the right to determine their own risk management each and every day. The majority of people did not die from COVID. They died from an underlying condition. The hospitals were getting government money for every death classified as COVID (and yes, I personally know people working in multiple hospitals).
Time for you to stop regurgitating/parroting the MSM garbage
I’d caution you to read my posting history or check out my resume/CV before lumping me into any groups.
And it may surprise you, but I came out very early against lockdowns. I’m not a fan partially for exactly the reason you laid out. But again, that is different than the POTUS denying the virus existed or wondering if Americans should drink bleach (I saw the press conference…he wasn’t joking). My argument was about competence, not lockdowns or where the virus originated (indeed, likely in a Chinese lab).
Well said, Matthew
I saw the press conference, too. He never told people to drink bleach, He never said anything even remotely like that. That was pure fabrication on the part of our media. You might want to go watch that again if you really think he said that.
I miss Melbourne.
He said—
“And then I see the disinfectant, where it knocks it out in one minute. And is there a way we can do something like that, by injection inside or almost a cleaning, because you see it gets in the lungs and it does a tremendous number on the lungs, so it’d be interesting to check that, so that you’re going to have to use medical doctors with, but it sounds interesting to me.”
@Matthew
You are parroting DNC/TDS talking points that even left-leaning “fact checks” say are false.
https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2020/jul/11/joe-biden/no-trump-didnt-tell-americans-infected-coronavirus/
https://www.politifact.com/article/2020/oct/08/ask-politifact-are-you-sure-donald-trump-didnt-cal/
Trump is a poor public speaker who doesn’t know how to explain technical concepts. My assumption is that he was advised of various developments to combat the virus and regurgitated parts of what he was briefed on in the most unsophisticated manner possible. As for his failures in dealing with the pandemic, I think his biggest was in dividing the country politically. There wasn’t much a Biden administration could have done differently to fight the virus. What happened is really an indictment of the American bureaucracy and public health establishment overall, not any single politician (though governors like Cuomo and Wolfe likely caused thousands of early deaths by ordering nursing homes to take COVID-infected folx). Perhaps the worst failure was the CDC’s bungling of testing in the early days of the pandemic. Masking and lockdowns were mostly theater.
I don’t suffer from TDS, but that press conference left an indelible mark on me. There are certainly failures “up the wazoo” when it comes to corona handling on a local/state/national level, but ultimately “the buck stop here” and the office of POTUS is about rhetoric and resolve, not necessarily technicality nor even results. But the narcissism was a deal-breaker for me. Such people are extremely dangerous. I cannot trust a narcissist. I agree that the Clinton or Biden Administration would have handled the virus in a similar way. But they wouldn’t have talked about in the same way. Neither would a Pence Administration.
Nice revisionist history. He flat out lied to gullible sycophants. Looks like you fell for it.
You can say Trump followed the right policy prescriptions but still acknowledge that his delivery was atrocious and turned off a large number of people who might otherwise have stuck with him. The hard-core Trumpers refuse to acknowledge it, but Trump’s utter inability to show humility and compassion lost him enough people to cost him the election. Matthew is right – if he’d spent even a little less time being a Twitter troll, he’d be enjoying his second term right now.
Foolish sentiment. It matters not who votes but it matters who counts them….
Oh, come on. You think this vast multi-state conspiracy could be pulled off? How could an otherwise incompetent government pull off something so diabolical, particularly in states controlled by the GOP? Trump won a close election in 2016 and lost a close (but less close) election in 2020.
1/3 of Americans polled month after month keep believing the Big Lie Matthew. They live in an alternate reality from most of us. Not worth your time engaging.
@Matthew
Trump definitely did not help himself in 2020, but consider that he faced horribly biased media and intelligence establishments that were willing to outright lie and that election procedures were changed under cover of the pandemic. The margin of victory came down to about 40,000 vote in three swing states.
I assume you consider (your old boss) George Bush and Barack Obama to be far better Presidents and human beings than Trump, but did Trump do anything that was worse than prosecuting the War on Terror and causing the Mediterranean refugee crisis? For those reasons alone he could be considered better than Bush 43 and Bush 44 (better known as Obama).
I’m very thankful Trump did not engage American ground troops in needless wars (and am thankful his advisors talked him out of escalating the conflict with Iran).
@UA-TDS
The Biggest Lie is still that the government is here to help folx.
@Matthew
I didn’t think you were afflicted with TDS. That is why it was disappointing to see you repeating those falsehoods. One can criticize Trump’s character without lying about what he has said. Pretty much every controversy about his statements was manufactured by deliberate media distortions. I was never a Trump fan, but I was genuinely shocked by just how biased the media were against him. Most revealed themselves to be the propaganda arm of the DNC and in conjunction with the censorship of Big Tech, they’ve pushed the US closer to the model of Communist China.
You shouldn’t just go on the success the US had in thwarting Coronavirus, which isn’t really been thwarted, but that is another matter. You should mention the number of infections and death the US has had before and after the vaccination campaign started. The highest in the world. Yes, Australia has been closed, but look at the numbers and for almost a year we were able to live a near to normal life.
Don’t criticise Australia and extend condolences to its people before you weigh facts with pros and cons!
Why would anyone want to leave Australia? My bil and sil moved there for work a decade ago….living on Manley Beach. We came back from visiting them and immediately looked at the immigration requirements. Unfortunately they are on a “points” system and being a wall street guy I couldn’t get get enough points to get automatic approval. America is great! I am the first one to light some sparklers and have fun this weekend. But after several trips to Australia..it’s a better version of America…mostly due to it’s size. With only 40mln people vs 375mln the waste just isn’t there. And common sense there seems to rule. Frivolous law suits gets tossed out more than not because they are frivolous. When we were there several boats of illegal immigrants from Indonesia landed in northern Australia. Here, when that happens in Florida….asylum proceedings takes years/decades. They literally had these people on a plane back in a week. As much as a bleeding liberal as I am, Aussies seem to reward hard work and also allow for a great lifestyle. They also protect their own.
I do think there repatriation was disastrous. How so many Aussie citizens couldn’t get home just shows the mental fortitude their leaders have. It was like watching the mayor of Porpoise Spit all over again 🙂
Actually there are plenty of reasons to want to leave Australia. I was an expat who returned to Oz after 22 years in the US, lured back by CV handling in the US and the US political situation. Here I am 8 months later planning to leave before I get locked into not being able to depart. My main reason why is the sheeple attitude of the locals, the total inability to follow the science. All the continued bleating about if we are 100% vaccinated still couldn’t consider reopening because someone might die. I refuse to remain and pay taxes so people with caveman attitudes can stay home on their couches watching sports, drinking slabs of beer and collecting endless rounds of government welfare to keep them under control. The fact that people are not outraged at this latest “plan” shows their inability to read and analyse what is actually being offered which is basically just more meaningless waffle without any defined targets.
They’re only 6% fully vaccinated after all this time. This isolationist strategy won’t work in the long run. They have primarily an urban population found in about 5 major cities. It should have been easy to vaccinate, yet here we are…
Your comment regarding Operation Warp Speed and its progress was thwarted by an “executive ” that downplayed the virus is simply not true. Warp Speed’s delays where in large part the bureaucracy mainly on the state level, this caused HUGE bottlenecks in getting the serine out, the system just wasn’t capable at that time to handle the magnitude of the issue. Once the executive order was signed it was off and running the general in charge was never impaired at all by politics only the system. Now it’s assumed there is a playbook where there was not before.
My comments are not political rather facts nor am I some right winger, rather a moderate conservative who grew up in DC and involved until a few years ago,
Please get your facts straight.
That’s not what I said. Warp Speed was an impressive feat by the USA and makes me proud to be an American. The executive complicated the overall US response through his unhelpful rhetoric.
OWS has yet to be evaluated. Yes, throwing money at the problem was the right approach, but we don’t know how effective it was. Lots of lessons to be learnt. Pfizer/BioNteck developed their vaccine independently of OWS. Both mRNA vaccines were designed 24h after the spike protein sequence was released. Moderna had no experience developing a drug and of course needed assistance but why are we still waiting for Novavax’s vaccine? And of course AZ developed an adenovirus vaccine independently of OWS.
Adding to your criticism of The former Prez, he treated the role out of the vaccine as a marketing campaign, overpromise how quickly it would happen while ultimately under delivering.
So the reason why places like California my Illinois couldnt meet the insane demand for the vaccine while Alabama and Texas were using it for BBQ lighter fluid was a state level issue? Makes sense.
The only thing Australia’s (and NZ’s) strict border closure policies have accomplished over the last year and a half is the creation of a population very vulnerable to new covid variants. Lacking natural immunity from prior exposure and vaccination immunity because of government ineptitude, it’s a nation of sitting ducks.
So much wrong and downright offensive in this post. Firstly, nobody is a prisoner. Australians can leave the country when they want. It ain’t cheap and may require a bit of planning but any Aussie so offended by these policies is free to leave. As for getting back….definitely harder and expensive but also not impossible. This is not China. The policies are being created by political leaders that can be removed if they are not serving the national interest. No evidence of a citizen revolt… To compare this to the deeply unhappy history of the penal system is offensive to the families of people that lived the penal experience.
Not true. I had a client denied boarding on a SYD-LAX flight because he had not obtained permission to leave. He’s a dual US/Australian citizen.
Totally false, It is difficult to get permission to leave unless you fall into one of the defined categories or are connected. Plenty of stories of people who have been refused permission to leave to visit a dying parent overseas. It’s why a lot of skilled migrants are actually packing up and leaving on a permanent basis.
Seems like countries that recognize Queen Elizabeth are the most problematic for travel right now (Australia, Canada, UK being the major ones). I know, major coincidence most likely, but just an interesting observation. I, as an American, will play the world’s smallest violin for its citizens while I prepare my Switzerland/Germany trip.
Americans may wish to see all countries open and without travel restrictions but seem to overlook the reality that all the vaccines made in the US remained in the US (until very recently) because Trump ordered no exports until all Americans wanting to be vaccinated, were. Ironically those not wanting those shots are in Trump voting Red states. Only two other sources of vaccine were available for the rest of the world: three plants in Europe producing Moderna, Pfizer and AstraZenica, one in the UK making AstraZenica (developed by Oxford U), and one in India making a version of AstraZenica, but no longer exporting given local demand. The J&J has come late a US output plagued by sub-contractor contamination, a contract let by the Trump administration to a company with no previous vaccine experience.
So before condemning other countries for remaining somewhat closed down consider their inability to secure vaccines and thus desire to keep citizens safe until they could be vaccinated. (And despite getting its vaccines two months behind the US, Canada has now vaccinated almost 75% of adults with one dose and 30% with two, and expecting fully vaccinated to reach 75% by the end of the summer. And unlike the US, these numbers are consistent across all provinces while several US states have yet to cross 30% first doses (or the single J&J.)
Australia is no longer a penal colony. You don’t need a criminal record to be eligible to enter.
Singapore is discussing that Covid-19 will become endemic. That means pockets of disease here and there. They plan to open up and then deal with outbreaks with testing and localized quarantine. This doesn’t mean permitting everything because if you cheat, you can go to prison for a short time (not years).
Singapore, after a slow start, is reaching US vaccination levels and is expected to exceed them by a wide margin. So far the fully vaccinated percentage is lower than the US but the 1 dose vaccination rate is slightly higher. Singapore is also using high quality vaccines, like Pfizer and Moderna, not Johnson and Johnson or AstraZeneca. It has a small supply (enough for 100,000 people) of Sinovac, which is excluded from public vaccination campaigns but shots can be had at some private facilities for a fee and not being covered by the vaccine compensation fund for ill effects.
I don’t like the Australian way but for 2020 and 2021, it is excusable, in my opinion because there haven’t been many cases there.
You may want to check the latest data on JNJ
https://www.cnn.com/2021/07/01/health/johnson-vaccine-delta-variant/index.html
Right now, it says 8 months protection at least, while the other vaccines say 6 months (of course, all 3 US vaccines work far longer, we just don’t have data). It also handles the Delta variant just fine
My understanding is that public opinion polls are largely in favor of how the government is handling it. I don’t like that godforesaken place and will never go back. So as far as I’m concerned enjoy!
Completely true. Just tune in to any Australian radio show and it won’t be long before you here someone blaming all of this on internationally arrivals to the country. The overwhelming sentiment seems to be close the doors and live isolated for a long time. I’m glad someone has finally called it out for what it is, ridiculous.
There are a few overlapping and interrelated issues. The Federal Government ( based in Canberra, headed by conservative Morrison) has responsibility for borders ( including quarantine, bio security, immigration, aviation), health funding ( although administration/ management is a state responsibilty)
Closing the borders has been very popular with the public ( and support for it remains above 70%, according to polls). Less popular though is the recent revelation that the system of travel exemption is being abused on multiple fronts: by ‘big end of town’ mates/cronies/donors of the government, by sports people pursuing private income , by ‘permanent residents’ coming and going as they please to/from India for business reasons ( ..resulting in it being very difficult/expensive for those genuinely stranded to get a flight. It was made worse by footage of the Prime Minister gallivanting around his ancestral village in the UK during the G7 ( while telling ordinary people they can’t travel)
This whole situation could have been avoided : 1.had the govt built designated quarantine facilities ( something they should have done 18 months ago, but finally agreed just last week) rather than relying on ‘leaky’ hotels; 2. They had negotiated adequate supplies of a range of vaccines, rather than being left fully reliant on the locally produced, ie cheap, Astra Zeneca.
The major threat to Australia in this situation is not short term ( loss of tourism is actually a net gain) but rather the impact on growth over the next 20-40 years ( lower levels of migration, the major contributor to domestic growth).
Australia has a vaccination rate of 5% ( ranking way down the list of countries, maybe outside the top 100). That makes the population vulnerable until those rates increase in Q4 and Q1 .
There is huge anger over the perceived ineptitude of the federal govt, and their corrupt incompetence in managing both travel and vaccination, but more in respect of the threat to health than in the ‘right’ to travel overseas freely.
I hear you.
It’s quite fascinating to see the reverse affect of these border closures, or the making of it more difficult. Australia and the U.S. are two examples. Other than business travelers who need to work deals in these places it really has little affect. And why most don’t care. If the U.S. is any example domestic travel surges to such a level that even the hospitality industry is now laughing with glee. Florida, Hawaii, so many others, even places you don’t even want to go, are fully booked and charging absurd prices. Sure, I have pending work waiting in Melbourne. But so what, I’m a blip on the radar of those within Australia that are booking local. In the end, the penal system works. For now. But eventually It will wear off.
There are places though where closures like this can be devastating. Maldives, Mauritius (which is essentially closed now until October) and locations which have little domestic demand and needs overseas travelers desperately. But for most large developed countries, the alternative domestic surge might actually be stronger than bleeding their own people to Fiji in exchange for Americans (as an example) that come to Sydney. I’m sure there is a mathematical formula for this but, ya know, math is hard.
I’m sure Qantas is not happy however.
You’re right and it is something I often forget in my own little bubble.
Is Australia the only country with closed borders? I find it odd the amount of attention that an island country, a long way the US, that the majority of Americans won’t visit in their lifetime, is getting so much attention for its policies which do not impact on the day to day life of most people. Why do you actually care?
In essence you are right. Probably the majority don’t care. Yet there are countless stories of people who missed the births of grandchildren, were not able to say goodbye to terminally ill loved ones, and on and on and on. And, those of us that do business of course in which both parties lose. The math may not be all that convincing as to the consequences. But for those who do suffer it’s tragic and painful.
I agree with you. And if people personally impacted by this were writing it, I’d completely understand. Indeed, my biggest criticism of the Australian Government is poor job they have done and continue to do, repatriating citizens from overseas. But much of the commentary makes it like a personal attack on individuals, who aren’t even impacted.
The end of the day, covid has resulted in countries tackling the problem in different ways. None of them have been perfect and all of them have had consequences.
With respect, there are many readers from Australia who read the internet plus the US internet audience is but a small part of the world.
Something like 35% of Australians were born elsewhere plus there are millions of non-citizen residents who are unable to leave. I for one have not seen my 12 year old boy for almost two years. He is now 14 and by the time we open up he will probably be 16-17. So essentially, I will not know who he is by the time I see him next. I am bitter because I would gladly pay for my quarantine costs but this choice is not even given. FWIW – I am fully vaccinated. The years lost will never happen again. Just sad! I wish I was not Australian.
Very sad to hear and the reason I wrote this story. Thanks for your comment.
Wow. Those are some harsh words. Better a penal colony than 600000 dead eh?
My country with its megalomaniac PM has helped to create and spread the delta variant the world over. Till you’ve seen it’s effects (and you in the USA will see it soon), you won’t change your mind.
It’s so sad that people just started dying last year. Too bad we couldn’t go back to 2019 when apparently no one ever died.
I think many would find that it’s actually easier to leave the country than is reported. I know numerous people that have left the country multiple times in the past 18 months. It isn’t that hard, you really just need to say you’re going to be gone for over 3 months.
As for getting back in, I also know numerous people that have quarantined on retune from multiple international trips. It’s a myth that there are thousands stranded overseas. In all likelihood they’ve had a chance to return at some point, but decided not to. Then when they want to return they can’t get a flight.
Matthew:
I am from Australia and sympathise with your comments. The harsh reality is though I am just one of 25 million people in this big island. What many people from America may not realise is not just that we ban our own people from leaving but we have state border closures too and not in the New York sense last year of “you can only enter if you agree to quarantine for 14 days and we may check on you”, in the sense of you cannot enter at all even returning residents unless you essentially beg them to let you in. I am in Sydney and we are literally cut off from the rest of the country after an outbreak of 200 cases, that’s bad enough but worst of it is the outbreak began three weeks ago with one flight crew transport driver who caught it from crew. Other outbreaks have begun with returned travellers including one who spread COVID through a using a nebuliser in hotel quarantine and another who was allowed to go to India for a wedding (when of course so many others have been denied permission to leave).
While many on Twitter are condemning our PM for the vaccine roll out and being in denial there’s anything wrong (and he is), people I’ve overheard out in public tend to say things like they’d only need to get jabbed if they wanted to travel overseas and are fine with not going overseas as well as saying Aussies stranded overseas “should’ve come home earlier”. As well as this every state election in Australia since COVID-19 has seen a landslide win for the incumbents (most pertinently WA with the “lock out everyone even residents, with no prior notice and potentially even kick people who entered the state in the immediately preceding days unless they get tested”, the opposition Liberal Party literally got reduced to just 2 seats in a 60 seat parliament). There’s a federal election due in the first half of next year Morrison is thinking he’ll get credit for international border closures plus his government’s wage subsidy scheme similar to Boris Johnson’s even though similar to Trump voters his supporters keep their mouths shut until polling day. Of course Australia will re-open to the world some day but it won’t be until after the next election.
In the interim, if people (particularly your Award Expert clients) are desparate to leave and aren’t coming back here they could go to New Zealand under the Trans-Tasman bubble and catch another flight with a different itinerary onward from there.
Nicholas, I greatly appreciate your perspective. Thanks for weighing in.
Of that 600,000….1/3 – 1/2 were in nursing homes. Avg life expectancy in a nursing home:
From Geripal website.
– the median length of stay in a nursing home before death was 5 months
– the average length of stay was longer at 14 months due to a small number of study participants who had very long lengths of stay
– 65% died within 1 year of nursing home admission
– 53% died within 6 months of nursing home admission
some perspective….600,000 is a media number with no context. Nevermind people dying of C19 vs WITH C19.
I don’t believe I have ever seen an age-stratified table of COVID-19 cases/deaths in the US media. This should tell you what its bias is. Instead of giving the public useful data about the risks of the virus, you see things like Chris Cuomo yucking it up with his murderous brother the Governor and faking climbing out of his basement after quarantine. Journalists should be ashamed of themselves.
Best of luck outrunning the Delta variant, anti-vaxxer…talk about who should be ashamed of themselves…
I’d say UA-TDS should be ashamed for his authoritarian shilling of the DNC party line, but the brainless box jumper doesn’t know any better. Keep jumping on the boxes, comrade. Imagine you’re stomping out racism! Stomp on a racist!
I am not old or fat. I don’t hang out in viral hotboxes. What do I have to be afraid of? Trump 2024? I wouldn’t vote for him then, either, but keep up the TDS and hate half of your countrymen. Is that sexist? Countryfolx?
I woke up and realized I wanted to say something else.
You need to up your game Matthew. As a world traveler especially…
Uruguay “took COVID seriously” and were lauded in the press (Along with New Zealand, Australia, etc…).
Look at how many people have died in Uruguay. If you adjust for population compared to USA, they’ve had almost 500,000 deaths.
lockdowns, masks, distancing, etc… it doesn’t matter.
Environmental, health, & ethnographic factors are much more important. Australia/New Zealand has high UV-B vs skin color. UV-B is the virus killer. Seasonality…
And now vax. Vax causes variants of concern, and vax rollouts have led to increase cases/deaths all over the world. We’ll see more this next cycle in Northern Hemisphere. Check twitr channel MCONCEPTIONS if you want to see a lot of graphs from
OUR WORLD IN DATA – graphs you can duplicate in seconds. Or search NOBEL PRIZE WINNER VARIANTS RAIR. More sources…but that’start. Search SALK SPIKE PROTEIN
don’t believe the pHARMa fiction.
Matt, please delete vaccine misinformation. Vaccines are the way to returning to normal travel.
We should be thankful to the scientists and pharma companies that did this research.
Yes, please, more censorship, comrade! No one should be allowed to say anything questioning the motivations of Big Pharma. That is plainly counter-revolutionary.
Keep the mis-information spreading, anti-vaxxer. 10K people a month in the US still dying of Covid, virtually all unvaccinated. Good luck with that!
How am I spreading misinformation? I never said the vaccines were ineffective. Anyone who chose not to get vaccinated and subsequently got infected and died suffered the consequences of his choice. I have no problem with this. People should be free to make their own choices, shouldn’t they? Comrades like UA-TDS cannot comprehend why anyone who “follows the science” might not toe the DNC/TDS party line. The theory that SARS-CoV-2 might not have been zoonotic in origin was considered “misinformation” not too long ago and Big Tech actively censored it. What changed? Bad Orange Man gone?
I did a search for “hyperbole” and this article came up. Not disappointed.
You are on the right track Matthew. For a year and a half Australia has been looking down at the rest of us since they measure “caring” and “safety” by the number of civil liberties they take away from their citizens and foreign visitors. Suddenly here in the US things are back to normal and our economy is expanding while Australia has no vaccine program to speak of and their long term plan is to lockdown any areas that have 2-3 cases. It’s quite amazing how short sided their strategy is. The only people who will suffer from their stupidity is their own citizens who won’t be able to travel while the rest of us return to normal.
Good article Matthew… pretty much nailed the “Stockholm Syndrome” effect of nanny state governments lockdowns and admonition of “anti social” behaviour by citizens who actually dare to walk on the beach or in the park. This has created a nation of largely compliant muppets who long ago ceased to question the fascist approach of the states and feds..As an expat Australian for 30 years, I returned a couple of years ago and am now sequestered by a system which would not be out of place in North Korea… and astonished at the level of acceptance by Aussies who are happy to take the “Covid cash” available and relax ( by far the largest benefactors of lockdowns are the alcohol retailers!)
I am just biding my time until I can board the first flight out of here and “sayonara” to Oz..
I’m Ex Pat living in US (Hawaii) and I hear this very same phrase “Australia reverting back to being penal colony” on local morning radio here this morning. Our government in their desire to keep the country save is destroying our reputation world wide. ….we recently have as many cases here on islands as Australia has in NSW. No lockdowns etc….local govts here are pushing the vaccines which is working with almost 70% numbers. Preventing citizens from leaving is pointless…what risk to they cause to Australia ?? Returning travelers with completed vaccination certifications likewise ..minimum at best. I think Australia has done a good job overall but its time to let people leave if they wish and welcome back those without quarantine..or at least just a 5 day version who have done the right thing and are vaccinated and have the appropriate confirming documentation.
This is a Continent that has condemned itself with brutal fascism because of its reaction to the Pandemic. As with South Africa, Australia should also be boycotted by the rest of the world whether it is for the next 100 years or 1000 years. Unless their government returns to a Constitution Democracy even similar to some of the Eastern European countries, Australia should be boycotted and left to itself. Its not worth losing your society over a few covid-19 cases. Beside that Australian police are so disgusting immoral sadistic monsters that even us in America blush at their actions. American police for the most part have much better morals and would NEVER stoop to such rape as these from down under do by the orders of their fascist premiers.