Imagine your father died during the pandemic and you could not be by his side before he passed nor hold a funeral for him. Then imagine that your mother suffered a severe stroke, leaving her in critical condition. But you couldn’t visit…flights were far too expensive due to stringent entrance limits and the quarantine upon arrival was cost-prohibitive. One Chicago resident did not have to imagine…that was her reality. But a well-timed plea on Australian television plus a kind gesture from United Airlines has brought new hope to a woman and her two daughters.
Australian Family Returns With Help Of United Airlines To Visit Her Dying Mother
Rebecca Vickers is an Australian national living in Chicago. Dealing with the death or sickness of your parents is one thing, but being unable to be with them is a punishment far more cruel. Yet her parents lived in Australia and during the pandemic Australia has decided to isolate itself from the world by sealing its borders to all but a trickle of citizens returning home.
After losing her father early in the pandemic, she could not visit. Recently, her mother suffered a stroke and Vickers again found herself on the outside. Have you tried looking for flights to Australia recently? They are either sold out or so prohibitively expensive you have to be rich to fly there. And then once you get there you must pay A$3000 for the 14-day quarantine (plus A$500 per child).
Then Australia decided to (temporarily…supposedly) cut the number of citizens allowed to re-enter the country each week to 6,300.
> Read More: Australia Reverts To Its Penal Colony Roots
She took the airwaves and made an impassioned plea for an exception on compassion grounds:
United Airlines heard her plea and helped her get her back to Australia. Hopefully she will be released early from quarantine and see her mother before she passes. Another man living in Canada was not so fortunate:
This all breaks my heart and in my view, constitutes a human rights abuse. When the history book is written on COVID-19, there will be a chapter about all the folks who needlessly died alone in the cruelest of fashions.
If someone is vaccinated and tests negative before and after a flight, a 14-day quarantine is absurd. What’s the point of saving your nation if you sacrifice your soul in the process? Humans need one another. Children should not be separated from their dying parents. Public health concerns should not be devoid of the nuance and context called life.
This is a very sad story. Kudos to Ms. Vickers for making such an impassioned plea and to United Airlines (and others) stepping up to get her and her daughters to Sydney. It should not require mortgaging your house to fly to Sydney. Nevertheless, her story in this pandemic is hardly unique. And it is a story that should not have to be told.
CONCLUSION
I’ve helped a handful of Award Expert clients get back to Australia during the pandemic. It’s an incredibly difficult process and increasingly strikes me as an egregious policy more aimed at covering ineptitude and preserving power than dealing with a virus. To all you Australians trapped outside your country and waiting anxiously to get home, my thoughts and prayers are with you. Welcome home Rebecca.
image: Rebecca Vickers/ Facebook
This is unforgivable. The world has lost its collective mind over this virus. When will people finally learn that government is not your friend and it will not help you? Perhaps the only case in which it might be justified is in defense, but even that purpose is corrupted to prosecute travesties like the War on Terror. The Australians who support the border restrictions should be ashamed of themselves. Of course, they are too stupid to realize they are wrong. There is no reasoning with insensate beasts.
The virus has a 99.8 % survival rate its about control
Not true. It’s worse than 99.8%. Some survivors get brain fog, which is terrible.
The Australian restrictions are too draconian if they are not matched by similar measures to combat domestic spread. Vaccinated people should be given allowances for their vaccination, which puts them at a much lower threat.
A 99.8% survival rate would mean 50,000 deaths in Australia, instead of the ~1,000 we’ve had
These are both incorrect. According to Johns Hopkins, Australia has confirmed 31,100 cases to date with 911 deaths. This is just north of a 97% survival rate; globally the survival rate is 97.9% (4 million deaths in 186.5 million cases.) However, as 100% of deaths are evaluated for COVID, all deaths are calculated but not all the cases. Why? Because some had it but were asymptomatic or recovered without a test so the number is higher than 97% and but not confirmed at 99.8% either.
Couldn’t agee with you more. And this is just one portion of the fallout. Look what we’re doing to our children, their schooling, social development. Look what we done to our economy.
An interesting point was made a few days ago. If for example an engineer designs a bridge or a building and it collapses, they will pay a price. Who is going to be held accountable or have to pay a price for the damage that’s been inflicted on our society as a result of the way this was handled? That would be nobody.
Maybe the reason Australia has such onerous entry requirements, even for their own citizens, is because if they didn’t, people with dual citizenship or residency would fly back and forth during the pandemic unnecessarily (for example, because they work better on planes). And it makes sense to maintain those requirements until 70% of their population is vaccinated. The consequence of people trying to find every loophole to avoid following rules is you either need super onerous rules, or no rules at all.
Don’t get me wrong — I believe people should be able to see their loved ones who have limited time left. But when the history book is written on COVID-19, there will be also be a chapter about all the folks who couldn’t shelter-in-place or wear a mask when asked to for the greater good.
Scandalous, disgraceful and shameful. There is no transparency about the travel exemption scheme but there is overwhelming anecdotal evidence that it’s discriminatory and ultimately corrupt in its application. It’s a national embarrassment. All Australians should be deeply ashamed of the actions of our government: they’ve overseen a system that gives carte blanche to their mates/cronies/donors to come and go, more or less as they please. It would have remained secret ( couched in terms of data privacy) had it not been for some whistleblowers.
The privileged and wealthy are getting these free-pass exemptions for trivia ( and on repeat trips) , while those in genuine…often desperate…need are denied. It’s a vile, repulsive, rotten-to-the-core mob of sleazebags in control of this scandal
I totally agree with you. I wouldn’t care so much as I’m a US citizen but I have relatives in Australia. I pray for their health and that nothing happens to them during the pandemic. I fear that if my inlaw gets ill, it’ll be a nightmare situation to go back. The Oz government is a total joke and a bunch of crooks.
We need Nuremburg 2.0 in various countries including but not limited to Australia and Canada as well as various states in the USA. Instead of hanging I would like to see public execution by guillotine.
I’m scandalized that this nice, white, photogenic family was impacted by their choices. It shouldn’t happen.
You’re kidding right? Surely you’re not implying that their “whiteness” got them a flight. That’s ridiculous.
Aww of course only United could’ve been capable of such a gesture.
No United isn’t the only airline capable of such generosity, both American and Delta also operate flights to Sydney, Australia. However for whatever reasons it was United who came to the aide of this family when normally a story like this would involve Delta Airlines. Flights to Australia are already ridiculously expensive thanks to the cap on arrivals and it was just announce that be July 14 that cap will be lowered once again just over 3000 arrivals per week, this action by the Australian government will result in even high air fares, and passengers are still facing $5000 dollar in quarantine bills to cover their 14 day quarantine. With some of the air fare prices I’ve seen and once the quarantine bill is added in a single adult passenger could be looking at $10,000 dollar in total cost just to get home to Australia.
Australia gave its citizens ample time to get home. It’s this families fault that they chose to ride out the pandemic in the USA.
Life is simply not that easy in our inner-connected world.
People have had their whole lives not to be fat. Being fat is a choice and the rest of us are paying the price for it. Remove the death numbers with obesity as a co-morbidity and what do you have left? The Australian border restrictions are ridiculous. Those who support them should move to North Korea. Elites get special treatment there, too.
My hearrt broke reading and seeing these two videos and the immense pain people and their families are still going through dealing with the pamdemic. Of all the countries in the world I would have expected that Australia would have reached out and taken care of their own and brought those overseas home. But after remembering how the Prime Minister kissed the ass of our former President I fully understand. The Prime Minister needs to be removed as well as the PM of India. They refused to believe science and now the people of Australia and India suffer. How very tragic. I pray for these individuals and also for anyone struggling during this time. God Bless you .
I’m still trying to get into the UK without a 2-week quarantine. I last saw my family in January of 2019. My mother died in December of last year–not able to say goodbye or attend the funeral. This is absurd.
I think the quarantine is only 10 days now for countries on their amber list. You can also “test to release” on the fifth day of quarantine. The quarantine is a joke. It is unfortunate that you weren’t able to attend your mother’s funeral, but I think you should have been able to without quarantining. Matthew went to a funeral in the UK earlier this year, I believe.
https://www.gov.uk/guidance/red-amber-and-green-list-rules-for-entering-england
https://www.gov.uk/guidance/coronavirus-covid-19-test-to-release-for-international-travel
Thank you. My brother looked into it at the time but he said it would be dodgy at best.
This is truly hilarious stuff. Not sure if this is third or fourth piece bashing AUS immigration. Aussies are probably one of the most lovable and approachable groups in the world. May be they are right. If they’re wrong, eventually they’ll buy you a beer and have good talk about it. Kinda hard to muster any real outrage. Time to move on. Definitely won’t stop me from visiting again when the time is right.
I love Aussies. I detest their government’s COVID-19 policies!
Australia
Population 25m
Cases 31k: 1231 cases /m
Deaths 1k: 36 deaths /m
USA
Population 328m
Cases 33.8m: 102,985 cases /m (83x greater)
Deaths 606k: 1846 deaths /m (51x greater)
To anyone that thinks the numbers are inflated due to “all” deaths being attributed to COVID, just tally the excess deaths for the pandemic period. No matter how you try to spin it, we sent about 600k more people to see Jesus last year than we would have on average.
Australia has these “draconian” measures and yet the virus is so incredibly difficult to contain that even with the testing, vaccination and quarantine measures in place, it STILL has entered the country and spread numerous times. This is truly a heartwrenching, individual story, but it’s unfortunately not the only scenario in play. In the US we’ve smoked 600k people that someone loved and cherished because we couldn’t possibly adhere to any expert guidance.
It’s so annoying having soccer mommies and crazy uncles that self educated from the university of Google second guessing the actual experts. Australia has used expert advice and saved countless lives of people they love and care about. In the US, we have a large population of the type of people that I watched fail out of freshman chemistry second guessing the brilliant minds that actually wrote the book on it.
It’s sad the lady couldn’t make it across the globe to be with a dying parent, but it’s even more sad that we in the US killed 50x more people per capita than another developed country. If you aren’t familiar with the Trolley Problem, it’s worth a look. This is a similar scenario
I would like to challenge the readers of this publication to trust actual experts in his or her respective field, and I’ll provide an aviation specific example. The next time you board an airplane, for what I hope will soon be free of COVID complications, ask yourself if you would like some random passenger to be selected to jump behind the controls and fly you to your destination or if you would like to have an expert, a professional pilot, at the controls. I don’t think any of us would like a novice at the controls of our flight just as we shouldn’t want a novice making medical decisions for us personally or for the entire country. The medical professionals that have attempted to keep us all safe have done so using years or even decades of personal experience built upon hundreds of years of scientific knowledge. They aren’t trying to take away your ‘Merican rights, they are just doing their best to keep us alive.
This was similar to my story but I was only in Victoria and my dad in North Queensland. I had to make the tough decision to wait it out last November so I could be with my dad instead of 14 days by myself in hotel quarantine. Thankfully I made the right choice and was able to be with my family but the stress and anxiety the Qld government put me through was something I will never forget and I was born and bred in NQ. Every time I see someone like this on the news my heart completely breaks for them, I cry for them and I re live what I went through, it is horrendous. Then to see every other person they let in to the state is so insulting. More needs to be done to prevent people from going through anything like this again. I don’t get someone who needs to travel on compassionate grounds is deemed more likely to have and spread the virus than a footballer or his wife, it’s crazy.