Australia today used helicopters and the army to enforce its 'Zero Covid' lockdown,

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hollydolly

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Australia today used helicopters and the army to enforce its 'Zero Covid' lockdown, as thousands of police flooded Sydney city centre to enforce the rules and hand out $500 fines for those not wearing a mask.

Sirens blared across the city and a draconian message was broadcast from the skies, as millions were told: 'This is public health order —do not break rules —you will be found and fines issued.'

Ministers had tried to eliminate all cases through isolation and closed borders, but just 17% of adults have been vaccinated and concerns are now growing over the virus' growing prevalence across the country.

Today, up to 1,300 police officers swarmed Sydney and set up a network of roadblocks in a massive show of force to avoid a repeat of last week's violent anti-lockdown protest.

Some 250 fines, each worth $500, were issued across the city today, with one man arrested after travelling on trains outside his local government area without a reasonable excuse.

It comes after Prime Minister Scott Morrison had launched a four-stage plan back to freedom but said 80% of adults would have to be vaccinated before the border can begin to open.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9846939/Soldiers-sent-enforce-lockdown-Sydney.html
 

Yep. That about sums it up. We cannot have a repeat of last weekend when roughly 3,500 idiots crowded into the city defying every health order and potentially becoming super spreaders of the delta variant. The last straw was an over muscled cave man punching a police horse in the head.

Yesterday the police simply turned away anyone who looked like repeating the folly. Punching horses is just not on.

The extremely low rate of vaccination is the big worry. The roll out has been poorly handled from the start and all we really have as a strategy to contain the virus is social distancing, mask wearing and containment of hotspots with stay at home orders. And lots of testing and contact tracing. So far this latest breakout in greater Sydney is quite worrying. The number of new cases keeps increasing but not exponentially because of the health orders. In another week or so we will know how much damage last weeks mindless protest will have caused.

https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2021/07/24/09/45836297-9820795-image-a-20_1627115246332.jpg

A SKY news report on yesterday's police operation Sydney police presence deters protesters (msn.com)
 
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Not surprised at the second major lockdown since the Australian government primarily relied on such strict social distancing from the first. That only delayed the inevitable ...that cases would go up as restrictions loosened. This round is kicking the can down the road as well. People can't hole up and avoid it forever; the virus is out there waiting.

The implementation methods of this lockdown sound scary as hell.
 
On the whole we Australians are a co-operative bunch. For the time being most of us have given up the privilege of doing whatever we like when out and about. We have accepted the need to prevent unnecessary deaths by limiting travel into and from Australia and from hotspots where Covid in uncontrolled to other parts of the country. We do this because it is common sense when dealing with a very transmissible and virulent disease. We do it to protect ourselves, our families and vulnerable strangers.

We look forward to the day when this will be unnecessary but as far as Sydney is concerned it will continue until the rest of August. Longer if idiots refuse to co-operate.

Along the way mistakes have been made and there are a number of political leaders who may not survive the next round of elections but the task that has landed in their laps has been, to use a rather hackneyed term, unprecedented in our lifetimes. I personally cut them a lot of slack because with one or two exceptions, they are doing their best to limit the human and commercial damage done by this virus. Our system of public health has been sorely tested and has stood up to the challenge and income support is available to people who are unable to work from home and to businesses small and large.

Sydney is a very multicultural city with a huge population of migrants. It is their custom to cluster in certain localities and they come together regularly for shared meals with friends and family. Asking them to stop doing this is a message that is hard to get across and in this latest outbreak they have been hard hit with whole households becoming sick. In the last couple of days a man was found dead at home with Covid. He refused to go to hospital and all of his family are now very infected.

Some of these new migrants are traumatised from their experiences of the police and military overseas and calling in the military to help our somewhat overstretched police force must be terrifying for them. In addition, they tend to be housed in high rise apartments rather than separate houses. Lockdowns are extremely hard on them and long lockdowns must be torture, especially where children are involved.

Any selfish action, including demanding a non existent civil right to do as you please, regardless of the consequences, just prolongs the agony for so many people. It's bloody unAustralian in my book. To survive and thrive in a land that can be very harsh at times Australians have always pulled together in adversity. This land has shaped us as much as we have shaped the landscape. To understand our mindset you need to understand our geography and our history.

All of the above is meant to explain why people like me are not in the least frightened by the police and the army being conspicuous yesterday. We are not living in a police state. No-one got shot. Lives were saved, not lost. A few people got infringement notices and will have to pay a fine.
 
Australia today used helicopters and the army to enforce its 'Zero Covid' lockdown, as thousands of police flooded Sydney city centre to enforce the rules and hand out $500 fines for those not wearing a mask.

Sirens blared across the city and a draconian message was broadcast from the skies, as millions were told: 'This is public health order —do not break rules —you will be found and fines issued.'

Ministers had tried to eliminate all cases through isolation and closed borders, but just 17% of adults have been vaccinated and concerns are now growing over the virus' growing prevalence across the country.

Today, up to 1,300 police officers swarmed Sydney and set up a network of roadblocks in a massive show of force to avoid a repeat of last week's violent anti-lockdown protest.

Some 250 fines, each worth $500, were issued across the city today, with one man arrested after travelling on trains outside his local government area without a reasonable excuse.

It comes after Prime Minister Scott Morrison had launched a four-stage plan back to freedom but said 80% of adults would have to be vaccinated before the border can begin to open.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9846939/Soldiers-sent-enforce-lockdown-Sydney.html
With ignorance and power comes fear and oppression.
 
Good on the Aussie govt. bringing in the army. A couple of weeks ago I was amazed at how many people flooded Bondi beach, no masks, no social distancing and this has been the norm for thousands of self centred Aussies, white, black,brown or brindle. It came as no surprise then when another shutdown was brought in and air travel was stopped. It is about pulling together as a country not about my right to infect others, how selfish can people get. But I forgot, they are bullet proof, yere right.
 
Good on the Aussie govt. bringing in the army. A couple of weeks ago I was amazed at how many people flooded Bondi beach, no masks, no social distancing and this has been the norm for thousands of self centred Aussies, white, black,brown or brindle. It came as no surprise then when another shutdown was brought in and air travel was stopped. It is about pulling together as a country not about my right to infect others, how selfish can people get. But I forgot, they are bullet proof, yere right.
You'll do well in the new communist world order.
 
Good on the Aussie govt. bringing in the army. A couple of weeks ago I was amazed at how many people flooded Bondi beach, no masks, no social distancing and this has been the norm for thousands of self centred Aussies, white, black,brown or brindle. It came as no surprise then when another shutdown was brought in and air travel was stopped. It is about pulling together as a country not about my right to infect others, how selfish can people get. But I forgot, they are bullet proof, yere right.
Onya, Cousin. You'd think a visit to Bondi wouldn't be all that important in Winter and in the middle of an Covid outbreak, would you?
 
On the whole we Australians are a co-operative bunch. For the time being most of us have given up the privilege of doing whatever we like when out and about. We have accepted the need to prevent unnecessary deaths by limiting travel into and from Australia and from hotspots where Covid in uncontrolled to other parts of the country. We do this because it is common sense when dealing with a very transmissible and virulent disease. We do it to protect ourselves, our families and vulnerable strangers.

We look forward to the day when this will be unnecessary but as far as Sydney is concerned it will continue until the rest of August. Longer if idiots refuse to co-operate.

Along the way mistakes have been made and there are a number of political leaders who may not survive the next round of elections but the task that has landed in their laps has been, to use a rather hackneyed term, unprecedented in our lifetimes. I personally cut them a lot of slack because with one or two exceptions, they are doing their best to limit the human and commercial damage done by this virus. Our system of public health has been sorely tested and has stood up to the challenge and income support is available to people who are unable to work from home and to businesses small and large.

Sydney is a very multicultural city with a huge population of migrants. It is their custom to cluster in certain localities and they come together regularly for shared meals with friends and family. Asking them to stop doing this is a message that is hard to get across and in this latest outbreak they have been hard hit with whole households becoming sick. In the last couple of days a man was found dead at home with Covid. He refused to go to hospital and all of his family are now very infected.

Some of these new migrants are traumatised from their experiences of the police and military overseas and calling in the military to help our somewhat overstretched police force must be terrifying for them. In addition, they tend to be housed in high rise apartments rather than separate houses. Lockdowns are extremely hard on them and long lockdowns must be torture, especially where children are involved.

Any selfish action, including demanding a non existent civil right to do as you please, regardless of the consequences, just prolongs the agony for so many people. It's bloody unAustralian in my book. To survive and thrive in a land that can be very harsh at times Australians have always pulled together in adversity. This land has shaped us as much as we have shaped the landscape. To understand our mindset you need to understand our geography and our history.

All of the above is meant to explain why people like me are not in the least frightened by the police and the army being conspicuous yesterday. We are not living in a police state. No-one got shot. Lives were saved, not lost. A few people got infringement notices and will have to pay a fine.
Thank you for giving us a perspective we're not likely to get from our own Media here in USA. Fox news might even lift the scariest footage and say it's happening in a Blue state or going to happen nationwide.
This is one of my favorite things about the pervasiveness of the internet: We can get the viewpoint of people closer to something than we are.
 
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Do civil liberties supersede the right

Not surprised at the second major lockdown since the Australian government primarily relied on such strict social distancing from the first. That only delayed the inevitable ...that cases would go up as restrictions loosened. This round is kicking the can down the road as well. People can't hole up and avoid it forever; the virus is out there waiting.

The implementation methods of this lockdown sound scary as hell.
That's the thing, when does it end; next week, next year, next decade. Trying to maintain that bubble could produce just as many bad side effects as what it's trying to keep out.
 
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Looks like Australia has become a penal colony again. Why do they put up with such draconian measures?

The last data I looked at showed 34, 381 cases of covid out of a population of, say, 25,000,000. That amounts to about 0.01% or 1/100 of a percent. Of those cases, there were only 934 deaths, which is a population death rate of 0.0037% or covid case death rate of 2.7%.

One could certainly argue that measures were keeping covid at bay; however, what price freedom and liberty? Also, what are they going to do when the next variant or type of flu comes along? Will the ADE generated by vaccination and isolation make the next one even more virulent?
 
Here is a good, responsible report on the COVID variant Delta from Rochester Regional Health who is not the primary source of information, but they are noted for tracking and reporting competent and reliable information after they have substantiated the facts.I think it’s worth taking a few minutes to read it. The article may give some of us a little relief from all of the bad news. The point that was made stating that for those vaccinated, if they should contract the Delta variant, the worse they should expect is mild symptoms. And that 99.5% of all Delta variant deaths have been from unvaccinated people.
https://hive.rochesterregional.org/2021/07/what-to-know-about-the-delta-variant-this-summer
 

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