Coronavirus: Australia’s covidiots and scofflaws are nothing more than more of the same, by Jack the Insider.
In the late, great Southern City there have been a total of 800 out of just over 3000 individuals who have tested positive for covid but thought quarantine was optional and instead strode out into the community with hacking, dry coughs. …
Earlier this week, a 38-year-old woman allegedly assaulted two young police women after she was seen not wearing a mask at a shopping centre in Frankston in Melbourne’s south east. The alleged assault was so serious one of the police officers was treated at hospital for “concussion and significant facial injuries.” The 38-year-old woman reportedly has no criminal history.
What on Earth is going on here? Victoria Police report they have encountered pockets of the sovereign citizen movement, a loose coalition of ultra libertarians who claim they have the right to opt out of the state’s laws whenever it suits them.
Aside from their amusing waffling about the Australian Constitution that they could not possibly have read or selective citing of the Magna Carta that they also have not read, events in Victoria show just how dangerous these people can be and how quickly noncompliance of temporary Covid laws can escalate into violence. …
A bit of Spanish flu history:
The arrival of the Spanish flu pandemic of 1919-20, a disease that swept across the globe killing millions, had eerie similarities to that of COVID-19 in that it first appeared in the summer months in Australia. …
One story you probably won’t hear down at the War Museum is the only reason Australia was beset with a viral infectious disease was that returned service men from the First AIF jumped quarantine, spreading clusters of infection wherever they went.
Wearing a mask was compulsory in NSW for several months in 1919 but the rules were drawn up with gaping, noodle-scratching inconsistencies. Churches were locked down but Sydneysiders huddled together in trams to get down to the beach. They could pack in like tinned anchovies at the footy, too, but not the races. Go figure.
Lockdowns obviously work, as experience with other viruses such as the black plague and Ebola prove. Those viruses are much more lethal, so people are much more motivated. But lockdowns require strong borders and quarantine, and they require that everyone take it seriously. Most of the developed world is managing to do that, more or less, with one big — and increasingly sick — exception.
