12 millions Aussies now in lockdown. By Ellie Dudley.
Almost 12 million Australians will wake up in lockdown on Friday, as the highly infectious Delta variant of Covid-19 continues to wreak havoc across the country.
The ACT was the latest region to be plunged into a seven day lockdown on Thursday after one new case of Covid-19 was detected in the community.
Half the country. This is the ACT’s first lockdown in over a year, caused by one profligate who officially has 3,900 close contacts, and has made at least six people sick. From a reader in Canberra:
The nightclub bouncer was a busy boy seeding the city, as his many visits to most parts of mainstream Canberra in a day or so showed. Unlike Queanbeyan, compliance in Canberra with QR code’s on entry to businesses has been poor, so the close contact number is probably nearer to 10,000.
Better hope the Canberra spreader is not a superspreader, or Canberra is out for the count.
Unlike other States, NSW uses an up to four days delayed, progressive lockdown system with improper policing (was better last year — this time some army personnel are being called in to try to improve things a bit) and being overly sensitive to special interest groups, such as the Arab community in S.W. Sydney during a certain, problematic religious festival. It keeps the economy going for longer, but everywhere pays a bigger price in the end.
Going back through a thousand years of history in Europe, lockdowns work. Not much else does.
Meanwhile, one selfish bloke on a train out of Sydney has now put the Tomago aluminium smelter near Newcastle in jeopardy. Shutting down that simply massive consumer of electricity and resources may sound like a blessing in some ways, but it’s far more costly to start it up again and management is dealing with some difficult duty of care issues.
All this from one slip up in quarantine in Sydney, with a limo driver, six weeks ago. A $50 hazmat suit for the limo driver would have avoided all this. Shame on our governments for not implementing quarantine properly — we need remote camps out in the sunshine, not inner city hotels.
Meanwhile the suburbs in Sydney (like Melbourne last year) where the virus is being spread are highly immigrant, with a high incidence of a particular religion. Many of those interviewed on what it’s like in those regions are in Muslim garb. Rumors go around that the health authorities don’t tell the police when members of this community flout the rules, because they feel sorry for them and don’t want them to get fined (how PC! how virtuous!). Meanwhile the people who follow the rules endure a lockdown that is dragged out because certain people will not follow the rules. A price of multiculturalism and our immigration policies — not that the media will ever dare to point that out.
