As a society, we accept certain risks in the name of freedom. Why wouldn't alcohol be banned? It's easily linked to thousands of people dead in car accidents, it's easily linked to domestic violence. Let's ban it and save thousands of lives. How many more people need to die before we enact the laws?

But we don't. Because we don't restrict freedoms for responsible 99% just to take care of the remaining 1%.

It is not the purpose of government to go on scorched earth campaigns fighting every single pathogen without regard to the consequences.

Why not? A proper explanation please. Many of us aren't suicidal yet but we're getting that way because of the inane and inconsiderate comments of others.

BTW, there's historical precedence, check what happened during the Spanish flu pandemic.

There's also "historical precedence" for governments to systematically exterminate vulnerable or minority parts of their population. This doesn't mean that it is a necessary component of a functioning government.

Sanitation expectations and standards fluctuate wildly amongst different cultures and populations; that doesn't mean your ethnocentric view on sanitation makes your civilization better than other ones.

Homosexuals and other groups were widely persecuted in the 1980s in Western countries in reaction to HIV/AIDS. We can completely lose our senses when it comes to the threat of contamination.

I see, so you are claiming that governments in Australia have always dealt with infectious diseases using oppression?

Specifically, I am wondering whether similar methods were used to deal with the following[1]:

> #How common are notifiable infectious diseases?

> More than 593,000 cases of notifiable diseases were reported to the NNDSS in 2019. Four infectious diseases accounted for 82% of these notifications to Australian health authorities in 2019:

> * influenza—more than 313,000 notifications

> * chlamydia—almost 103,000 notifications

> * campylobacter (a gastrointestinal infection)—almost 36,000 notifications

> * gonorrhoea—more than 34,000 notifications.

[1]: https://www.aihw.gov.au/reports/australias-health/infectious...

The word quarantine literally refers to the 40 days a new arrival would be required to spend aboard his ship before disembarking, as early as the 14th century [0]. In Australia, the practice dates to at least the 1830s [1].

Public health gets involved in notifying the partners of STD index cases, with varying degrees of coercion.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quarantine

[1] https://theconversation.com/why-are-australians-so-accepting...

All of these diseases are either much less infectious than Covid or much less dangerous, or both.

> I see, so you are claiming that governments in Australia have always dealt with infectious diseases using oppression?

Ignoring for the moment the prerogative term "oppression", using the rule of law to stop the spread of hazards is pretty common.

In South Australia we've had to throw put fresh fruit when bringing it from interstate because of the risk of fruit fly infection, and there are currently strong restrictions stopping movement of fruit between postcodes because of an outbreak, eg: https://fruitfly.sa.gov.au/outbreak-restrictions/red-area

This is a restriction on movement of potential infection vectors. SA remains free of Covid, and until we can get our vaccination rate up I'd prefer to have this restriction than a lockdown.