Police harass citizens for the crime of taking a rest on a park bench while on their 1 hour of allowed outside time per day. I have friends who have been unable to leave the country to see dying parents. I have had friends unable to travel interstate to see their dying parents. My own grandmother died in our lockdown so the last 12 months of her life were spent locked in her own home.
This is not a successful strategy, and anybody reading Australia's low deaths and case numbers need to realise this. We have myopic politicians who are suffering from an obsession with a particular metric, neglecting everything else enabled by a population of unthinking zealots who genuinely believe a single death is a policy failure.
Locking down this severely is neither clever nor demonstrates a particularly high level of consideration. It is the most blunt and basic response to the virus and it's only possible in a country of docile livestock who are content to cede every right if the person they're ceding it to promises it will make them safer from a virus, or in the case of these new national 'security' measures pedophiles or terrorists.
That sounds horrendous but honestly little different to what we went through in the UK at various points in the last year and a half, and the death rates are very low in comparison.
I’m sorry for your loss.
Im somewhat neutral on most of Australia's restrictions: my opinion is that theyre unnecessarily draconian, and that some of them are not in accordance with pretty well-established science (1 hour of outdoor time is ludicrous).
But this is a relatively low-confidence belief, as I don't have a strong rebuttal to those championing the minimal-Covid-until-vaccinated strategy and its relative success. I wouldn't pick the same spot on the freedom/safety spectrum, but I have no basis for claiming those who do are "wrong".
But how on earth do the restriction apologists justify forbidding _leaving the country_? It has, by definition, zero safety justification. Plus, forbidding people yo leave a country is quite reasonably considered a violation of international human rights law. With respect to this specific policy, what on earth are policymakers thinking?
I guess no-one had given up their civil rights in East Germany, or the Soviet Union then either.
In states that have covid under control, that means filling out a form stating you're not sick. Rather sensible requirement during a pandemic
The banning of country exit visas is far far more controversial and doesn't have wide spread support. It seems okay as a sensible precaution at the start of the pandemic in order to ensure quarantine places were available for people who want to return to Australia. The fact that it's gone on so long without any real effort to find a better solution is poor government.
Border controls in Australia, are widely popular. Much like in the US.
The border controls will be removed once the country reaches a steady state of vaccination levels and things are as back to normal as they will get. All other controls have been removed immediately once they were no longer required.
This mass surveillance is far more concerning, and people constantly talking about temporary quarantine controls are muddying the waters of an important topic.
the Nazi treatment of Jews was also widely popular among the Germans at that time.
That seems like a massive hyperbole.
In WA, there are no lockdowns or any real coronavirus restrictions once you're in. Looks good to me.
Might want to compare those death rates too.