Coronavirus - Australia
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I think most of you are now being a bit mean about our Governments and how they are handling this ongoing crisis (CRISIS?) - this article makes it pretty clear that they're on top of it:
Plane crazy: my family’s harrowing run-in with paranoid overkill
CAMERON STEWART
AN HOUR AGO APRIL 28, 2021
711 COMMENTSHas Australia lost the plot on COVID-19?
When I was living in the United States last year, watching America’s disastrous response to the coronavirus pandemic, I took some pride in how Australia had taken a tougher approach to largely eradicate the virus.
That was then. The pandemic has now been largely tamed here and yet there has been no sensible adjustment to this victory. The approach of some of our premiers remains one of paranoia and bureaucratic overkill, as if we were India.
Last week, my wife had the misfortune of being on QF778 from Perth to Melbourne, sharing that plane with a man who later tested positive for COVID-19.
Her treatment by Victorian authorities since then has been a dark comedy of errors which betrays the brutal and clumsy COVID-handling regime that is being quietly imposed on ordinary Australians who pose very little threat of spreading the virus.
Once news broke last Friday that a man had tested positive on that same flight from Perth with 257 passengers, my wife immediately went to get a drive-through COVID test and then self-isolated in a spare bedroom with an ensuite in our Melbourne home until we heard more.
We then heard that she and every other passenger on that flight would have to self-isolate for a full 14 days, a catch-all decision which paid no heed to the proximity of the infected passenger to others on that plane.
But what did that mean for myself and our 12-year-old son who also share the house? Were we free to go out into the community? There was no clear guidance on this. My wife tested negative and the next day I also got tested as a precaution.
It was not until Saturday night, three days after the flight and two days after the COVID-positive passenger was discovered that a health official finally called. That official said that both myself and our son were also required to stay at home despite my wife having returned a negative test and having been in ongoing isolation within the house.
This advice was then directly contradicted by two health workers who knocked on our door the next day and said that my son and I were free to move about in the community.
Given these mixed messages, we did not leave the house on Sunday, causing my son to miss his team’s soccer game and for me to cancel a long-planned family gathering.
When a health official finally called again on Sunday night, my wife was told she had two choices: to go to hotel quarantine for the remainder of the 14-day period or to stay at home in self-isolation in a bedroom. But the official then added the kicker that my wife staying home would mean that myself and my son would also have to isolate at home, meaning he would miss almost two weeks of school.
The official told us that the only way that myself and my son could be “released” back into the community was if she went into hotel quarantine and then returned another negative test.
This seemed a heavy-handed response when she was fully self-isolating in a bedroom, had already tested negative (as had I) and when zero COVID cases were emerging from that flight.
My wife felt she had no choice but to go to hotel quarantine to allow our son to attend school for the next two weeks. So a quarantine bus was booked for the next day, Monday.
But on the Monday — as a bus was driving to our home to take her to hotel quarantine — my wife got a call from yet another health official who said that in fact she was allowed to continue self-isolating at home and that myself and our son would be free to leave the house during that time.
So the bus was cancelled. But about an hour later another health official called, apparently a more senior one, and said our latest advice was wrong. She said the rules require that you either choose hotel quarantine or else the whole family must quarantine at home together. So once again, my wife was all but forced to choose hotel quarantine.
By this stage, my wife, who had no symptoms, had gone out to get yet another drive-through COVID test in the hope that this would help “release” my son and I.
Finally the quarantine bus came to collect her at 8.30pm on Monday, a full five days after the flight, when she had already taken two COVID tests and when no other passenger had so far caught the virus off the infected man.
Even Perth has lifted the lockdown associated with that infection. I have seen reports that there are still at least 50 passengers from that Perth flight who have not been tested at all, much less twice. And yet she was still forbidden from isolating in a room in our home without bringing the whole family into similar isolation.
Don’t get me wrong, we are more than happy to do our part to prevent the spread of COVID. But as my son sobbed watching his mother taken away for no good reason — her second two-week hotel quarantine in as many months because we returned home from the US in February — it was hard not to feel that common sense has been lost in Australia’s fight against the virus.
CAMERON STEWART
ASSOCIATE EDITOR -
@voodoo said in Coronavirus - Australia:
Plane crazy: my family’s harrowing run-in with paranoid overkill
CAMERON STEWART
AN HOUR AGO APRIL 28, 2021 -
you just know that on a facebook post of that article, someone would have replied "thank you for keeping us safe Dan"
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After attending the Royal Easter Show on Easter Saturday here in Sydney, I thought for sure if nothing serious appeared within 2 weeks, we were unlikely to see a major event again.
A hundred thousand people all lining up, milling around, tripping over each other and getting pissed off with crowds. Maybe that was just me...
In any case, I've noticed a few people reporting the sniffles (including my kids) as we just stop giving a fuck about social distancing and start interacting again. C'est la vie.
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@nta said in Coronavirus - Australia:
In any case, I've noticed a few people reporting the sniffles (including my kids) as we just stop giving a fuck about social distancing and start interacting again. C'est la vie.
Mate living in the nation's capital that was me some time back. I'm sure if I was in Europe or India I'd have a different opinion. Perhaps.
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@nta @antipodean I'm also in the "don't give a fck about distancing anymore" camp, but I have noticed many people are still wary. For example, on the bus people still won't take a vacant seat next to a stranger. And then there was the old lady that I spotted bumping a large suitcase up a flight of stairs near my work this morning - I walked up to her and motioned that I could help lift her case for her, and she practically recoiled in horror at the thought of me touching her stuff.
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@voodoo said in Coronavirus - Australia:
@nta @antipodean I'm also in the "don't give a fck about distancing anymore" camp, but I have noticed many people are still wary. For example, on the bus people still won't take a vacant seat next to a stranger. And then there was the old lady that I spotted bumping a large suitcase up a flight of stairs near my work this morning - I walked up to her and motioned that I could help lift her case for her, and she practically recoiled in horror at the thought of me touching her stuff.
I fucking hate people so will be using Covid as an excuse for, oh... A good decade or so...
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@voodoo said in Coronavirus - Australia:
@nta @antipodean I'm also in the "don't give a fck about distancing anymore" camp, but I have noticed many people are still wary. For example, on the bus people still won't take a vacant seat next to a stranger. And then there was the old lady that I spotted bumping a large suitcase up a flight of stairs near my work this morning - I walked up to her and motioned that I could help lift her case for her, and she practically recoiled in horror at the thought of me touching her stuff.
As someone who has larger personal space needs than most I am loving social distancing. I don't have to worry about people sitting next to me, and best of all, the weirdos that would stand too close behind me in a queue are no longer doing it. Yay.
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@voodoo said in Coronavirus - Australia:
then there was the old lady that I spotted bumping a large suitcase up a flight of stairs near my work this morning - I walked up to her and motioned that I could help lift her case for her, and she practically recoiled in horror at the thought of me touching her stuff.
That could have just been you?
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@crazy-horse said in Coronavirus - Australia:
@voodoo said in Coronavirus - Australia:
@nta @antipodean I'm also in the "don't give a fck about distancing anymore" camp, but I have noticed many people are still wary. For example, on the bus people still won't take a vacant seat next to a stranger. And then there was the old lady that I spotted bumping a large suitcase up a flight of stairs near my work this morning - I walked up to her and motioned that I could help lift her case for her, and she practically recoiled in horror at the thought of me touching her stuff.
As someone who has larger personal space needs than most I am loving social distancing. I don't have to worry about people sitting next to me, and best of all, the weirdos that would stand too close behind me in a queue are no longer doing it. Yay.
yeah, have to say i was hoping it would just be a habit going forward, its pretty common in scandinavia to give loads of personal space
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@mariner4life said in Coronavirus - Australia:
you just know that on a facebook post of that article, someone would have replied "thank you for keeping us safe Dan"
That statement proudly sponsored by the North Face...
@Donsteppa it’s quite something when you think about the India and Europe situation. Someone asked me yesterday about the Olympics and Japan, and I said they’re only getting about 4000- 5000 cases a day in recent times!
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@snowy said in Coronavirus - Australia:
@voodoo said in Coronavirus - Australia:
then there was the old lady that I spotted bumping a large suitcase up a flight of stairs near my work this morning - I walked up to her and motioned that I could help lift her case for her, and she practically recoiled in horror at the thought of me touching her stuff.
That could have just been you?
Lithe thought did cross my mind. 100kgs of unshaven mess in sports gear approaching from behind, I probably scared the hell out of the old dear 🤣
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@voodoo said in Coronavirus - Australia:
@snowy said in Coronavirus - Australia:
@voodoo said in Coronavirus - Australia:
then there was the old lady that I spotted bumping a large suitcase up a flight of stairs near my work this morning - I walked up to her and motioned that I could help lift her case for her, and she practically recoiled in horror at the thought of me touching her stuff.
That could have just been you?
Lithe thought did cross my mind. 100kgs of unshaven mess in sports gear approaching from behind, I probably scared the hell out of the old dear 🤣
one of those foreign undesirables Peter Dutton warned her about
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Michael Slater says Scott morrison has blood on his hands because he won't let Australians in India return home.
Michael Slater has already escaped India and is in the Maldives until he can return home
Michael Slater is a fucking tool
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@mariner4life said in Coronavirus - Australia:
Michael Slater says Scott morrison has blood on his hands because he won't let Australians in India return home.
Michael Slater has already escaped India and is in the Maldives until he can return home
Michael Slater is a fucking tool
He might be a tool but he's % here. What sort of government decides to threaten Australian citizens with gaol for the crime of returning to Australia?
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@antipodean said in Coronavirus - Australia:
@mariner4life said in Coronavirus - Australia:
Michael Slater says Scott morrison has blood on his hands because he won't let Australians in India return home.
Michael Slater has already escaped India and is in the Maldives until he can return home
Michael Slater is a fucking tool
He might be a tool but he's % here. What sort of government decides to threaten Australian citizens with gaol for the crime of returning to Australia?
yeah nah.
the jail bit is probably fair, but the travel ban is 100% on point. And with people just slipping around the world to find alternative ways home, what is the option?
But my main point is, it's a bit fucking rich for a dude who went to India voluntarily to make money, who left India to go to a tropical resort, to take pot shots at government policy
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@mariner4life said in Coronavirus - Australia:
@antipodean said in Coronavirus - Australia:
@mariner4life said in Coronavirus - Australia:
Michael Slater says Scott morrison has blood on his hands because he won't let Australians in India return home.
Michael Slater has already escaped India and is in the Maldives until he can return home
Michael Slater is a fucking tool
He might be a tool but he's % here. What sort of government decides to threaten Australian citizens with gaol for the crime of returning to Australia?
yeah nah.
the jail bit is probably fair, but the travel ban is 100% on point. And with people just slipping around the world to find alternative ways home, what is the option?
But my main point is, it's a bit fucking rich for a dude who went to India voluntarily to make money, who left India to go to a tropical resort, to take pot shots at government policy
It's a job.
The government decided to prevent people going overseas, then decided to grant exceptions, then decided to make people who had the temerity to travel during what scientifically and mathematically can best be described as a bad flu season pay for their own quarantine. Then arbitrarily decides to implement yet another fucking stupid policy of preventing the same people it let out of the country from returning home. Then it gets pissy to learn others understand about connecting flights and hubs.
This government and the people who support it can go get fucked.