I was talking to someone earlier this year, originally from England but he had settled down in Australia for a good few years. When the initial lockdown had started, he was unsure whether he ought to go back to England to ride the pandemic out, or stay in Australia. He chose to come back to the UK. He got onto talking about Australia's lockdowns, how everything got shut straight down at the first sign of cases, and just how much harsher & stricter they're being over there. As he talked me through what measures Victoria had been taking, I thought I could hear a sense of dismay in his voice. A country he'd called home for many years turning into this bleak, hellish shithole, anyone would feel the same.
So it really threw me off when the next words out of his mouth were that he wished he had stayed in Australia, "where they're actually taking things seriously". When he'd been describing the lockdown measures, the overtones of horror I'd heard in his voice weren't for how awful things are over there, but because we weren't doing enough here.
Forget the increased number of suicides, rise in mental illness, destruction of small businesses, increase in obesity, high streets looking empty af, massive government borrowing to fund furlough, lack of social contact and proper education effectively ruining a large chunk of children's formative years, increase in domestic violence, elderly dying alone, increased NHS waiting lists which were already doing terribly to begin with anyway, I mean, I could go on for a while, and I still wouldn't have described just how devastating the lockdowns and the government's handling of this pandemic has been for people.
And yet we should have done more, according to this bloke, taken a leaf from Australia's book.
Stay strong, dude. This crazy ride has to come to an end eventually. I just hope we haven't lost too much by that point.
When things kicked off back in March last year we went from "it's only a flu bro" to "ZOMG! Airborne AIDS" in about a week and it's only gotten worse since then.
On Friday the NSW premier, a very unfortunate looking woman, outright said that the current outbreak was showing only a fraction of the case mortality than the earlier outbreaks, which she put down to the vaccines (because of course). Not a single journalist asked the obvious question, why the fuck are we carrying on with ever more ludicrously strict lockdowns then?
Australia was in the lucky position of being able to outright stop all inward travel in 2020 and so we managed to (mostly) eradicate the virus. When the Delta strain, which is 10 times less lethal than the original Wuhan virus, became the predominate variant then was the time to open up. Offer the vaccine to whoever wants it and let nature take it's course. There is zero prospect now of our health system being overwhelmed. There is zero prospect of a mass death event. But we're cursed with politicians who're drunk with power and obsessed with case numbers.
I can predict with 100% certainty how the coming year will play out. By late September , if we reach the magic 80% of over 16's vaccinated, the government will start granting privileges to the jabbed. Interstate travel (not overseas), indoor dining, pubs, cinemas etc. All will be dependent on having a Covid passport. The rest of us will be expected to continue in a state of semi-lockdown. If they don't reach their 80% number they'll put even more draconian restrictions on the non-jabbed, including banning us from shopping centres and the like. We'll also be made to wear masks with the police conducting random stops to scan our QR codes. No jab? No mask? $5000 fine.
Before Christmas they'll start rolling the vaccines out to children. School attendance will be made conditional on vaccines. They'll start off with the over 12's and then move on to primary school kids in the New Year.
In the early New Year it will become obvious that the vaccines aren't working and we'll start to see a summer time outbreak, as in Europe and the US. It will be interesting to see if they try and cover this up or not, but it will be impossible to hide. They'll blame the unvaccinated and start rolling out the booster jabs, but I think by then we'll be dealing with yet another variant which has completely escaped the vaccines, and so it will be double jabbing with a new mRNA vaccine or else you will lose your passport privileges. I would normally think that most people would wake the fuck up at that point, but Australia, so maybe not.
The state of Emergency laws, which are supposed to be used for a few days at a time to deal with things like bush fires and floods, have been ongoing for 18 months and there's no prospect of them being lifted. I like in a country where the rule of law has been suspended. As long as the magic words "health order" are slapped on a politician's pronouncements then it becomes the de facto law of the land. No vote, no debate in parliament. I can't see them wanting to give that up in a hurry.
The only thing that will stop this insanity is massive civil unrest. Up to now the people have been placated with free gibs and it's noticeable that the unrest during these lockdowns is far more violent and for sure a lot of people are desperate. The government ran a massive wage subsidy program from March 2020-21 now people are being made to apply for 'disaster payments' which are being strictly rationed. Small business is fucked, many business owners squandered their life savings to keep themselves going with the prospect that things would be back to normal by now (ha!). Even the housing market is beginning to tank. Keeping this bullshit going during an economic downturn is not going to work out well for them.
