The Politician in question here is Daniel Andrews, the Labor Party Premier (that’s their word for Prime Minister) of the State of Victoria, which is home to Melbourne. It has a population of more than 6million, which is larger than Ireland. The population is relevant, because it puts the following figure in context: Yesterday, Victoria had 22 (yes, twenty-two) new cases of Covid 19. Ireland, with a population 25% smaller, had 1,758.
That’s the benefit of Zero Covid.
This, on the other hand, is the downside:
Welcome to Victoria, Australia, where you cannot remove your mask to drink beer outside pic.twitter.com/vXqKvk12Ps
— Stuart 'LDU' Jeffery (@StuartJeffery_6) August 16, 2021
Victoria, incidentally, featured on Gript yesterday, too, when Ben reported on their willingness to go door-to-door and forcibly test people for Covid-19:
The Premier of the Australian state of Victoria has said that authorities “won’t hesitate” to go “door-to-door” to carry out mandatory covid tests on citizens if they deem it necessary, “popular or otherwise.”
The Premier, Daniel Andrews of the Australian Labor Party, made the remarks during a press conference about the country’s newest lockdown.
So, if you are one of those people who thinks NPHET are bad, well. Just be thankful that the Zero Covid people did not get their way. Things can always be worse, and more extreme.
The problem in Australia, by the way, is really very extensive. Their vaccination numbers are disastrously low: Only 21% of the population have received two jabs. That compares to something like 70-80% of the population here in Ireland. Their case rate being low is entirely reliant on the country being run like a police state, with complete crackdowns on the population any time a single case is detected, and almost a complete ban on entering and leaving the country. That’s Zero Covid for you.
But back to the point: This particular measure has everything. It has all the anti-science zealotry of fundamentalism, for one: We know from all the scientific literature that covid is not widely transmitted outdoors, unless you are literally on top of an infected person. Nonetheless, this guy is making it a crime to remove your mask outdoors, even if not another person is within 100 meters of you.
Second, it’s so absurd as to be unworkable: Human beings exist in a rule of three – you can go three minutes without air, three days without water, and three weeks without food. That is to say: People need to drink. As Ireland heads into the Winter, Australia heads into summer. Summer temperatures in Melbourne regularly hit 30 degrees. Banning people from drinking outdoors, you might wager, will pose a much greater threat to health than 25 cases of Covid does.
Third: How the hell do they propose to get out of this? It’s been 18 months, heading for two years now. Zero Covid has actually left Australia more vulnerable – not less – to a devastating wave than the rest of the world. They have many fewer people who have natural immunity than most western countries do. Their policy has become self-fulfilling, in that it is, actually, dangerous to re-open the country to the rest of the world, because in Australia, Covid will find one of the few large populations in the world where there has not been a major wave of the virus.
Imagine that we had adopted this policy in Ireland, for a moment: This is the position in which we would now find ourselves. You might think things are bad here now, but this was the alternative. Those who spent months promoting this alternative in the media, of course, have not been held to account for it. They’re still there, pretending that they were right all along.
They were not.