Covid-1984 Outback Concentration Camps? By James Reed
I saw this at an American site, no doubt there was mention of it in the Australian press, but there you go. Is this concentration camps in the desert where people will be guarded behind razor wire? Let’s look closer and see how wrong I got it:
“Australia has relied on one of the world’s most aggressive quarantine programs to keep the coronavirus at bay. Now, one leader wants to go further by housing returned travelers in Outback camps far from cities as new Covid-19 variants threaten the country’s success.
The premier of Queensland state wants to repurpose camps designed for resources workers as isolation hubs in remote scrubland where temperatures can top 100 degrees Fahrenheit. It follows an outbreak of a highly contagious coronavirus strain at a quarantine hotel in state capital Brisbane, Australia’s third-largest city with a population of about 2.5 million people.
“I think with this new strain, we have to put all options on the table and these are sensible, rational options,” said Annastacia Palaszczuk, who was re-elected as Queensland premier in late October in part due to her centre-left government’s tough measures to contain Covid-19.
The idea of using remote camps illustrates how leaders in places that had crushed the virus are considering more extreme measures to protect people from new variants of the coronavirus, which emerged in the U.K. and South Africa and have since spread to more countries. Currently, travelers returning to Australia are housed in hotels, often close to city airports, for 14 days.
Queensland was on a run of almost four months without a case of local transmission when a cleaner at a quarantine hotel in Brisbane tested positive for the new U.K. variant. More cases followed, and 129 people who were isolating were soon moved to another hotel and had their quarantine extended.
Underpinning the logic of using workers’ camps to house returned travelers is the potential for health authorities to get on top of outbreaks quickly and limit their spread. Other positives include access to fresh air and exercise for those in isolation, officials say.
A disused worker village in the Northern Territory—built in 2012 by Japan’s Inpex Corp. for workers on the Ichthys LNG-export project, but closed in 2018—is already being used for Australians repatriated on flights chartered by the federal government.
“There’s no reason why we couldn’t do something similar here in Queensland or if not around the country,” Ms. Palaszczuk said. She intends to raise it at a meeting with Australia’s prime minister and other state and territory leaders next Friday, while also holding talks separately with camp owners. States can introduce quarantine arrangements without needing approval from the federal government.
However, some lawmakers in other states are opposed to the idea, partly because camps can be far away from a large hospital if people fall seriously ill while in isolation. The old Inpex camp is on the outskirts of the city of Darwin, home to two hospitals. Mining companies worry that using their camps as quarantine sites could threaten relations with nearby communities.
Resource-rich Australia has hundreds of mines and oil-and-gas operations that are typically in remote locations and have nearby camps to accommodate workers that jet in for extended shifts and then fly home. Queensland is one of the world’s biggest producers of coking coal, used to make steel, and is home to three big LNG-export facilities.
Australia has already cut the volume of international arrivals until mid-February and increased testing of travelers, as officials work to better understand how they can stop more-contagious strains from leaking out of quarantine.
The country—which has recorded 909 deaths from Covid-19—has avoided the worst of the pandemic so far, in big part because of strict border controls that mean some citizens are still stranded overseas.
Gladys Berejiklian, premier of New South Wales state, home to Sydney, said she opposed the use of camps as moving returned travelers to the Outback merely shifted the problem from one community to another.”
So, it looks like I got it wrong, not concentration camps, where Dissent Righters are sent, but nice air-conditioned buildings, nothing to worry about. But, Mike Adams does not agree:
“Since when did Australians agree to isolation hundreds of miles in one of the country’s least-hospitable regions? And does she really believe locking away sick people in an isolated quarantine camp is “sensible” and “rational?”
What is going on with our democratic leaders?
Yes, in recent weeks new strains of the virus have been discovered — but that’s what viruses do, they mutate. These new strains, however, are no more deadly than the original strain, so why the excessive, liberty-stealing isolation?
Here’s how they justify it in Australia.
“Underpinning the logic of using workers’ camps to house returned travelers is the potential for health authorities to get on top of outbreaks quickly and limit their spread. Other positives include access to fresh air and exercise for those in isolation, officials say,” the WSJ reports.
Got that? Stealing liberty and limiting freedoms is good for you. Actually, it’s good for those in power, who are never going to subject themselves to similar rural isolation.
They’re too important, you see.
“There’s no reason why we couldn’t do something similar here in Queensland or if not around the country,” Palaszczuk told the WSJ, adding that she’s going to bring up the idea with Prime Minister Scott Morrison and other territorial premiers in the coming days.
Make no mistake, this is not good. Never in the history of modern democracies have citizens endured such a massive assault on their civil liberties. In the U.S., our constitutional rights are not contingent on whether or not there is an outbreak of a viral illness, especially one that is far less deadly than we’ve been led to believe.
Americans — and free citizens everywhere — should be trusted to make their own judgments and decisions about the risks they do or do not want to take. We don’t need a nanny state functionary telling us how to live our lives.”
Covid-1984 has done more to eliminate freedoms that even a nuclear war would do.
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