Covid Freak-Out, South Australian Style By James Reed
Being in Victoria, with a brother who deserted mighty Victoria and fled to south Australia, I have always found the ways of the crow eaters, as bizarre as their nick name. Take the recent lockdown where these folks were shut up at only a few hours’ notice so that there was little time to get panic shopping done. Then the lockdown was more intense than even herein Danisistan, once known as Melbourne, with no one hour exercise outside. Yes, even prisoners still get an hour exercise. And the SA police showed that they were ready to match our police going out and fining people who dared to venture out. And, there is a story involving some pizza bar worker who lied about the infection, or something important, making it all a false alarm, according to one shock jock I listened to. But, it was a good test run again for the next level of the New World Order.
“When Steven Marshall fronted a press conference on Friday to give an update on day two of the state’s hard lockdown, his tone was grim. Someone had lied to a contact tracer, he said, which meant the state’s strict lockdown had been unnecessary.
“To say I am fuming about the actions of this individual is an absolute understatement,” the South Australian premier said. “The selfish actions of this individual have put our whole state in a very difficult situation. His actions have affected businesses, individuals, family groups and is completely and utterly unacceptable.”
In Marshall’s eyes the facts were simple: a security guard at Adelaide’s Peppers medi-hotel was infected with Covid-19. They also worked at the Woodville Pizza Bar in the city.
A second worker at another medi-hotel – The Stamford – had also become infected. Marshall said that worker “deliberately” lied, telling contract tracers he had only ordered from the restaurant, when he had actually been working there. This alleged lie led authorities to believe the cluster was much more widespread and more infectious than it really was, leading them to impose the wide-scale lockdown.
From hotel to pizza shop to lockdown: has South Australia learned Victoria's Covid tracing lessons?
Not content with calling out the alleged liar Marshall explained that under the South Australian emergency act “there is no penalty associated with telling lies”.
He added: “It is a male and I can’t go into the specific details of the reasons for their lying but needless to say, the fact we weren’t provided accurate, truthful information has instigated a course of events that, based on the information we were provided, was the right course of action, and we are moving swiftly now to change that, based on what we know now,” he said.
Almost instantly an online mob formed with users taking to the Woodville Pizza restaurants Facebook page to announce a boycott. Reporters rushed to the Woodville pizza bar store front in Woodville, a post-industrial migrant neighbourhood in Adelaide’s west to set up for their live crosses.
Before long a police car soon arrived to keep a watch over the shopfront.
In some ways it was a convenient out for the state premier and health authorities who were feeling the heat over a decision to outsource security work in the state’s quarantine hotels. Low pay and a failure to regularly test workers had put them at risk and caused what many thought was a second wave.
Ryan Batchelor, executive director of the McKell Institute in Victoria said the framing of the announcement worked to direct blame on an individual worker when there were real systematic issues that needed to be addressed.
“It seemed like the authorities were saying: largely this is the fault of the person who lied to us,” Batchelor said. “The danger here is that this is portrayed as the actions of one person when it actually points to some more systemic issues with the way we work.”
Say leftist newspaper, could it be that there is blame to be placed on BOTH the lying individual and the state government, or doesn’t sociology allow that? Did that occur to them?
https://amp.abc.net.au/article/12908916
“The frightening assertion that South Australia was suffering a virulent strain of coronavirus unseen in Australia was based on a 'disgraceful' lie by an infected pizza bar worker.
Premier Steven Marshall announced the strict lockdown imposed on the state, which was based on the false information, will end three days early on Saturday, with millions of residents immediately let out to exercise.
The revelation came as the Parafield cluster, in Adelaide's northern suburbs, climbed to 25 infections - with three new cases reported on Friday.
Health officials feared a super strain of coronavirus had been unleashed in Adelaide after it was apparently transmitted on a pizza box from an infected worker to a customer.
But suspicious contact tracers have since discovered this was a lie, and that the customer – who also worked at a quarantine hotel - was in fact employed at Woodville Pizza Bar in Adelaide and worked closely with another positive case.
'To say I am fuming about the actions of this individual is an absolute understatement,' Mr Marshall said.”
Never mind about the entire testing issue, which does not get discussed in the Australian scene, maybe even the alternative press, except here, on this happy blog, with all the juiciest information:
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