Escape from Victoria? And the Multiculturalism Connection By Brian Simpson

     Will it get like the movie, Escape from New York (1981)? Maybe worse?
  https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8473277/Victoria-records-64-new-cases-coronavirus-residents-brace-local-lockdowns.html?ito=push-notification&ci=20740&si=1326534

“Thousands of Melbourne residents have been ordered back into lockdown from Thursday as Victoria battles a second wave of coronavirus. The state government has re-imposed stay-at-home orders for 36 suburbs in ten postcodes after recording 139 new cases of the deadly virus in the past two days. After just four weeks of freedom, those residents will be banned from leaving their homes except for work and school, food shopping, giving care and daily exercise. Restaurants, gyms, pubs and all other non-essential services in the suburbs must once again close their doors. Affected businesses will be compensated with a government cash grant of $5,000. Residents from the ten postcodes will not be allowed to go on holiday and the government will announce a support package for affected tourism businesses tomorrow. The lockdown will last for four weeks and come into force from 11.59pm on Wednesday. Police will be enforcing the orders with random vehicle checks similar to random breath tests and will dish out on-the-spot fines. Premier Daniel Andrews said the lockdown was 'deeply painful' and 'damaging for businesses' but insisted that it was necessary. 'If we don't take these steps now we will be locking down every postcode,' he said.”

In a new testing blitz across the hotspot suburbs, officials will be knocking on doors and offering people on-the-spot swabs. 'Please, on behalf of every Victorian family, if you, or a family member, get a knock on the door and the offer of a test, please say yes,' Mr Andrews said. During a testing blitz over the weekend, 928 people refused to get tested in Broadmeadows and Keilor Downs alone. Mr Andrews has also asked the Prime Minister to divert all international flights away from Melbourne for two weeks so the city does not have to quarantine returned travellers. The PM has not yet answered his request. Chief Health Officer Brett Sutton confirmed Victoria was suffering a second wave after recording zero cases on 5 June. 'The virus seems to have been snuffed out in early June. There is no evidence of any original virus from February, March, around currently,' he said. Victoria recorded 64 new cases of the virus on Tuesday. The number, down from the 75 reported on Monday, is the state's sixth-worst figure since the pandemic began. On Monday night Prime Minister Scott Morrison spoke to Premier Daniel Andrews and urged him to shut down 'hotspot' suburbs before the outbreak gets worse. The state's Chief Health Officer Brett Sutton said the government was considering 'anything required' to stop the spread.” 

     Andrew Bolt had a good article on this, probing the multiculturalism connection:
  https://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/opinion/andrew-bolt/why-we-need-to-probe-if-tribalism-is-behind-new-coronavirus-spike/news-story/d1611a9e5f7b5191dcbedcb81c104ac3

“Victoria’s coronavirus outbreak exposes the stupidity of that multicultural slogan “diversity makes us stronger”. Oh, really? It’s exactly that diversity — taken to extremes — that’s helped to create this fear of a “second wave”. For eight days, Victoria has had between 13 and 25 new infections a day. The rest of the country combined has had between zero and nine. Other states now treat Victoria as a leper. South Australia is stepping up police guards on its border, and NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian warned businesses “not to interact with citizens from Melbourne”. For this to happen to Victoria would seem bizarre. Didn’t it have the most insanely tough restrictions? Didn’t it ban even fishing, golf and visits to Mum? But check where most new infections are breaking out — in six poor, outer-suburban areas in Melbourne’s north and south-east. In five, more than a third of residents were born overseas, in countries such as India, Sri Lanka, Iraq, China and Vietnam. From what little we’re told by this secretive Labor government, many of the sick are probably from immigrant families, at least one of which had a member work as a guard in a hotel housing travellers in quarantine. That family group, spread over several households in Keilor East, is responsible for 15 of the infections, including a boy who then went to school. Just what kind of families are involved, neither the government nor the Ethnic Communities Council will say. We must rely only on hints to figure what’s really going on. One hint confirms we are fast becoming a nation of tribes, struggling to share even a common language — a lethal problem in an emergency like this.

Victoria’s Health Department has translated coronavirus warnings in 53 languages and advertised in 22 of them, but Health Minister Jenny Mikakos on Wednesday said even this wasn’t enough. “I guess some people are …. not really watching mainstream media. They’re only getting their information in their own language from their own news sources,” she said. Maha Abdo, head of Muslim Women Australia, insists on much simpler messaging from government, maybe using pictures. Doesn’t this demonstrate that Australians are now dangerously disconnected from each other? It’s so bad Victoria Police will now go door to door in these hotspot suburbs to get residents to listen. But it seems there’s not just a language barrier. There may also be a cultural one. Again, we must rely on hints — while also bearing in mind many Anglo-Saxon Australians also flout virus restrictions. Premier Daniel Andrews blamed half the new infections on “principally families, larger families often, making decisions that are not in accordance with the rules”. This wasn’t because the families simply didn’t understand those rules. There had also been “wilful conduct” — deliberate rule-breaking. On Monday, police found 13 people — not necessarily from these families — supposed to be in quarantine who had left home. But tribalism does tend to make us think more of our own than of other “tribes”. That’s not good in any crisis where Australians must make sacrifices for the safety of all.”

     It seems the same observations can also be made about the UK Covid-19 round 2.0 spread:
  https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/06/26/exclusive-half-uks-imported-covid-19-infections-pakistan/

“Half of Britain’s imported coronavirus cases originate from Pakistan, The Telegraph understands, amid calls for tougher quarantine checks on arrivals from "high risk" countries. Data from Public Health England (PHE) shows that 30 cases of coronavirus in people who have travelled from Pakistan since June 4, which is understood to represent half of the incidents of imported infection. More than 65,000 people have travelled to Britain on 190 flights since March 1 from Pakistan, which is reporting 4,000 Covid-19 cases a day, and has seen a new spike in the disease after easing its lockdown measures. Most are thought to have UK passports.”

     And the rest is behind a pay wall, just like multiculturalism.