[ephextom]

Quarantine has been used in all kinds of societies for thousands of years during times of infectious outbreak. It’s described in the Bible, and it was used in the USA during the Spanish Flu. What is the point of quarantine without systems to ensure it is obeyed?

[shirro]

Used in the US and around the world for cholera and typhoid as well. For many years. There are a lot ruins of old quarantine facilities and several islands around New York were used for the purpose.

People don't understand how isolated some states of Australia are, even from the other states. Some parts of this country were barely touched by covid. It was just about the least dystopian life you could imagine apart from driving through the Mad Max landscape.

[hilbert42]

Exactly, for the life of me I cannot understand why some people just don't understand that. It's tragic really because many people have lost their lives through the bloodyminded actions of those who who've callous regard for others.

[throwawayfear]

Your post could word for word be used for the opposite narrative too. Many people have lost their lives through the bloodyminded actions of those clamoring for a totalitarian regime and its systems of enslavement.

[ephextom]

Nobody is using it for the opposite narrative. Quarantine has nothing to do with enslavement. You’re being histrionic, but also inconsistent when worrying about loss of life through totalitarianism but not loss of life through preventable illness. You’ve said elsewhere that the pandemic is not deadly enough to justify the actions we’re seeing, and I somewhat agree (population-wide lockdowns have been excessive), but hospital systems everywhere, including in Australia, have been pushed to beyond capacity. Australians can accept some limits to their freedoms to keep the medical system functioning. They won’t accept it forever, and regardless of any malicious intentions, governments can’t afford it forever.

[throwawayfear]

You have no power over them if they choose to keep it this way forever. Especially in Australia. What are you going to do to the contrary? And how can you guarantee they won't choose to keep it this way forever?

The quaranting itself is not the enslavement. It's how they are going about it and what kinds of systems they want to build.

[ephextom]

> It's how they are going about it and what kinds of systems they want to build.

You don’t seem to be well informed on how they’re going about it and what kind of systems “they” want to build. Who are “they”? Which of the multiple levels of government, several states and territories and multiple political parties who all have different policies and priorities do you mean? What do you mean by “enslavement”? None of it makes sense, and you’re making giant extrapolations from exaggerated and inaccurate headlines and reports in a media that you probably wouldn’t trust or believe on most other topics.

[tarboreus]

The word quarantine comes from 40 days, though. They weren't indefinite and endless.

[jeeeb]

Good. This isn’t either. This is for 14 days or until you test negative from COVID.

[ephextom]

In that context it was 40 days for each returning ship. Australia’s quarantine is only 14 days for returning travelers.

[throwawayfear]

Those systems will not go away once they are implemented. Power will consolidate. It is a system of enslavement.

[ephextom]

Whatever their intentions, governments can’t sustain these measures forever economically or politically.

[throwawayfear]

Yes they can. Especially in Australia where people don’t have means to defend themselves and are falling for the “vaxed vs unvaxed” narrative. Pit sides against each other and they’ll clamor for the state to protect the peace and establish order. And that it will do with increasingly invasive measures like arresting pregnant women for making anti-lockdown Facebook posts or locking residents of an entire apartment complex in their homes with no one allowed to leave.

Imagine being told in 2018 this would happen a short time later - the government there arresting or locking people in that way. Would you have believed it could happen?

Could you see it becoming worse, particularly if the media narrative about us-them continues until one side gets dehumanized?

Why rest in this blind faith about how much they can sustain? When they have already been sustaining this stuff for going on two years with no signs of letting up. If anything it seems to be getting worse per the OP, with even more idiotic systems being built “because of the antivaxers” or whatever convenient justification is peddled by media to divide the people and consolidate power towards the top of the top.

sigh

I don’t want to be right. I want to be WRONG.

[ephextom]

> Imagine being told in 2018 this would happen

Every possible scenario would have been alarming. 50000 deaths and a collapsing hospital system would have been unthinkable too. Australia has chosen to avoid that nightmare, and has chosen a different, also highly undesirable but marginally preferable path.

People are getting whipped up into a frenzy about all this, based on mental models of government and population relations that may apply elsewhere but don’t apply in Australia.

In truth:

- there is heavy pushback on government by the media and population, acceptance of lockdowns is in rapid decline, and governments are being forced to change their polices week by week.

- We don’t have a heavily militarized and hostile relationship between police, military and the population, it has always been egalitarian and cohesive, like pretty much everything else in the country.

- Australia has been ranked in/near the top 10 freest countries in the world for a long time, and little of what has happened during the pandemic would warrant that changing.

[rossy]

> When they have already been sustaining this stuff for going on two years with no signs of letting up.

For what it's worth (you've revealed in another comment that you're not Australian, so you might not be aware,) in the period between the 2020 lockdown and the delta outbreak this year (approx. October 2020 to June 2021) things had almost returned to normal. I was back at work and at sport. Beaches and shopping centres were packed. State borders were open (a friend went on a camping trip to Queensland.) It was remarkable how quickly things returned to normal once the number of new cases dropped to zero, and it was surreal to watch international news and see that not everyone was able to live like us. This outbreak is more severe, but I have no reason to believe things won't be like that again once case numbers drop.

[hilbert42]

"Facebook posts or locking residents of an entire apartment complex in their homes with no one allowed to leave."

This IS the correct procedure during a disease pandemic. To halt the process of a disease it's been a common and effective practice throughout the centuries and across many countries to isolate those infected along with their close contacts for a period of time until the disease is over/can no longer propagate.

What do you specially find wrong with it and why? Sure it's inconvenient for those involved but it's the least harmful action for everyone - all of society benefits this way.

Clearly you don't know your history or you'd realize it was common practice. For example, until quite recently Sydney had a quarantine station at North Head for well over a century until the Government stupidly shut it down and turned it into a hotel: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Head_Quarantine_Statio...

Clearly, isolating people like this is new to you. Get used to the fact that it's not a new practice and the fact that you'll likely see it again in the future.

The same goes for the vaccinated versus the unvaccinated. Unvaccinated people are threat to the life and health of others so society has the right to isolate them for its own safety. This practice is not new either, it's been practiced ever since vaccination became common practice.

The them and us problem is simply solved by 'them' not being so damned selfish and getting vaccinated like the rest of society.

Please note: the matter of coercion with respect to public health matters is NOT like other forms of government coercion or government surveillance for political reasons. They are two completely separate matters - or they ought to be. If any of these COVID measures are later abused by Government then the citizenry has full rights to object in every way possible. Government has absolutely no right to take advantage of this tragic heath problem and it is incumbent on citizens to ensure that it does not.

[throwawayfear]

* If any of these COVID measures are later abused by Government then the citizenry has full rights to object in every way possible. Government has absolutely no right to take advantage of this tragic heath problem and it is incumbent on citizens to ensure that it does not.*

It is naive to think this way. By then it will be too late. They are building tyrannical systems of enslavement in the name of public health because obviously they wouldn’t openly say they want to enslave you.

Waiting for them to build the systems before you evaluate if they’re abusing their power must be some kind of preemptive Stockholm Syndrome from a citizenry that deep down can sense what is happening but finds itself powerless or too afraid to speak up. And so they just eat their own by failing to be critical and cautiously paranoid at the right time.

Wake up.