Amusing given the artificially high airplane prices right now. For example, if you need to make an emergency trip from SFO to Melbourne, that will run you about $10,000 right now.
Normally that flight would be about $4,000 for a next day ticket.
Normally that flight would be about $4,000 for a next day ticket.
The government is very serious about discouraging international travel (and returning) if you’re poor.
https://www.executivetraveller.com/news/australia-to-limit-i...
https://www.pm.gov.au/media/national-cabinet-7aug2020
Would make more sense to just have an arrival tax, but why do that when you can gift the airlines their own oligopoly instead.
Now, why the Federal Government isn't using its powers to set up quarantine centres on Christmas Island and other appropriate locations is a better question to be asking. They were pretty happy to do it at the beginning of the pandemic when they were quarantining people coming from China.
We have immediate family there (sister in law) and are unable to visit. Heck we even would go to quarantine for 14 days in order to see them afterwards for a couple of weeks and/or some longer travels.
The current situation where ~25'000 Australians are still unable to get back home makes no sense to me. Even leaving Australia for personal travel is not really possible at this time due to the restrictions in place.
Given the entirety of the current outbreak has been traced back to quarantine failures, this is somewhat understandable.
As you noted both quarantine and testing is imperfect. I have no desire to open the doors and have a repeat of Iceland or Victoria writ large. Yes, I'm disappointed at not seeing overseas friends and family for (at least) the next year or two. But that seems like a relatively small price to pay for the relative quiet, healthy, functioning society here.
Possibly having wait until critical illness or death before I am able to visit and help with an exemption on compassionate grounds does not reflect a healthy and functioning society in my opinion. It might be quiet though.
In the rest of the world, we think that in a healthy society, we as individuals sometimes have to sacrifice for the greater good of everyone. In the United States, self-sacrifice is only good if you die killing others in the "service" of your country.
The rest of us see ideas like quarantine not as the sign of a unhealthy and dysfunctional society but proof that we can work together to beat even a fearsome, non-human enemy like a pandemic.
And now these two contrasting ideas are being tested by COVID-19. We'll see in the end whose idea works better - your individualistic views, or our cooperative ones.
Visiting people shouldn't be anyone's priority, right now! Of course they're denying such an optional activity.
Why?! Why does that disturb you? What disturbs the rest of us is watching America refusing to believe in basic medical facts!@
- everyone working at the airport and on the flight
- everyone else on the flight over
- people in the hospital if you get sick while quarantining
And that’s even if people are obeying the quarantine. Which they often don’t.
All that for a social visit? Why?
This could be solveable with a negative test and few days of quarantine pre-travel. Some countries are indeed looking at that.
> All that for a social visit? Why?
How long would you want to _not_ visit your immediate family members? What's your personal threshold?
People sometimes manage not seeing their actual immediate families like children and spouses for a year (for example military). It’s only been six months so far. Can people genuinely not go without seeing their siblings in-law for everyone’s sake?
Australia, on the other hand, is still in Covid elimination mode. I know that Perth right now is only letting in 75 people a day, and I can imagine you're paying for a lot of empty seats on a long range liner.
I'm the case of Perth, it seems the one flight in per day is coming from Singapore. Therefore in my case it would be a matter of getting there first, which is a bit cheaper. Still, factor in the cost of quarantine and you're back to 10 grand. Unfortunately won't be making it back for Christmas this year :(
We had a trip back to Perth penciled in for September this year but as you can imagine thats been put on a somewhat indefinite hold...