Inside Australia's Covid Internment Camp
unherd.com
unherd.com
Our response to the pandemic deserves criticism. I think this person misjudges community expectations quite severely. The NT has some of the most vulnerable people, a large aboriginal population with significant co-morbidities. If C19 got into the wider community in the NT, which is per-capita under-funded and lacks significant healthcare investments of the southern states, it would be a disaster.
Would home quarantine have worked? Probably. I might add that based on this writing, I would have seriously questioned this individuals personal commitment to stick to the obligations of home quarantine, which I know is judgemental of me.
Howard Springs pre-dates the pandemic: An accommodation facility named Manigurr-ma Village was built at Howard Springs in 2012 by Japanese energy company Inpex to accommodate up to 3500 temporary fly-in fly-out construction workers on the Ichthys LNG gas plant.[10] The facility was closed and abandoned in 2018.
It consists of demountables, and has had post-pandemic modifications such as fencing, segregation of areas within the complex, additional health facilities. I do not imagine it is a nice place to be overall (although, for the refugees locked up in detention by Australia for over 8 years, it might be heaven by comparison with their experiences)
I don't like the current federal government, I didn't vote for them and I think they are morally bankcrupt. Howard Springs is not the evidence, or related to that.
>Would home quarantine have worked? Probably. I might add that based on this writing, I would have seriously questioned this individuals personal commitment to stick to the obligations of home quarantine, which I know is judgemental of me.
Mere suspicion is not grounds to imprison someone for 14 days.
"Being held on a health order" -- this is plain question-begging. It's just a restatement of what happened, not a justification.
I'm astounded that people don't see the problem with this. It's tyrannical. The government took her from her home and imprisoned her, for no crime and with no evidence she was a threat to anyone.
We're racist. We had a white Australia policy, we excluded people on race and language for decades, we had to vote in 1968 to give citizenship to aborigines, our press was famously anti-asian beyond the Hearst yellow press. You can't teach us about slavery, we did it too. (Kanaka blackbirding)
We are partially in denial about our racist history, and detention of refugees. That's a far bigger problem than a public health emergency temporary constraint on civil liberties.
40% of Australians are migrants, or second generation of migrants, many from oppressive regimes and war. Many of us know people badly affected by quarantine rules. They are also unquestionably popular, and backed by more people than oppose them. There are many godwins-law comparison risks in camps, but we generally avoid them because they have WiFi and are shared by voluntary residents as well as recalcitrant subject to health law controls. A tiny number of people have had to stay beyond 14 days because of reinfection risks.
We don't have lateral flow tests in widespread use. It is arguably a mistake, home quarantine should be fine.
To repeat what I said above: I hate this government but these camps are not why, and very very few Australians view these camps as an assault on civil liberties in the wide. The performance demonstrations are not widely supported any more than the proud boys are in the USA.
We are a literate, actively voting (its, mandatory voting with low bar to invalid ballot if you want) and we're not sheep, although Australians are more conformist than the popular image of sweary rebels.
If you want to understand Australian attitudes to our history find "Babakiueria" (1986) on video, and then also look for recent lamb marketing videos (seriously: hunt 'australia day lamb ad 2021')
Under the banner of "For Our Safety" the allies went to war on flimsy pretext and killed hundreds of thousands.
These health orders prevent the introduction of COVID into one of the poorest areas with least access to healthcare in the western world and so most of the "subjucators" appear happy enough to lock down and/or isolate if required.
Likewise you can dismiss anyone's protest about anything if you frame their position as merely "not wanting to do what they were told".
She was not flying in from somewhere needing to quarantine. She was a resident, who happened to be a close contact of a positive case. That is not grounds for being taken away in a van for 14 days quarantine.
The health directive should have been as follows: "Hello, you've been identified as a close contact of -- and are required to immediately get tested and self-isolate until you receive a positive result".
That's it. No need to ask questions about what she's done recently, just tell her to get tested and call back next day if she hasn't done it. Easy. No need to drag people away in unmarked vans.