Aussie Military Trucks Transfer Covid Patients To Quarantine Camp

https://gript.ie/aussie-military-trucks-transfer-covid-patients-to-quarantine-camp/
Chief Minister of Australia’s Northern Territory, Michael Gunner, has said that Covid-positive patients and their close contacts are being transferred by military trucks to a remote quarantine camp following an outbreak of the virus.

The comments come after an outbreak of 2 new Covid cases in the town of Katherine in Australia’s Northern territory. One 33-year-old mother and one 67-year-old man tested positive for the virus, and both must now enter quarantine by law.

 

Just a little background.

The Northern Territory (which acts jurisdictionally like a State but historically isn't) has been very successful through Covid19 times in managing the Pandemic and keeping the numbers way down. One of the reasons for this is that they have a much higher percentage of first nations peoples than any other state, and they have as a group been understood to be very high risk.

Howard Springs is just outside Darwin (30 KM), and given it's reasonable proximity to the International Airport, it was recently upgraded as a quarantine facility. Some if the advantages in this is that it provides separate cabins with separate air-conditioning units, which has resolved many of the ventilation problems found in hotel quarantine. It is not an architectural masterpiece, however it is clean, functional, three meals a day and has free wifi and free to air television.

Katherine is about 300 KM from Darwin, is a town of about 6,500 people, based around mining, cattle, farming, and defence personnel. Indeed take away the defence personnel and their families and the population will be more like 1,000. There are four traditional aboriginal groupings in the area, and their vulnerability is high. Naturally the medical facilities in a town this size are limited.

As we are phasing out quarantine for returning fully vaccinated and tested overseas travellers. Howard Springs as a result is currently under-utilised and it seems a reasonable use of the resource that has been repurposed with Covid19 specifically in mind. Using military is of course the easiest available resource in Katherine for the 300 KM trip.

Gript have used a Pixabay Photo, and when you look at the image there you realise that there are many cobwebs, and the disrepair of the vehicle suggests that it is not a currently serving Australian Defence Vehicle. Australian Defence Personnel have a significant track record in helping in all manner of humanitarian and emergency situations, including bush fires, floods, and other things, and have been deployed for various purposes through the pandemic.

Sadly one of the problems with being highly successful in keeping the virus at bay seems to have led to a complacency in vaccination. States were we have seen outbreaks have become our states with the highest vaccination rates.

Contrary to the recently often portrayed view of Australia, we are a largely free society, with a high degree of mobility and good social cohesion. The article is largely correct, but misleading.

 

Most Americans would find the Australian approach intolerable. (Patrick Henry meant it when he said “Give me liberty, or give me death!”) But, if that’s the approach Australians want and approve, then we (Americans) must accept it as an expression of liberty, rather than an abridgment of it.

 

Those of us who are not Americans find the American attitude towards liberty rather strange. It seems to us to be a case of 'I'm alright Jack'. It looks to an outsider like an American only thinks of her/his liberty and shows no concern for others. I think you would find in other societies that people will not think only of themselves but of the community and what actions they can take to protect the community. I know I may be misrepresenting Americans. However, it is what comes across to those of us outside the USA. I think your comments perpetuate that impression.

 

I'm glad they have internet and tv. I'd read that the people held there were not allowed to bring any entertainment items or toys.

Cooking utensils and equipment are forbidden also, but meals are left on the ground outside their doors three times a day, as you say. People are not allowed to leave their assigned personal space without permission, if what I'd read is correct.

As @Invictus says, most US citizens would not be amenable to being carted off (like it or not) by the authorities to a camp and made to stay there for whatever length of time it took. It makes me think of a prison minus the prison bars. (Or have they by chance built a high fence around the Howard Springs camp?)

I suspect that when the Germans first began carting the Jews off to the internment camps, the unfortunate Jews may have initially been told that it was temporary and for their own good. Americans, having fought to free those Jews from the camps, have a certain amount of healthy skepticism (and indeed an aversion) of such camps. (Why the Brits don't all share such feelings is a puzzle to me!)

The only sort of camp I want to be in is one that I can drive an RV into, cook my own meals at, and decide my own departure date from.

 

I finally looked up that idiom, since we Americans never hear the phrase spoken on this side of the pond (that I'm aware of).

I'm all right, Jack
The notion of self-centered complacency, i.e., of being satisfied or happy with one's circumstances, and thus unconcerned with anyone else's. Often used as a modifier before a noun, though typically not hyphenated. Primarily heard in UK. (Example: ) What's most interesting is that people who get supplementary income from the government are more likely to have an "I'm all right, Jack" attitude about welfare, tending to oppose broadening the scope to include others who earn less money each week, or none at all.​

It is interesting that a charge of selfishness would be leveled at the very people who counsel against the sort of complacency that would allow the rounding up and detention of innocent human beings at the diktak of some government officials, when those who so counsel are willing to fight (and quite often die) to protect those innocents from having their freedom, human rights, and dignity stripped from them.

Not all, but far too many, people who advocate in favor of the government assuming and exercising more control over its people actually do this for selfish reasons even while they claim altruism. When they say, "it's for the good of all," what many of them really think (deep down, if they're perfectly honest) is, "in the long run I think it will be good for me." The imagined or perceived 'collective good' is just a side benefit and a means of justifying their personal desires.

 

I’m afraid you’ve misjudged me.

 

Something, of course, no would could ever accuse the US federal government of doing!

 

I was generally judging Americans as a group rather than you personally.

 

"I think people should be separated from their loved ones and sent to remote camps for their own safety."

 

Does that make it better?

 

I knew you or someone would bring that up. And I agree, there's no doubt that the US government's hands are not clean. Not every wrong is successfully righted or prevented.

BTW, is Australia at war with any other nation right now, the way the US was when it did what it did? See, there is a bit of a difference.

 

You are welcome to argue that Americans are uniquely self-centered relative to citizens of the other advanced democracies. The available data in areas like charitable giving do not support that.
https://theconversation.com/amp/ame...pandemic-job-losses-and-racial-justice-161489
https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/most-charitable-countries
The point of my original comment was to remind my fellow Americans here that liberty in the Anglo-American tradition is understood as ‘rule with consent’, not - as in the French revolutionary tradition - ‘rule in accordance with abstract ideals’. Therefore criticisms of the Australian approach by Americans as a form of rights-infringement is wide of the mark. By the some token, non-U.S. Anglophone criticisms of U.S. criticisms of lockdowns (remember we actually did those here, too) are also wide of the mark, and frankly are little more than caricatures. We knew the high rates of unemployment, business failures, poverty, mental health crises, suicides, etc., that would - and did - result from lockdowns. The critics did the math and concluded it didn’t make sense. Majority opinion ultimately came around to the same view. Right or wrong, it was a civically-minded critique, rooted in answering the question of what would cause the lost societal harm.

In other words:

• Americans as a whole are not more concerned about liberty than citizens of other advanced democracies; and
• Citizens of other advanced democracies as a whole are not more civically-minded than Americans.

 

Probably quite true, and more true than I like to think. "As a whole" being the key phrase there, for they are mixed, about half-and-half.

 

I think this is basically true. The gift of the Statue of Liberty from the people of France to the United States bears some testament to that. I think that there is some nuance between the idea of liberty as a personal right and liberty as a characteristic of the society. I think this plays differently in different jurisdictions, in part due to history. European habitation of the USA began as free settlers, and in Australia began as a penal colony. I am very fond of Barrington's Prologue (he was convict of the 1st fleet), which has a unique place in Australian history:

True patriots we for be it understood
We left out country for our country's good.​

Some Americans deliver us a world view that is often Americentric, and I recall being told most assuredly in another place that Richard Niebuhr's book was 'The Kingdom of God is America' when I have quoted the title 'The Kingdom of God in America'. America has had an economic world dominance for most of the 20th Century. Australia has a population about 7% of the USA. We have none the less developed our own national ideal, and character - unlike any other - and where Americans speak of liberty more loudly, we will speak of independence, as we care not to be a vassal state of either England or America, yet we have borrowed from both of them.

One of the things all three have is the ability to make choices from a field of fools for who will lead us.

Put not your trust in Princes, nor
in the sons of men who cannot save. ​

 

By “as a whole” I meant that it is the rule rather than the exception. Anecdotally, from my own experience, I would say that the vast majority of Republicans, Democrats, and Independents all evidence a high degree of civic-mindedness. Those who do not are the outliers. There are substantial differences, to be sure, but I don’t see selfishness vs. civic-mindedness as one of them.

 

It was neither better nor worse. It was simply an observation for which I have not seen any objective refutation.

 

Can you name the wars to which you were referring?

In a way Australia is at war, as a more countries. However, this war is against any enemy it is not easy to spot and who it is very difficult to fight against.

 

I don't think the first article has any relevance. It says what Americans gave but makes no comparison to what amounts the populations of other countries gave. As for the second article I'd be interested to know how they calculated the three areas they measured. What seems to have lowered the UK's overall score is the volunteer rate. I'm surprised it is so low. What also makes me wonder at how the data were classified in Myanmar coming second with a high rate of people making donations. It cannot take into account the actual amounts donated. Myanmar is a very poor country so I cannot see large sums being donated.

I still get the impression from what many of you Americans write of this forum that one's own personal liberty is given a much greater value than considering the needs of the wider community. This thread seems to be a good example. Americans on it are saying they view their personal liberty to be much higher than taking a course of action that may prevent the spread of COVID-19 to others.

I think it wrong to say that Americans are more concerned about liberty than citizens of other advanced democracies. Just look at what is happening in the Netherlands. On Sunday the Swiss, who have much greater control over how they are governed than most, are voting in a referendum about reducing COVID-19 restrictions. The French are very quick to protest if they don't lik something their government proposes. Living in the UK I feel no great infringement on my liberties.

 

That kind of bigotry isn't worthy of refutation. I'll pray that God opens your heat and mind.