Aussie Military Trucks Transfer Covid Patients To Quarantine Camp

During WWII some people of German and Japanese descent were taken to detention camps due to national security concerns. It was feared that they might turn on the citizenry, take up arms in allegiance to their homelands, and fight. I find it regrettable that the US succumbed to the fear motivation and overreacted, penning up good, honest people for years when they'd given no genuine cause for recrimination or suspicion.

A virus is not an enemy combatant except in a loose sense of the word "enemy," and in that sense hunger and poverty are enemies as well, but these are not the sort of enemies for which we lock up people who've done nothing wrong. Self-quarantine would be a suitable and less severe remedy.

Moving people into a camp against their will may be viewed by some as an expression of the majority's will (democracy at work). However, the law is supposed to protect minorities from the unhindered will of the majority at times like these. The majority is being selfish when they tell the minority, 'You must go where we tell you to go because you must protect us;' that sort of attitude is just and fair when dealing with soldiers (who take an oath to follow orders) or with criminals (after being given due process, tried, and convicted), but not when dealing with innocent parties in the general public.

 

Americans as individuals... indeed, all people as individuals... are (or should be) perfectly justified in placing personal liberty above the common good. For it is that personal liberty which enables the individual to evaluate information and then choose what personal actions, if any, are appropriate to take to meet the needs of the wider community. It is essential that man have free will to do this, or else he is little more than an ant in an anthill or a worker bee in a hive; his life is worth little more than what it lends to the good of the collective. Without free will, man cannot be good, because he cannot choose to do good, nor can he sift through information to discern what actions truly are 'good' (there are many who would deceive us concerning what is good and what is evil).

God set the example for us when He gave us free will to choose whom we will serve. It certainly would have been 'for the good of all' if every human were forced to comply with perfect obedience, would it not? There would never be any wars, any thefts, any jealousy or greed or envy or hatred. And yet, God did not make man to be His automaton. Only man tries to make automatons of other men, usually for self-serving purposes, and usually dressed up in the fine, flowery language of "love, compassion, and the common good."

 

The first article absolutely has relevance. It highlights that charitable giving in the U.S. not only increased during the pandemic, it actually accelerated. The second article compares charitable giving in the U.S. to other countries. The two articles are meant to be read as part of one larger argument. I didn’t think it was necessary to spell that out, but there it is. The U.S. has been the world’s leader in philanthropy for decades. That shouldn’t be news to anybody here.

Your reply can basically be re-worded as “the facts just don’t matter.” I also fail to see why (methodologically) favoring individual liberty over the needs of the community is necessarily a bad thing. After all, a community is just a collection of individuals, not a separate thing unto itself. Communities don’t have “needs” or “rights” separate from the individuals that comprise them. What’s good for the individual as such should also benefit the community as a whole. That perspective is not uniquely American, and is in fact best stated, each in their own way, by your own Adam Smith and J.S. Mill. The reason we should be concerned about communities is because changes in communities affect the individuals within them. The notion that Americans don’t take communities and what economists call ‘externalities’ seriously because of our focus on individual liberty, is patent nonsense. The whole point of American opposition to the lockdowns we imposed here was the profound and irreparable social harm they would - and indisputably did - cause.

 

I agree with this in principle and am sympathetic to the point you’re making. However, Australia is a representative system like ours, i.e., lockdown/quarantine policy wasn’t determined via referendum. Australia also, like the U.S. and unlike the mother country, is both federal and strongly bicameral - “strongly” is being used here in a technical sense to indicate that the powers of the two Houses of Parliament are roughly equal. What this means is that political power in Australia is decentralized, as it is here in the U.S., and overlapping majorities are required to get any legislation passed (at least at the federal level), since the Senate and the Australian House of Representatives are elected via different methods: the former by proportional representation, and the latter by first-past-the-post (which is what the U.S., the U.K., Canada, and India also use for elections to the lower House). So although the electoral method is majoritarian in the case of the lower House, the structure of the system, and the legislative process, have strongly counter-majoritarian features that act as procedural and institutional bulwarks against infringement of minority rights by overzealous majorities (or even overzealous minorities who nevertheless are able to form governments). If we were talking about the UK, that’s different. Nothing really prevents the UK government from running roughshod over the rights of a minority (e.g., Catholics - in the old days…today, gun owners…). Australia is not the UK.

 

A note of correction here. This has not been established. The move was mandated by a Public Health Order in the Northern Territory. Whilst that does not mean that the people were invited to consider having a holiday elsewhere, the is NO suggestion that the people moved in fact objected to being moved, and most likely people accepted it was for their protection, and for the protection of their communities. Given that we are taking about First Nations Peoples, it is about protecting the most vulnerable.

No argument from me here, and indeed that is exactly what the Public Health Order set about achieving.

Health is essentially a States area of responsibility in Australia, except since the States conceded taxation to the Commonwealth, in order to expedite financing for the war effort. The States quickly found that it was not going to be easy to get Tax back from the National Government, however the Federal Government shoulders to bulk of Health Funding. It is one of the really confusing things about our system, that the States who have the responsibility to spend the money have to go and negotiate with the Federal Government to get it.

 

I shall return the favour and pray for you. I will pray that your mind is open to properly reading posts and not making knee jerk reactions.

 

From what you said about being at war I thought you were referring to some more recent period. The US federal government has certainly done many things that you claim not to like much more recently than WWII.

Therein lies the problem: self-quarantine. What is supposed to happen if a sufficient proportion of a population will not freely choose to take recommended measures? Is a government to say oh dear the populace is not willing to protect itself but what can you do? Alternatively, should it take some measures to help reduce the spread of the pathogen, limit the incidence of the disease, protect society's more vulnerable members and prevent healthcare services being overwhelmed?

 

Why do only these two extreme options have to exist? Is there no possible middle grounds?

You do not have perfect freedom to do exactly as you choose. If we all did then we would have anarchy. I presume you obey speed limits and other traffic regulations. If we all do that driving is much safer for everybody. Sometimes governments have to intervene to protect people if they will not act themselves. Many of the arguments I have heard against self-isolating, wearing face coverings, observing social distancing, not having vaccines are quite clearly because of lack of knowledge of the science. I understand that. I am not being patronising when I say most people don't understand the science. it is a simple fact. Science is far more complex than people often realise. If the science were explained to them I can imagine most people's eyes glazing over. The alternatives are, whilst lacking in scientific evidence, all too plain and easy to understand. Therefore, many opt for the easy explanation rather than the scientific one. If this is leading to large proportions of a population making decisions that are not going to help end the Pandemic governments sometimes have to step in.

 

I am ending my involvement with this thread and with you. Your answer bears no resemblance to what I said. It seems to me Americans can be anti-whoever but nobody must ever say anything that is not positive about the United States of America.

If you want to take the time to type a reply to this post that is your choice. I would like you to know that I will not see it.

 

Absolutely, there are differences and gradations of infringements upon liberty. Speed limit requirements are a very minor infringement, and the penalty for a civil infraction of speeding (a fine) is appropriately minor. On the other end of the spectrum, if we have people who are incarcerated for serious offenses like rape and murder. If we have folks who have done no wrong being carted off and held against their will, this is a very great infringement for very little justification in the traditional sense of human rights and due process of law.

However, if (as @Botolph states) the people are truly amenable to being carted off and held, perhaps it can be said that their rights are not being infringed. Personally I would not be amenable in such a situation, yet I suspect that I would be carted off against my will anyway; who is to say whether all of these people being taken to the camp are doing so voluntarily?

 

Maybe this is just stoking more flames in the fire - but historically the Australian public prefer to lock people up in camps offshore with poor sanitation and unsatisfactory shelter from the elements, sometimes for decades. When viewed in that context, our current quarantine facilities are really a marked improvement for individual liberty and autonomy.

 

Rights and Responsibilities. In Australia our citizens have access to health care, and it would be nice to say that it was uniform and universal, and perhaps that is an equity goal, however people living in a city of 5 million people are likely to have better access to better health care than people living in a community of 5 thousand people. Much health care is funded by government, some by a system of private health care, and some people just pay for it.

If first nations people are more at risk of serious disease and/or death from Covid19, as seems to be the case, then protecting the community does seem important. In this case the infected people, were taken into health care and appropriately cared for, and the close contacts, taken into quarantine, much closer to high grade health care, which protects both them and their community.

I can tell you that none of the people were transported to Howard Springs voluntarily, but under a mandatory Public Health Order. And I clearly stated that it was not an invitation trip for any of them. We don't live in a perfect world, sometimes we have to choose the least bad solution, seeking the greatest good for the greatest number. If people accept and understand the reasoning for the Public Health Order, they are most likely willing to comply, and that is quite different from doing so voluntarily.

If I had the virus, or had been exposed and so potentially had the virus, would I prefer to be quarantined, or live in community and infect others?

 

Of course in the 1780's we were the offshore camp with poor sanitation and unsatisfactory shelter from the elements!

Australia's treatment of refugees has been appalling in my view. We have the unusual benefit of a home that is girt by sea. Off-shore detention of Asylum Seekers has been a fiasco. On-shore detention has been no better. The cost of proving these facilities has been astronomic, and simply outsourcing the services has been absolutely counterproductive. The outrageous and undue delays in Asylum Seeker processing has been a real abuse of human rights. And I am not saying that Australia does not have the right to screen and disallow access to some. The Lindt Café Siege was perpetrated by someone who came to our shores this way. There is a difference between someone fleeing persecution and someone fleeing prosecution, however one the ground it can be hard to tell the difference.

In a world with 60 million refugees Asylum Seekers and IDP's (Internally displaced people) we need to find some better solutions.

 

Protests in Melbourne over the weekend.

 

That's absolutely correct Rexlion and look how they took away Typhoid Mary's liberties a century ago. What would you have done in her case Rexlion?

 

Thanks for sharing. Victoria is our 2nd largest State by population. Comparing them with New South Wales, our largest State is interesting.

The message delivered in NSW has been largely 'we are all in this together, let's get this job done, this is what we need to do and why'.
The message delivered in Victoria has been largely 'you will do this, you will comply, ...'

Victoria has had 120,000 cases and 1322 deaths, and NSW has had 81,355 cases and 625 deaths.

The Premier of Victoria is bringing before the Parliament of Victoria legislation to grant him more powers in terms of declared pandemics, and declaring pandemics. This seems to have earned him the nickname 'dictator dan'. I think that it is a little misleading to suggest that this is a protest against vaccination, but rather an amalgamation of those opposed to vaccination, those who are opposed to vaccination being mandatory, those who are frustrated to be in the city that has the longest time in lockdown on the planet, those who are opposed to the new laws before the parliament, and those who would care to ditch the dictator.

The issues of Covid19 did get a little out of hand in Melbourne due to mismanagement of the Hotel Quarantine program. A decision was taken to use private security personnel to manage the program, and there seems to have been some poor staff selection or training, and it seems numbers of them took the guests out to various venues, and apparently did not realise the having sex with people in quarantine would be a breach of their professional role. A three month enquiry into the breach was able to determine the nine minute interval in which the decision was taken, the room in which the decision was taken, the people who were in the room when the decision was taken, but unable to determine who made the decision.

This of course is entirely unrelated to the topic in this thread, which has to do with the Northern Territory. The Northern Territory is our smallest by Population (non)-State. they have had 1,156 cases and no deaths. Most of those cases have been at Howard Springs when it was used as a quarantine facility for returning residents from overseas.

 

Good question. Mary Mallon had plenty of reason to notice that people became ill everywhere she worked, and the fact that in each instance she would immediately leave with no forwarding address and obtain employment elsewhere testifies to her suspicions (at the least). Yet she continued to behave the same way for years, in denial of the evidence, because she needed the work to survive. One could conclude that she was acting negligently at least, and perhaps willfully, in causing bodily harm to others for a lengthy period of time.

The current situation is demonstrably very different:

• the involuntarily encamped person has acted neither willfully nor negligently to cause bodily harm, and
  
• the person has not been (nor will be) spreading the contagion for many years, and
  
• the person has not been given the opportunity to self-quarantine voluntarily (as Mary had the chance but refused).

That said, Mary was given a home on an island and her sustenance was provided for her; later on she was able to work on the island as a lab assistant to a doctor, and she was given opportunities to take short trips to the mainland. No other people identified as asymptomatic carriers of typhoid (and there were others) were similarly 'encamped' because they accepted their medical situation and undertook their own voluntary precautions to avoid spreading the illness.

On a personal note, if I had reason to believe that I was infecting multiple parties over a considerable time period the way Mary was, I would be quite happy to voluntarily retire to an island and let someone else pay the bills. No need for a job, as I can amuse myself with gazing at sunsets over the ocean waves, walks along the shore, reading, internet browsing, and collegial conversations on the Anglican forum!

 

Question: How did the Omicron variant get into Australia if the unvaxxed can't leave or enter?

(This was a question posed to me over the weekend)

 

Because anybody can still be a carrier. That’s why a society should aim for universal immunization, to achieve the lowest possible number of new cases.

 

It seems that there is a level of transmissibility associated with the Omicron variant. The five cases that have been on inbound travellers who had been in Southern Africa, on flights from Doha. They are all asymptomatic. They are all in Quarantine. 4 in NSW and 1 in the Northern Territory, no doubt at Howard Springs.

I think that the truth of the vaccines is that rather than preventing the disease altogether, they reduce incidence and the severity of the disease. No-one in ICU in Australia with Covid19 is double vaccinated, as I understand it.

The five cases are in quarantine, all passengers on the flights that there were on have been required to home isolate and get tested again.

I wake this morning to discover that Fortress Australia has once again pulled up the drawbridge.