As COVID-19 cases soar in Australia, the Land Down Under continues to live up to its history as a penal colony. The country’s health ministry is now calling on defense forces to round up people in rural areas who test positive for the ‘Rona and take them to quarantine centers.
NEW – Australian defense force called in to haul positive #COVID19 cases and close contacts to quarantine centers.pic.twitter.com/Bs1SlUBl1u
— Disclose.tv (@disclosetv) November 22, 2021
The activity is taking place in Australia’s remote Northern Territory, where the notorious images of the “outback” originated. Two communities in that region are now in the most severe cases of lockdown they’ve seen as cases in rural areas rise.
Health authorities announced that five men and four women had been diagnosed in Binjari late on Saturday. It is understood the group is from several different households.
A woman from Robinson River, 1,000km south-east of Darwin, became the sixth person in her community to be diagnosed earlier on Saturday.
All 10 are Indigenous Australians aged between 17 and 78 and bring the territory’s cluster to 31 cases.
The outbreak was triggered by a 21-year-old infected woman who illegally entered the NT in late October after contracting the virus in Victoria and lying on her border entry form.
The reaction to an outbreak of 10 people tells us two things: how remote this area of Australia is and how quickly things can go draconian in that country.
And it doesn’t matter if you’re vaccinated. While unvaccinated people aren’t allowed into the Northern Territory at the present, vaccinated people who travel from a “red zone” area where infections are high to a “green zone” area where there are fewer COVID incidents still have to quarantine at home for a week. They must have a rapid test with a negative result within 72 hours and retest within five, seven, and 14 days after leaving their home quarantine. Vaccinated people are also being encouraged to stay only in areas with high vaccination rates.
It’s madness because you’ll recall that the vaccine was supposed to solve all the world’s problems. Yet the vaccinated are being treated with measures similar to what the unvaxxed are having to undergo.
All of this isn’t lost on the people of Australia. In Melbourne, in southeastern Australia, thousands of people protested over the weekend against more tyrannical measures that Victoria State is hoping to enact.
At least 100,000 strong crowd of anti-lockdown protesters marched from Parliament House in Melbourne to Flagstaff Gardens on Saturday for the World Wide rally for Freedom Day.#freedom #victoria #covid_19 #protest #freedomday #Melbourneprotest pic.twitter.com/6iq7DfhFmC
— 5 News Australia (@5NewsAustralia) November 20, 2021
The Guardian reports that these protests have come in the wake of legislation that seeks to replace the expiring emergency powers that have allowed the state government to enact mandates and restrictions.
In other words, Australian state governments want to codify the emergency measures that they took to combat the pandemic when things were unknown and fear reigned.
It was the latest demonstration after a week of escalating protests over a contentious pandemic powers bill that the state government is seeking to pass within the next month. The bill would replace a state of emergency that is set to lapse on Dec. 15, allowing officials to continue enforcing restrictions related to lockdowns, masking requirements and vaccination mandates.
A smaller number of pro-vaccine forces protested in a separate location.
Similar protests took place in Brisbane, on Australia’s east coast.
Brisbane right now#brisbane #protest #australia #VaccineMandate #VaccinePassport #Covid_19 pic.twitter.com/NaggaakJqT
— Hadassah (@daQweenHadassah) November 20, 2021
In Sydney, former Liberal Party politician Craig Kelly, who quit the party when Prime Minister Scott Morrison called him out for his vaccine hesitancy, spoke out. He said, “When we have governments that adopt vaccine passports, we’re no longer free. We don’t live in a free society — we live in a prison camp.”
The citizens of Australia are starting to wake up to the tyranny of their government’s response to a nearly two-year-long pandemic that’s receding in so many other places. Thank God we’re not seeing a response this bad in the United States, and I hope we never get to the point in this country where we have to protest en masse against COVID measures like what we’re seeing Down Under.
