Before Covid, Australia was used as an example of how to disarm the American population. People asked stupid questions like why do you need a gun etc.? Fast forward to today where their population is disarmed and they have lost all freedoms and human rights. Silence on guns now.
— Stalingrad & Poorski (@Stalingrad_Poor) September 29, 2021
By Buck Sexton
Americans used to think of Australia as something like the United Kingdom with warmer weather and better beaches.
But in the era of COVID-19, it has turned into a cautionary tale of the limitless powers that governments can seize under the guise of protecting public health.
You won’t see a lot of headlines about it, but about half of Australia’s 25 million people are suffering under a severe, ongoing COVID lockdown. And unlike in the U.S., where “essential workers” and a host of other exceptions were allowed to go about their job despite a rapidly spreading virus in their communities, the Australian version of lockdown is much closer to prison, which the term is taken from.
Down Under Lockdown
Australian police are the ruthless secret police Stasi of COVID rules… They will enthusiastically give fines to young mothers pushing strollers in public parks for being unmasked outdoors, or not having a good enough reason for being outside the allowable radius from their homes.
There are viral videos online of Australian police firing rubber bullets and deploying flashbang grenades against anti-lockdown protestors for the crime of simply being outside. These armed agents of the state clad in black riot gear zealously enforce outdoor mask measures on public streets, and will viciously arrest and faceplant into concrete those who transgress these idiotic rules.
Sydney, the most populous city in Australia, has been in lockdown for 14 weeks. Its regulations have included a 9 p.m. curfew and only an hour of outdoor exercise allowed a day – even though there is absolutely no scientific anti-COVID basis for either limitation.
When will the madness end? The government is talking about a “full reopen” when 80% of adults in the country are vaccinated. Currently, about 42% of Aussies have gotten the shot.
Why did Australia decide to implement a Down-Under version of an Orwellian dystopia? They would no doubt point to their very low COVID spread and fatality rate – 1,256 deaths out of 100,000 cases – as the primary justification.
The Isolationist Model
But the data also reflects, it’s much more likely that Australia’s isolation from the rest of the world – it’s notably an island, with a sparse population – played a larger role than lockdowns in suppressing the virus. Perth, in the fast west of Australia, is among the most isolated major cities in the world, and it currently has no lockdown and almost no cases. It’s not Australian’s mask policy that made the difference – it’s geography.
Apart from the debate over how to best suppress a virus (other than living on a remote island that can entirely restrict travel), there’s a very real concern growing that COVID policies are turning westernized societies into much more authoritarian places.
If the government can shut down your business or church, and even mandate that you stay inside your own home for weeks on end – all to combat a virus with a 99.7% survival rate – what can the government not do in the name of “public health”?
It’s not just Australia where these concerns have taken a turn into tyrannical reality… The U.S. has more than its share of statist demagogues in office, and the Biden administration appears equally drunk with power and incompetent with its hands on the steering wheel of government, especially when it comes to COVID.
A Dark Credo
At the state level, some politicians have adopted an almost messianic tone in their approach to combating the virus…
Earlier this week, the new governor of New York state, Kathy Hochul, gave a homily at the Christian Cultural Center, a non-denominational megachurch, in which she praised the good works of mega-corporations Pfizer and Moderna as though they were on orders from the almighty:We are not through this pandemic, I wished we were, but I prayed a lot to God during this time and you know what, God did answer our prayers. He made the smartest men and women, the scientists, the doctors, the researchers – he made them come up with a vaccine. That is from God to us and we must say, ‘Thank you, God. Thank you.’
In Pfizer we trust, according to the governor… This should be deeply unsettling to any American who still values individual freedom.
Biden+Hitler+Stalin+Mao=Castro=Tyranny
You can tell that some people simply get a nut forcing others to act against their will. But we have other issues at play here at home.
As in 2020, the Democrats will need an edge in the 2022 elections. Shutting everything down and making voting by mail the standard proved to be an invitation to fraud, and fraud answered the invitation en masse. Along with voting by mail, all standards of verification were simply ignored and discarded and with a massive defeat looming (and far more dire consequences to the Democrats if they lose the House and Senate), it will be very beneficial for the impression of an ongoing and worsening epidemic at home to be prevalent.