Melbourne apartment towers complete lockdown

[Imtootired]

In Melbourne, Aus there are five tower blocks that will be put under complete lockdown for five days. I am all for being proactive about stopping the spread of coronavirus but this is madness. They are public housing so people on very low incomes for various reasons including elderly and disabled people, refugees and single parents. There will be police guarding each floor. No one will be able to leave for any reason. There have been many reports of bad hygiene practices for people quarantined in hotels and it makes me so angry that the government and dodgy contacted companies didn’t do their jobs properly and now the most vulnerable are paying the price. How will they be able to attend to all the individual needs of 3000 people? If I was stuck in a tiny apartment with my children with no time to prepare I would be furious. There were no armed guards for rich travellers returning home. I’m so angry and feel so bad for the residents. This is the beginning of a police state and once it’s happened it could happen again. If I was a resident I would be getting legal advice ASAP. I hope someone takes them to court.

And what about the person who tried to leave today, and bit a police officer? Now that police officer will have to be tested, won't be able to see their family and will have to isolate until they have results. Not to mention the possibility of other infections etc.

Countries choose methods that suit their population; this militarised option clearly suits Australia, but in the UK our methods are lighter touch.

I was stating that it is our norm that our police generally carry guns so the implied menace of "armed police" was daft. All cops carry guns here, what's the issue?

@AllAussieAdventures - it comes with a risk of infections, yes, all approaches have risk of covid, mental health, other illness etc. None of us know how this will all pan out, it's probably better not to make assumptions just yet.

It's also just 5 days FFS. Remember those people on the cruise liners that were just left for ages as covid ripped through people?

*Leading us to the grave though?

Get a grip.*

Well yes admittedly I prob got a bit dramatic there (It's a fault), but I mean...+44000 dead.

@FruitTingleFrizzante - sorry for the confusion, the militarised approach I was referring to was confining everyone to their flats so they can't even go for a walk nor get essential shopping. My point wasn't about guns, though they do add an extra stress factor. I know your police carry them, but if it were me planning this I'd have said they shouldn't be visible at the tower in this highly stressful scenario because it heightens tensions, but I recognise that's partly because I'm British and we just aren't keen on guns generally.

@FruitTingleFrizzante

*Leading us to the grave though?

Get a grip.*

Well yes admittedly I prob got a bit dramatic there (It's a fault), but I mean...+44000 dead.

Yes, it's not great. The thing is we don't know how many people died WITH covid and how many actually died OF it.

But there have been deaths as a consequence of the lockdown too, and there will be many many more.

Lockdown has basically just exchanged one set of lives for another.

It's worth thinking that Australia is only 1/3 the population of the UK, yet in a far larger country; even your cities have a lot of space in the suburbs. You're also many thousands of miles from most other countries with strong agricultural economies, you would always be infected later and have better isolation capability. Where Australia and New Zealand can contemplate closing borders indefinitely because of those options, European countries simply cannot, none of our economies can function isolated in that way and we live in tightly packed cities. If it were me in charge at the time, I'd have shut returning flights to non-residents 2 weeks earlier and gone into lockdown 1 week earlier (in fact as a family we did go into lockdown a week earlier). There still would have been many thousands of deaths, but when there was no way that the country could avoid the virus there was always a balance to be struck for health, the economy and civil liberties. Mistakes that were made can be counted in days rather than in approach, in my opinion, because the aporoach is already at the limit of the liberties British people would be willing to give up. None of us know what the excess deaths will look like for each country in the long term, there are many more months to go of this virus and it remains to be seen what winter brings. It's very distasteful to see people using the death of others as some kind of point scoring, they were all somebody's loved one.

(There were also some mistakes in not keeping a constant rolling stlck of PPE and in expecting care homes to have infection control, sadly it's clear that there was a massive mismatch in expectations around care homes. Those mistakes impacted deaths, but no amount of armed police at tower blocksv would have affected them.)

*passive aggressive koalas

For some reason I love the idea of a passive aggressive koala. Yeah, I'm going to sit up in this tree looking like a huggable teddy-bear and completely ignoring you, human.*

This is exactly how koalas actually behave.... they could not give a toss. They know they are cute little bastards but font dare acknowledge your existence 😆 Don't even dare drive on a road they be walking down....
they are brilliant 🐨

Our distances are one of the 'best' and 'worst' things in this situation. They allow us to cut ourselves off from the rest of the world and mostly spread out a bit. We also culturally like space from other people so that probably didn't hurt.

However, you can be hundreds of kilometres from the nearest hospital let alone the nearest ICU.

Australia has apparently had one of its 'best' flu seasons so we may even get out of 2020 with less overall deaths than usual.

AND right now for the vast majority of us we are back to 'normal' with the benefits that brings economically.

So while I don't like it, I think given all that the benefits outweigh the costs. Though I am acutely aware that I am not the one locked in a small apartment right now.

@eaglejulesk

And I've posted a handful of times. It's hardly sooooooo much time but I guess nobody is allowed to criticize perfect Australia?

It's not a case of nobody being allowed to criticize Australia, but criticism by citizens of countries where the govt. has massively stuffed up their handling of covid is not welcome. Why not concentrate on your own issues and let Australia deal with theirs. No-one actually cares what you think tbh.

And of course everyone else's opinion is dead important just not mine?

This is what I mean about aggression there's no need for it.

So you're saying it didnt happen?

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@echt

So you're saying it didnt happen?

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What are you saying then?

Because it did happen you know.....

🐨

And of course everyone else's opinion is dead important just not mine

👍

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Right. Clearly you can't think of an intelligent response because you know that you're wrong. I'll just leave you to it.

What? I do object to police with guns to be honest. Doesn't go well for America most of the time does it?

But our police (with guns) are nothing like American police (with guns). They don’t go around intent on shooting people. There is the occasional incident with someone who is mentally ill but they only shoot if someone is under imminent threat, such as charging at someone with a bloody big knife intent on killing them, and there is no other way to disarm/disable them without potentially sacrificing the other person. They will taser but sometimes people can just power through the taser like a raging bull which then leaves them with seconds to save someone else or themselves so they shoot.

To say that Australian police are the same as American police because they have guns is just absurd. Also, no one sees it as a threat as they trundle around armed all the time. You are just as likely to be standing behind an armed policeman (including women) grabbing a coffee, at the local takeaway, Krispy Kreme or Macca’s or indeed just when you are pulled over for a random breath test. Everyone is used to that as standard, they are not threatening. I would however see the riot squad as threatening but they are not involved in this scenario.

Is there really any need for that?

I'm not going to continue posting, I'm just going to report all your abuse.

Disgusting.

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