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.

I live in Melbourne and feel so sorry for the people in the commission housing towers. In the best of times they wouldn’t be the greatest living environment, let alone now. They must be feeling awful and scared and trapped. And they had zero notice compared to the other suburb lockdowns. However, I think Dan Andrews has made the right call. This will kill him politically - it shows the level of how much the virus is getting out of hand again. This would not have been an easy decision and one of last resort. The virus was nearly gone in Victoria. It shows how quickly it can change. I think whatever needs to be done to stop it spreading should be done.

This is not normal circumstances and Victoria is not a police state. And honestly, whatever the premier does is going to be criticised, but what other option is there? People who have tested positive have gone to work and spread it, large numbers have refused to take the test. A lot of support has been set up to help people financially. Most people are doing the right thing, but lots are not.

They're not asking, they're telling. And there's the rub.

In some jurisdictions they're asking, some they're telling .its an important distinction.

@MrsTerryPratchett

I think we should be wary of using the term "imprisonment"

And I think we should understand what words mean. If you deprive people of their freedom, and make them stay in one place, even if that is their home, that's imprisonment.

I'm not saying it's necessarily not warranted. I'm saying that sleepwalking into a fundamental loss of liberty is a big deal.

A year ago, would you have agreed that the state should be able to put whole buildings under house arrest? I wouldn't. Yet here we are.

No, that’s not imprisonment. Imprisonment is being confined in an institutional setting.

A year ago I would have absolutely agreed with the state doing that, yes, if you’d told me that we’d be in a global pandemic that has claimed 100,000s of lives. And you would almost certainly agree too if that pandemic had qualities that made it more troublesome to you (eg v high morality rate for children).

@MrsTerryPratchett

For goodness sake I'm not being inflammatory.

I'm pointing out that surrendering fundamental rights is something to take seriously. It worries me that people are so willing to do it.

There are other options.

They do it because fear of the virus has been cynically drummed into them

They do it because fear of the virus has been cynically drummed into them

:o

@MrsTerryPratchett

Fundamental freedoms are just that. Whether for 5 days or 10 years.

Allowing and celebrating the state removing them is worrying, regardless of motive.

What would happen if a resident walked out of their home and said, "I have the right to leave my home"? Would the armed police use those arms?

Let’s say it wasn’t coronavirus circling the world, but the bubonic plague. And a resident in one of those streets wanted to leave. Would you support their rights?

I guarantee that we just have different thresholds for what constitutes a valid public heath reason for confinement.

And you would almost certainly agree too if that pandemic had qualities that made it more troublesome to you (eg v high morality rate for children).

Absolutely. If it was aerosolised, long incubation period Ebola, which was going to wipe out 50% of the population of the earth, we'd be talking.

My point is not that there is never a time to institute states of emergency and similar. My point is that it's an incredibly serious thing to do and should be treated as such.

My concern is that we seem so keen to surrender rights I'd rather try other models first.

My point is that it's an incredibly serious thing to do and should be treated as such

It is and is being so treated.

I'd rather try other models first

Such as......

@echt

My point is that it's an incredibly serious thing to do and should be treated as such

It is and is being so treated.

I'd rather try other models first

Such as......

www.nytimes.com/2020/06/05/world/canada/bonnie-henry-british-columbia-coronavirus.html

For one example.

@MrsTerryPratchett

And you would almost certainly agree too if that pandemic had qualities that made it more troublesome to you (eg v high morality rate for children).

Absolutely. If it was aerosolised, long incubation period Ebola, which was going to wipe out 50% of the population of the earth, we'd be talking.

My point is not that there is never a time to institute states of emergency and similar. My point is that it's an incredibly serious thing to do and should be treated as such.

My concern is that we seem so keen to surrender rights I'd rather try other models first.

For me it’s the fact that having time and the opportunity to fail is rather a luxury in pandemic. And the alternative if you fail, ie a lockdown, is to painful to take lightly.

A utilitarian approach, which I’m inclined to agree with, would almost certainly support what’s happening here. As being preferable to a statewide lockdown that causes mass redundancies; the cancelling of life-saving cancer treatments and surgeries, millions of children out of school and confined to their homes, isolation and mental health crises on the rise... Ie the UK.

Paywall.

It's imprisonment without trial
Oh dear god. 5 days staying at home is NOT imprisonment without trial. Its isolation in the middle of a global pandemic so we can save peoples lives from a deadly virus. Millions of us have had to do it for over 3 months. So do give your head a wobble and grow up.

It's not a deadly virus

It's not a deadly virus

So that's all right then.

I’m Aussie in the U.K. and would rather be under the Australian government (and I loathe Scomo).

My home state has been back to normal for 2 months. Meanwhile, in the U.K. we are rapidly slipping into a deep and crippling recession that will have a much wider and cruel impact on the lives of people living in these tower blocks than Covid, because we can’t get a handle on the disease & therefore can’t re-open the economy.

Australia has its faults but it does have a broadly higher acceptance of decisions taken for the greater good. In the U.K., even wearing masks on public transport elicits loud cries of excuses as to why that individual can’t possibly suffer even a tiny bit of inconvenience to protect others.

Things like Ruby Princess showed the out & out corruption in parts of the Australian state system but relative to the U.K. approach of allowing Covid to go unchecked for far too long it’s a smaller error.

There are nine towers in hard lockdown. The alternative is if the Premier of Victoria hadn’t made this decision many of the people in the towers would die. There are also two more areas next to the towers which have also gone into lockdown last night besides the other nearby suburbs that went into lockdown at midnight last Wednesday night.

The residents of the towers will have their rents paid and the government will pay them and feed them.

The reason for the hard lockdown is because they live in close proximity to each other, share lifts and are vulnerable people.

My son and his family live in one of the adjacent suburbs which went into lockdown last Wednesday night. His children go to the same school as many of these children.

The other states in Australia, which are currently Covid free have their borders closed to Victoria.

Thankfully the state of Victoria has a Labour state government.
www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8490777/Victoria-records-74-new-COVID-19-cases-hit-Daniel-Andrews-announces.html

@EnlightenedOwl

It's not a deadly virus

It is, even if indirectly. High hospitalization rates when you have finite doctors and nurses means that non-covid life saving treatment will be put on the backfoot. At a cost to human life (see the UK’s excess deaths for the price we paid to ‘protect the NHS’).

In addition, once the hospitals fill up, people who would’ve otherwise survived with coronavirus can’t get a bed, so the mortality rate goes up. Currently happening in Texas.

————-

As an aside, the NYT article was very interesting. But my understanding is that British Columbia was already in a state of lockdown for schools and businesses, so the stakes were a lot lower.

For those who are saying it isn't imprisonment or house arrest, then how come the police prevented a resident collecting the food she ordered for delivery?

In the UK all my deliveries including food have been contactless. The delivery person phones or rings the bell before hand then puts the item(s) on the ground and steps away. I wait until they step away, open the door and pick up the item. Deliveries are done like this whether you live in a house or flat.

The towers have large numbers of BAME people, especially Sudanese and Somali.
The women I know who live there frequent each others houses as is their communities norm. Many of the men were taxi drivers.
The lockdown is surely to stop the virus spreading in this community specifically as they are high risk.

Food, medicine, money and translators are being provided. Its not even a week.

@RedRumTheHorse

For those who are saying it isn't imprisonment or house arrest, then how come the police prevented a resident collecting the food she ordered for delivery?

In the UK all my deliveries including food have been contactless. The delivery person phones or rings the bell before hand then puts the item(s) on the ground and steps away. I wait until they step away, open the door and pick up the item. Deliveries are done like this whether you live in a house or flat.

Hmm yeah that sounds very excessive to me

@FizzFan

It’s ridiculous

Just how much shit are people expected to put up with and for how long in the name of “public health” and “the greater good”.

Absolutely

Police state is really easy to introduce, it turns out

Start with the poor

Start with the poor

But specifically those whose first language isn't English and are immigrants as they won't immediately know their rights to fight against you.

I’m in Australia and don’t have a problem with this. The rationale being there are a large number if people packed together in close proximity so it’s not going to work if you give the same rules as for suburbs in lockdown where people are really spread out.

The government is organising all required food, medicines, medical care, is providing activity packs, is working with Telstra in the hope of having temporary mobile towers brought in, is supplying drug and alcohol and domestic violence support workers, social workers. It’s really not a case of locking people up without food and requisite support but that doesn’t make for a sensationalist headline.

The metro area I live in had a natural disaster a while back and we were basically trapped in a couple of streets. SES and police came in and worked to establish which households had vulnerable people, babies requiring provisions etc and removed them (with much ado including use of cherry pickers and other equipment) to an evac centre. The rest of us were confined to our streets and some were only able to walk a couple of houses down at most and some not at all as police were stationed at points and directed you back to your house - fallen broken power lines everywhere that took days to be capped and very unstable large trees, landslides. We had no electricity but they handed out bottled water, sausages and bread to each household daily. We all have BBQ’s so could use these to cook the snags. Anyone who ran out of gas shouted out to a neighbour or let police know and they would get someone with gas onto it. This lasted for a 3.5 days. We didn’t whinge about a police state and infringement of civil rights. You just get on with it. We also certainly didn’t get activity packs, had no electricity, internet or mobile reception (for several days even after the area had been made safe and police moved out), so personally I think the people in those towers need to be thankful and have a word with themselves.

But specifically those whose first language isn't English and are immigrants as they won't immediately know their rights to fight against you

So that's the plan

And so patronising towards those who live in those towers. They do have brains, you know.

It’s really not a case of locking people up without food and requisite support but that doesn’t make for a sensationalist headline.
It’s not that people think they’ve been supplied with nothing

It’s not that people think they aren’t getting this stuff, it’s that it’s happening even with it.
Of course they’ll need food etc the opposite is pretty bad indeed.

I’m surprised reading this, from here, especially people exclaiming children’s packs have been given as if it’s a big deal.

I’d be worried to feel so closed off for five days in a tower, harder with children.

I assume they’ll test the guards too so they don’t have another quarantine staff situation.