Australia’s capital city to enforce snap lockdown after one new Covid-19 case | Hacker News Reader

Australia’s capital city to enforce snap lockdown after one new Covid-19 case

foxnews.com

14 pointsmrfusion14 comments

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-08-12/canberra-records-new-...

4 cases for the population of 431,215, but the presummable point remains, is this justified?

Melbourne is currently in the 6th lockdown, may this be the future of governing moving forward?

Lockdown does solve every problem ever I guess, gun violence, traffic accidents... you name it.

Snap lockdowns have proven effective at slowing and stopping the transmission of the virus, and it has been proven time and time again that a handful of these cases can become hundreds very rapidly.

Personally I think it's quite justified, the question is how long can this strategy go on for.

> the question is how long can this strategy go on for.

Australia's strategy involves relaxing/reducing lockdowns when vaccination rates reach 70% and again at 80%. These levels are less ambitious than they seem because they don't count the 20% of the population under 16 years old.

Other thresholds are:

* when vaccines become available to anyone, which should be the case by December (Australia's vaccine roll out has been excruciatingly slow)

* the national budget anticipates opening up in the middle of 2022

My expectation is that the country will spend the first half of 2022 screaming and arm-twisting at the vaccine hesitant to get jabbed, and will then open up anyway on June 30.

I read that drug overdose, alcohol poisoning, and suicide have increased. May need a few years to study this...

Oops. Fox News accidentally reported only the conservative point of view.

"The Australian public are rightly proud of their efforts to combat the Covid-19 pandemic. Almost all Australians – 95% – believe Australia has handled the pandemic well, according to new Lowy Institute polling released today.

"This is for good reason. Despite the slow vaccine rollout, Australia has consistently ranked as one of the best performers in the world." [May 2021]

https://www.lowyinstitute.org/the-interpreter/state-mind-how...

That this has been normalized is grotesque. That the focus has shifted to mere cases, even in small numbers as a justification for draconian, personal freedom-ignoring lockdowns in this paranoid, absurdly overreaching way is not something that any normal person should applaud or defend. Simply imagine the extrapolation of these tendencies moving forward into the future, for any government anywhere, using lockdowns as a justification for all sorts of things and always using the "somebody think of the children"-like argument of, "but if it ambiguously saves even one life, it's justified".

frankly how did this even start? Lockdown is the kind of garbage "solution" that only a certain regime could come up with and it does suit their governing style, how that spreaded over the whole world is beyond me.

For a variety of reasons (tl;dr - _horrendous_ government mismanagement), Australia has a very low vaccination rate, even in the elderly and vulnerable. So, given Delta, they have a very simple choice here; harsh lockdowns, or get building surplus crematorium capacity. You can see why they're opting for the first.

This isn't to excuse the Australian government; it's largely a mess of their own making. But given where they are, they don't have much of a choice right now.

Definition of "true dichotomy" (plural: true dichotomies): A situation in which two alternative points of view are presented as the only options, because no other are available.

// Example: harsh lockdowns, or get building surplus crematorium capacity

I mean, what's your alternative? Asking the virus nicely not to kill the elderly? Given the nature of Delta and the very low vaccination rate, Australia has limited good options here.

If a place is no longer safe for some people should the solution be to shut down that place? Or burn down? People lose their business, their job, their home, their savings, go into debt, hospitals are full. At some ratio evacuation should be preferred. Of course one wants to stay where one is but if the price is to see that place destroyed in front of your eyes it doesn't seem worth it.

No alternative. Harsh lockdowns are the way to go. After detecting a single COVID-19 case, we should lock everything down [1]. No talking allowed [2]. There are no potential side effects [3]. Welcome to SimCity™

[1] https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2021-08-12/austra...

[2] https://mobile.twitter.com/MichaelPSenger/status/14255164081...

[3] https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-9884297/Covid-19-...

It seems the person agrees with you by saying "true" instead of "false dichotomy"

I don't, it's funny that the decision to stop __eveything__ to "save lives" can be done at a finger snap, no due process, yet banning __just__ guns (or replace it with just tobacco, fastfood, teflon... other things that kill) seems impossible to get pass debates.

When in doubt, lockdown?

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