Snap 5-day lockdown in Western Australia after one case - first in 10 months. It's like premier Mark McGowan was itching to do it. A bushfire on the outskirts of Perth adds to the drama.

"We cannot be sure that the virus is not out there in the community, so by taking every extra precaution, we give ourselves the best chance of crushing this virus."

"Right now WA is battling two different kinds of emergencies - a dangerous fire emergency and a Covid-19 lockdown emergency."

I'd argue three kinds - including Premiers getting off on totalitarianism.

The report concludes:

"About 250 firefighters - who are wearing masks and socially distancing - are battling the blaze but struggling in the hot and windy conditions, said Western Australia deputy fire commissioner Craig Waters."

"By global standards, it is a very low risk as the city has reported just one local case. But the city of two million people entered a snap five-day lockdown on Sunday after that case - the first local infection in Western Australia in 10 months - was found."

What? Locking down two million people due to one case? The death rate for this virus just doesn't warrant that, does it?

We'll be moving to the Tokyo area soon, and it's getting a few hundred cases a day, but still the government doesn't force any lock down. They don't actually have the authority to do so according to my understanding.

The political climate in Australia is growing more and more disturbing. Covid has seen a massive rise in the power/profiles of the state premiers - most of them cannot help themselves.

The federal government has chosen to watch on from the safety of the sidelines - a pathetic abdication of responsibility.

Interestingly, one state, New South Wales, has handled things pretty well in difficult circumstances. The premier has avoided the knee-jerk reactions of draconian lockdowns and border closures and instead concentrated on improving quarantine security for overseas returnees, and rapid contact tracing for the inevitable cases that slip through. It's proven successful.

She has begged other states to refrain from border closures every time someone sneezes in another state - but has been ignored and abused for not listening to the advice of health experts.

Luckily we're printing money by the truckloads so it doesn't seem to matter anymore if you trash the economy.

Daniel Andrews, Vic Premier:

"I am always happy to sit down with the prime minister and see if there are some bespoke facilities that can be built.

That might give you some greater capacity and might be useful not just for this pandemic but events that could occur in the future. Bushfires, all sorts of different things.

Emergency housing that is fit for purpose and built for that purpose and can be open and get bigger and smaller as the needs call for, that wouldn’t be a bad thing to have a network of that all the way across the country. We don’t have that now – I would be happy to talk to the commonwealth government about that."

Great idea. Didn't China develop a pre-fab kit for that already to re-educate the Uighurs? We can just buy some of those as part of Dan's Belt and Road Initiative - he could get us a good deal.

48 hours after bragging that Victoria set the "gold-standard" for hotel quarantine (as an excuse for why they couldn't take their fair share of returned travelers compared to NSW), another quarantine outbreak occurred in Victoria.

The 'outbreak' was/is not serious - it has resulted in zero to two cases per day. The response: a snap 5-day lockdown. Another one. The last one went for 111 days.

This time the lockdown covers the entire state - even though there wasn't/isn't any hint of a case outside Melbourne. There hasn't been a Covid death anywhere in Australia since Oct.

Residents have been ordered to stay home, forbidden to travel more than 5km, only allowed out once a day for shopping, made to wear a mask whenever outdoors. So a farmer in Mildura - over 400kms away, needs to wear a mask to plough his field.

Outdoor activities such as golf and fishing are banned. Even if you do it by yourself.

Yes, we know Dan Andrews is an ego-maniac wanna-be dictator - but i don't really blame him anymore - he's just doing what any ego-maniac politician would do - grabbing power/attention for himself.

The problem is the federal government and the Prime Minister, Scott Morrison. He's been MIA since Covid began and handed over power to the state premiers, whereupon they've run amok (with the exception of NSW, which has handled things sensibly).

The underlying problem to this problem is the Funny Money Theory. If you had to pay for your decisions with real money, politicians would be seeing things in a totally different light - but as we just keep cranking the money printing machine up, no-one feels the need to take responsibility for their actions.

BBC: South Asia has reported nearly 13 million Covid cases and more than 186,000 deaths so far.

Many countries, including those in South Asia, responded to the pandemic with stringent lockdowns.

(A) report - Direct and Indirect Effects of Covid-19 Pandemic and Response in South Asia - examines the effect of these government strategies on healthcare, social services, including schools, and the economy.

It estimates that there have been 228,000 additional deaths of children under five in these six countries due to crucial services, ranging from nutrition benefits to immunisation, being halted.

That's a statistic you'll never hear a politician or science expert talk about. 228, 000 children dead from Covid lockdowns - so far. That's 42 000 more than the number of elderly patients lost due to the actual disease in South Asia.

If you wanted an argument for 'the cure is worse than the disease' then that's a strong one.

The Report: Child mortality rose the highest in India in 2020 - up by 15.4% - followed by Bangladesh at 13%. Sri Lanka saw the sharpest increase in maternal deaths - 21.5% followed by Pakistan's 21.3%.

Then there's this from the BBC story you cite:

It also estimates that there have been some 3.5 million additional unwanted pregnancies, including 400,000 among teenagers, due to poor or no access to contraception.

On the eve of Victoria's 4th lock down (guessing that's the world record - for number of lockdowns - the Andrews' Labor government is already way ahead on total days), large numbers gathered to protest outside Parliament House.

These are people with a valid point that deserves to be discussed by society - otherwise totalitarianism has won. Instead they're treated like criminals - mad conspiracy theorists - quietly rounded up - heavily fined - recorded - made to comply.

Watching this video, you can see Andrews has got the CCP system of government down pat - if it wasn't for the skin color that could be Hong Kong.

video: https://www.adelaidenow.com.au/news/multiple-arrests-made-as-protesters-turn-out-for-me...

Victoria, under Dan Andrews, is back in a 3-week lockdown. By the time it's completed, that will be 185 days in hard-lockdown since Covid began.

We've been asking this question for a while - how long can this go on?

Recently a lady in her 90's passed away from Covid - the second or third death this year in Australia. In Australia it was headline news. In the UK, where 99 people died yesterday, there's no mention of death whatsoever on the BBC.

The grim reality is that we need to offer a vaccine to everyone who wants one, and then, whether they work or not, re-open society, do our best to protect the vulnerable. Which is what the UK are doing.

It's not a perfect strategy - the perfect strategy would have been 'don't let scientists fuck around with GoF experiments in shady labs' - but it's too late to reverse that.

The Funny Money Theory cannot keep pumping it out to cover lost productivity - compounding Covid by plunging the world into depression is not the answer - neither is an indefinite state of restrictions on basic human freedoms.

But here's the weird part - lockdowns are hugely popular in Australia. The NSW premier, who's done her best to use them as a last resort (and managed a very difficult situation pretty well), is under a constant barrage of attack. Dan Andrews - the lockdown king - is still insanely popular - even though his state has had more Covid deaths than all the other states combined.

I would add to the above, pump up the therapeutics. There are drugs that have reasonable efficacy in reducing the severity of symptoms - they're not as glamourous as vaccines but they're an important part of the solution.

Footage of protest today in Melbourne against state-wide lockdown. The numbers have grown significantly from last time.

https://twitter.com/i/status/1418772143366500352

Meanwhile, in Japan, where there were roughly two thousand cases just in Tokyo last Thursday, the Olympics are in full swing.

None of this makes any sense at all. Tokyo is in a state of emergency. Japan is looking at more daily cases than they've ever had during the pandemic, and yet the Olympics must go on.

No wonder people are protesting. It's all bullshit. Individual rights come last. Corporate rights come first.

(T)esting, tracing, isolating and hotel quarantine will remain a feature of Australian life for years to come according to new research by the Doherty Institute

Tom Crowley, Grattan Institute economist: The Doherty modelling shows that optimal isolating and quarantining will be critical to control Covid even when 70 per cent or 80 per cent of the 16+ population is vaccinated, and if they fail we’ll need lockdowns.

This is what worries me. The one thing that would convince me to get a vaccine is if it meant an end to lockdowns and restrictions on freedom of movement - but that's not what's being planned for us.

Either vaccines work or they don't - but they can't keep locking us up forever.

I guess this belongs here.

I found this on one of those fact checker pages.

What strikes me about this is, well, where to start. First off, it's just fucking stupid. Why is it stupid? Because people don't stay in circles, or squares, or seats, they move around. This is all theater. Yes, I know, when they move out of their square and within the 6 foot zone of another, they're not there long enough to spread, yada yada bullshit bullshit.

They've tried to do this in schools and it's a joke. Nobody buys it. We all know it's bullshit. Kids are going to wrestle and hug and get in each others' faces. That's what they do. To deny them that is literally inhuman. I guess that's my second point.

Now, there is a good side to this. You get your own circle in the park! Nobody can take that circle away, invade it... sweet.

What a crock.

The subject line says it all.

US ranks last in healthcare among 11 wealthiest countries despite spending most

Millions of Americans don't have health insurance and can't get basic health care. Millions more have health insurance that's essentially useless. The last time I lived in the US, I paid something like $650/month for a policy that had a $6,500 deductible for both myself and my spouse. $6,500. That means the policy, that I was paying nearly $8,000/year for, paid nothing until I had paid $6,500 out of pocket, and this does not take into account what my spouse may have had to pay.

And I was only making $60K/year! It's entirely possible under that plan that we'd have to shell out $21,000/year on health care before the insurance even kicked in, and then it only covered partial payments. So that's roughly 50% of my take-home pay.

So, basically, we didn't go see doctors because we'd have to pay out of pocket. The insurance was useless. It was there for catastrophic events.

And yet, now, the government seems to care so much about our health. Why is that? Why is it now so important that I get vaccinated for the well being of myself, my family, and my community? If I fear I have cancer or some chronic ailment such as high blood pressure or diabetes, why doesn't the government care, at all? Those ailments are far deadlier than covid.

But nobody is asking these questions in the media.

Shane Patton, Vic Police Commissioner: We will have hard barricades, we will have traffic management points, we will have roving patrols, we will doing everything we can to prevent access to the city.

It’s been known for a while that there’s a rally planned for Saturday. We are saying you cannot come in. It is an illegal gathering. We will be doing everything we can to prevent that gathering. Anyone who makes it in there will be subject to a $5500 fine.

We saw on the 21st of August a large crowd of around 4-5000 people. We saw a convergence of people who were placing others at risk of potentially contracting the coronavirus. We can’t allow that to occur again.

In addition to locking down public transport, we will also be in effect locking down the city for that period of time. We will have hard barricades. We will have traffic management points. We will have roving patrols. For those who do get through ... we will arrest those people and issue infringements where we can.

This whole cohort of people who are about ‘freedom’ don’t respect the freedoms of others.

Oh, i see - the Lockdown Nazis are actually 'freedom fighters'.

Good questions!

I think there's a level of hypocrisy and corruption that we kind of accept as part of political life - but then there's a whole other 'beyond the pale' level - which is where we are now with Covid.