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OpEdNews Op Eds    H4'ed 7/21/20

Panic and the Pandemic 'Down Under': The Ultimate Unseen Enemy

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Expanded police powers include random home door-knocks to check that people are 'self-isolating,' with the police searching for anyone not at home. A recent video showed police harassing a woman walking in the center of the city with a child in a pusher. While one policeman wrestled her to the ground when she objected, another wheeled the child away. Groups of police are arriving unnannounced at restaurants to make sure social distancing guidelines are being observed and the names and contact phone numbers of all customers recorded on the official government form. Police 'enforcement patrols' have been set up in viral 'hot spots', with traffic stopped across the city to check whether drivers have moved out of these suburbs.

Both the Federal (national) and state police have an arm called Protective Service Officers. In Victoria, they were created for the express purpose of providing security at suburban railway stations but are now being redeployed at shopping centers and in residential areas. In the words of Police Minister Lisa Neville, "What we hadn't predicted was that we would be given the opportunity to test how using them in shopping centers and other areas would go and we've had that opportunity." Assistant Police Commissioner Shane Patton concurs, as it had been a "real advantage" for the Victoria Police to be able to use the PSOs elsewhere during the pandemic.

Hundreds of people have been calling the "police assistance line," set up for reports of "non-urgent" crime, to report breaches of the pandemic regulations: 61,000 in February, before the pandemic was declared; 71,000 in March and 102,000 in April, an average of 3500-11,500 day, mostly about the virus. 'Dobbing in' - snitching - has always been regarded with the greatest contempt in Australia, along with contempt for the 'scab,' the worker who breaks the union picket line, but now the police see the snitch as a virtue, as doing "the right thing and holding others to account," says Assistant Police Commisssioner Patton. "It's about saving lives."

Fines of up to $1652 are being imposed for people not doing the right thing, by failing to wear a face mask or not observing the correct social distance. Apart from police surveillance and intervention, the phone app millions of Australians have been persuaded into downloading enables the government to track them down wherever they happen to be, in the name of 'tracing' contacts of those who might have been infected. The fact that anyone with a smartphone can be tracked down anyway, can even be heard and photographed without their knowledge is no argument for taking the surveillance possibilities of the virus app lightly when there is no verifiable protection against its use for other purposes.

With the number of new cases on the rise, Andrews called in the army to give logistical support. Prime Minister Scott Morrison, talking as though this was Afghanistan, said the army was already "on the ground" in Victoria. Discussions were continuing with Mr Andrews and the Minister of Defence. The army had already been summoned "to assist with compliance" at the hotels where nationals returning from overseas are being quarantined in their rooms for 14 days (at least at the government's expense: in Queensland overseas arrivals have to pay $2800 per person).

The quarantine hotels have been placed under the overall control of Corrections Victoria, which runs the state's prisons. Media images show up to a dozen police and soldiers in uniform with slouch hats surrounding travelers bussed in from the airport as they wheel their luggage into a hotel foyer. In South Australia police armed with assault rifles have been patrolling "at risk" areas.

As the number of infections continued to rise in Victoria, NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian called on anyone offering accommodation - hotels, hostels and Airbnb - to turn away people from Victoria. The NSW government then took a further step, closing its borders to Victorians from 'hot spots' and threatening those who 'slip across' with an $11,000 fine and six months in jail. Queensland has closed its borders to all visitors from Victoria. Cars crossing from Victoria into South Australia have been vandalized and the drivers abused, such is the hysteria that has been generated.

While travelers arriving in Melbourne are quarantined in hotels for 14 days at the government's expense, those arriving in Brisbane on a flight from overseas have to pay $2800 per person. No arrangement seems to have been made for travelers who need to be in Queensland and don't have $2800 to spare.

With dire reports of death, new 'hot spots' and 'spikes' filling the papers every day, people have been wondering when and how it will all end, "when will I be able to hug my grandchildren again?" as the headline over one article read but "do the right thing", "do the decent thing", "play it safe and stay at home" are the messages repeatedly being hammered home by politicians, police, bureaucrats, health experts and the media, in and out of uniform, but all speaking with the same voice of authority.

Around the world 'lockdowns' have had profound economic and social consequences, including mass unemployment (about half the British workforce is now unemployed or underemployed), depression, domestic violence, eviction from homes, impoverishment, the denial of regular medical service even to people with serious and possibly terminal illnesses and 'distance education,' with parents expected to hold down jobs and simultaneously supervise the education of their children at home.

Health practitioners writing for the British medical journal the Lancet say the closure of schools in 107 countries around the world has been based on evidence and "assumptions" from influenza outbreaks. About 862 million children and young people - "roughly half of the global student population" [4] - have been affected, apart from the impact on the lives of parents and other relatives.

The other consequences include the loss to society of parental productivity, the possibility of vulnerable grandparents called on to provide child care transmitting the virus to children (or children transmitting it to them), the loss of education, harm to the welfare of the child especially among the most vulnerable childen and nutritional problems caused to children for whom free school meals are "an important source of nutrition." Social isolation is listed as another negative byproduct.

The Lancet study notes the "remarkable dearth of policy-relevant data" on school distancing, including closures. The authors question whether the closures were necessary and draw attention to the adverse effects, which include the economic harm to working parents, health-care workers and other workers "forced" from work to provide child-care.

Ä degreest finds that "the evidence to support national closure of schools to combat COVID-19 is very weak and that data from influenza outbreaks suggest that school closures could have relatively small effects on a virus with COVID-19's high transmissibility and apparent low clinical effect on school children."

Writing in the New York Times, David Katz, President of the True Health Initiative and founding director of the Yale-Griffin Prevention Research Centre, proposed more targeted ways of dealing with the pandemic, based on preferential protection for the medical and those over 60 years of age while allowing 'herd immunity' to develop among the population at large. Infection would spread but only in a mild form for the vast bulk of the population, with adequate medical resources then available to treat those who become seriously ill. [5]

Although contact-tracing phone apps have been introduced in many countries, including Australia, the WHO has recommended against their use in any circumstance, whether epidemic or pandemic. Issues of privacy, increased government surveillance at a time when it has already reached an all-time high and the possible 'repurposing' of the apps are immediately raised.

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Jeremy Salt Social Media Pages: Facebook page url on login Profile not filled in       Twitter page url on login Profile not filled in       Linkedin page url on login Profile not filled in       Instagram page url on login Profile not filled in

Jeremy Salt has taught at the University of Melbourne, Bosporus University (Istanbul) and Bilkent University (Ankara), specialising in the modern history of the Middle East. His publications include "The Unmaking of the Middle East. A (more...)
 

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