- Joined
- Sep 20, 2018
- Posts
- 3,658
- Qantas
- Platinum
Thanks for posting @Tiki. This is a great read. I wish all pollies would read it too. Here are some of my favourite quotes from Daniel Bookman’s excellent piece.C'mon Australia: We can't live in this Covid purgatory any longer. — Mamamia. I hope this is not paywalled. C'mon Australia: We can't live in this Covid purgatory any longer. By Daniel Bookman best article I’ve seen so far and I wish all pollies would read this.
”Australia's approach to COVID implicitly includes the following: a comfort with severely curtailing its citizens’ liberties; the capacity to absorb and pay for economic calamities; a belief that its brand is strong enough to recover from the damage inflicted and to once again attract talent and capital; zero tolerance for risk or its citizens ability to manage it; and conviction that trust in authority will remain despite all the failures, hostility and dishonesty.”
”By all means, maintain strict border controls, but stop perpetuating a false binary where you have to choose between submitting to imprisonment in your homes, or bodies in the street. I don’t want to labor the point, but does the chart below really justify a form of martial law for half the country? Risk is a concept to be minimised, not something capable of being removed.”
“Here are some very simple and sensible things the government should do: transition the messaging about COVID away from fear and towards practical realities, because we will live with it as an endemic disease for many years to come; move on from a tyrannical obsession with zero cases; widen vaccine eligibility; loosen restrictions for those who are vaccinated, and acknowledge that returning travelers who are vaccinated do not need to spend 14 days locked in a hotel. We must move to a place where individuals have greater autonomy over managing their own risk.”
“It's clear the government bungled the vaccine’s procurement, messaging and roll-out, and that they somehow still haven't figured out how to fix a broken quarantine system. But instead of openly acknowledging their mistakes, they have resorted to dishonesty to cover them up, and continue to insist there is "no alternative" to the current situation.Let’s be very clear: this is not true. Our politicians have perpetuated this lie for over a year, and they have been aided and abetted by a media that’s comically breathless in its desire to drum up panic and hysteria; to overseas readers, Australian newspapers’ coverage of COVID verges on satire.”