At least you are predictable De Selby.
1. That would be the United States among many others. Wherever smallpox or plagues appeared, there were quarantines. Quarantines at international borders were also routine. That’s no different to what’s happening in in AU/NZ.
No one here is arguing against quarantining people who are infected with very dangerous and contagious diseases, nor even quarantining people who cross international borders. Are you claiming that those are the limit of what Australia or New Zealand (or the US for that matter) are doing as far as lockdowns?
2. Not allowing people in quarantine because of an infectious disease to leave quarantine is the definition of quarantine. Taking dramatic licence with your description doesn’t change what it is, and it’s been in use in the entire English speaking world for as long as there’s been communicable disease.
Yes, quarantining sick people is a thing. That is not equivalent to general lockdowns.
"Look, we have a long history of locking up people who are sick with very dangerous and contagious diseases, so of course there is precedent for locking up everyone irrespective of their health status, forcing them to close their businesses, arresting them for walking on the beach, and so forth!"
My kids can loan you their book on avoiding basic logical fallacies if you need to borrow a copy.
4. Quarantines in Australia and NZ are effective because of mass compliance, not enforcement. Many parts of the US had the same rules but the widespread refusal to follow them made them ineffective in 2020.
Yes, I believe that Australians in general are far more tolerant of the totalitarianism of the Australian system. That's kind of my point. But I've also seen enough of the Australian protests to know that compliance is hardly universal and has required some ... enthusiastic enforcement, to back it up. As you say, some parts of the US had similar rules, but as most of those rules were of questionable legal founding and therefore tended to lack the enforcement the Australians were willing to exercise.
In terms of granny, Bogies posts on this thread and many others imply that old people dying of Covid isn’t really a problem because old people die of something or other. What more is there to say about that?
Sorry, were you under the misapprehension that I am Bogie?
That said, we have known about the disproportionate risks of COVID to elderly and otherwise at-risk patients since before COVID was known to have escaped China. On the other hand, we've made policy based on the idea that everyone is at equal risk.
Had a government from the outset instituted a border quarantine, a quarantine for anyone who tested positive, encouraged free testing, suggested that elderly and otherwise at-risk people stay home and made provisions to deliver food and medicine when necessary, but allowed the population to generally make their own decisions few people would have complained, the people most likely to be severely impacted would have been protected, individuals and businesses who wanted to take extra precautions would have been able to do so. But that is not what was generally done, was it?
