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Overseas friends facing a new wave of Covid: You'll be hearing a lot from those of us living in Melbourne, Australia right now, a city that had a bad outbreak and has now had two weeks of no deaths and no new cases.
Please don't just assume "Do What We Did" is a good idea.
Please don't just assume "Do What We Did" is a good idea.
Yes, wearing masks and movement restrictions of some sort are probably going to be needed where you are. But we had some VERY negative measures that were cheered on by people who should have known better.
There was an outbreak in some public housing tower blocks. People in those towers were given an hour's notice that they'd be confined to their apartments. This ended up lasting over a week. They were heavily policed.
People in poor, and heavily non-white suburbs were far more heavily policed than those in whiter, wealthier parts of the city.
The government enforced an 8pm-5am curfew for about 8 weeks. This curfew was not advised by health officials. In fact, officials from all sorts of departments, refused to take responsibility for recommending it.
Of course, these abuses happened in the context of Australia's QAnon-lite movement and their media and political enablers being thoroughly irresponsible. No doubt you'll have them too, but don't let them stop you making serious criticism when your authorities abuse power
This is important. https://twitter.com/AsFarce/status/1327144503933890561?s=19
One way harsh measures held us back is that people who tested positive were reluctant to admit what they'd been doing because of the fear of punishment
Re the tower blocks: This thread details some of the abuses of police powers when they were locked down. The #FreeThe9Blocks tag has much information from then https://twitter.com/hpstorian/status/1280659547833565184?s=19
