Opening Up

[Trunkage]

New Zealand has removed all Covid restrictions internally. The reached a milestone of no known in

New Zealand kicks off live concerts with audiences — so where does this leave Australia?

After 10 weeks in lockdown, coronavirus restrictions lift in New Zealand, giving the green light for the country's live arts and entertainment industry to get back to work. And Australian leaders say local concerts aren't that far away.

www.abc.net.au

A few questions: Did they wait too long, opened to early or got it right?

should the milestone be no new infection + x weeks or no infections at all?

Australia has opened up but in stages. They had some new infections. What should be the milestone here?

 

[SupahEwok]

Fuck if I know, with these protests and the overall response the US is gonna get hit harder than some third world countries before the end of this. You guys do you.

 

[Kyrian007]

I can tell you what's happening where I am. Our governor made the restrictions "suggestions" and announced there would be no enforcement from the state government, but allowed county governments to make heavier restrictions or enforce the state "guidelines" if they chose to.

Now, my county houses the largest city in the state with around 400,000 residents. So one would think we might take the reopening more carefully...

Instead our commission said "nope, everything's wide open, bombs away, y'all can do whatever." Now we're seeing a clear spike in infections and deaths. All the isolation, all the work we did... gone. It was all for nothing because some idiots were worried that they might get voted out if they kept the lockdown going when they were given the chance to lift it.

Oh, and now they're blaming protests over George Floyd's death for the spike, even though they lifted the restrictions before the protests began. I'm not saying protesters couldn't spread COVID-19, just that with our restrictions eliminated it would have happened either way.

 

[Agema]

I can tell you what's happening where I am. Our governor made the restrictions "suggestions" and announced there would be no enforcement from the state government, but allowed county governments to make heavier restrictions or enforce the state "guidelines" if they chose to.

When it boils down to it, there are two approaches to this sort of thing. If you look at usually the more right-wing leaders, the prevailing attitude is that people can just pop off and die because metrics like GDP, etc. matter more. Lilly-livered liberals, however, tend to think about saving lives ahead of selling shit far and wide.

The big problem for the former is explaining to people why their grandma was condemned to death, because it tends to upset people. The idea of "voluntary" measures or suggestions is tantamount to government sending grandma to her grave, but pretending that wasn't their decision or their responsibility.

 

[Silvanus]

Here in the UK, the government plans to reopen almost all nonessential retail from this Monday, despite the rate of infection lingering around 0.9 and having almost as many daily deaths as the rest of Europe combined (and more than Europe combined on at least two days).

Back when the loosening of restrictions was announced, the government laid out 5 "tests" it said must be met in order for that to happen. Fast-forward to now, and the government is saying the tests have been met, while Scientists have been saying they haven't, and the loosening goes ahead regardless.

There's one major reason for this: they've lost moral authority. They may well have intended to be cautious, or to call off the reopening of retail if indicators looked bad (and they do look bad). But now, after the Dominic Cummings affair and the utter collapse in approval of the government's handling, they know that if they reinforce the restrictions, people won't listen. They've lost the moral authority to enforce it, relying (as it does) on willing cooperation.

So, they might as well plough ahead with reopening, allowing them to keep up the facade that they haven't lost control. It also has the handy side-effect of allowing the government to blame the populace for failing to follow "suggestions" once they were no longer actual rules: they know a good chunk of people will be more than willing to blame eachother, or beach-goers, or protesters.

 

[Agema]

Here in the UK, the government plans to reopen almost all nonessential retail from this Monday, despite the rate of infection lingering around 0.9 and having almost as many daily deaths as the rest of Europe combined (and more than Europe combined on at least two days).

Back when the loosening of restrictions was announced, the government laid out 5 "tests" it said must be met in order for that to happen. Fast-forward to now, and the government is saying the tests have been met, while Scientists have been saying they haven't, and the loosening goes ahead regardless.

There's one major reason for this: they've lost moral authority. They may well have intended to be cautious, or to call off the reopening of retail if indicators looked bad (and they do look bad). But now, after the Dominic Cummings affair and the utter collapse in approval of the government's handling, they know that if they reinforce the restrictions, people won't listen. They've lost the moral authority to enforce it, relying (as it does) on willing cooperation.

So, they might as well plough ahead with reopening, allowing them to keep up the facade that they haven't lost control. It also has the handy side-effect of allowing the government to blame the populace for failing to follow "suggestions" once they were no longer actual rules: they know a good chunk of people will be more than willing to blame eachother, or beach-goers, or protesters.

Maybe... I think it's worse than that. They've destroyed their own authority, moral and rational, because they never believed in lockdown in the first place.

Lockdown was against their economic ideology, and Johnson's facile notions of liberty and willingness to make a difficult call. I think it very much decided that people could just go and die, until it belatedly realised just how big the cost would be, that the health service couldn't possibly cope, and there would be hell to pay in popularity. Senior politicians waffle about "science" not because they're following it, but because it's a convenient fiction to hide behind so they don't have to take responsibility for political decisions. It's fudging everything and hustling us back to work because it cares more about GDP than tens of thousands of lives, it just won't come out and say so (for obvious reasons).

Behind this is I suspect also a calculation that it can burn a lot of reputation for the next three years, then splurge a load of goodwill tax breaks and public spending in the next two in the lead-up to election. In 2024, the government hopes that covid-19 will be so 2020-2021. In fact, I think that's Tory policy generally: eyes forward, don't look back. Tut at all the broken bits of the country and say "Ooh, you don't trust Labour to fix that, do you?", trying to make everyone forget the fact that the Tories broke it in the first place and that they shouldn't be judged on past performance.