Australian gov to use facial recognition and GPS tracking to enforce quarantine

This probably doesn’t come across to an international audience but Australia is in a really weird state at the moment.

On one hand you have QLD/SA/WA which are probably the places least effected in the world by COVID. QLD for example with a population of 5.2 million has had a total of 7 deaths from COVID over the entirety of the pandemic. Schools, shops and workplaces have all been pretty much running as normal the last 18 months in these states.

On the other hand you have the South East states which have large active delta outbreaks and have gone through long lockdowns, especially Victoria. These states have given up eliminating COVID and are planning on letting COVID spread as vaccination rates meet targets.

Residents from the SE states are effectively locked out from the rest of Australia. State borders are shut and have been on and off for much of the pandemic. Thus Australia is in some ways operating as two countries at this stage.

What’s more international travel to Australia is effectively shutoff. The only people allowed back are Australians and there is a wait list and you better be planning on moving back to live permanently.

Obviously no one wants to split the country in half. No one wants suspend international travel indefinitely. In particular the federal government views its reelection chances as effectively riding on getting things to a semblance of normality by Christmas.

Yet residents of places like SA and WA obviously do not want to give up their COVID free status.

Hence you see the search for solutions like this. The app does address a genuine problem. In particular, hotel quarantine was introduced in Australia after home quarantine failed due to wide spread non-compliance. Yet it is expensive , capacity is limited and hotels aren’t great quarantine facilities in the first place. Sealed windows and shared ventilation systems in particular are problematic.

Whether or not the trade off in tracking people for two weeks is worth it, I’m not sure.

I don’t think these measures will be around permanently though. The slightest suggestion of permanent measures has been slapped down hard so far.

> I would rather anti-vaxers leave the country than continue to hang around, yes

Those supposed 'anti-vaxers' are more or less guaranteed to be vaccinated for nearly all diseases just like I assume you (and others who insist on calling anyone who is not toeing the party line by that epithet) are.

Some people have natural immunity from having had SARS2.

Some people are being advised by their doctors not to take the current crop of vaccines.

Some people deem their risk from contracting SARS2 lower than the risk of side-effects from the current crop of vaccines.

Bodily autonomy is an essential part of a liberal democracy.

If you are vaccinated you are mostly protected so why worry over those who do not get vaccinated? They run a higher risk of contracting SARS2, they have a higher risk of ending up in a hospital, they run a higher risk of needing intensive care and they have a higher risk of succumbing to the disease compared to vaccinated people in their own age and risk group. These are all risks to their own health, something you might find stupid and unreasonable but... it is their own choice. The only possible argument you might have in a country with socialised health care (like Oz) is that they may run up health care costs due to their refusal to take the vaccine. Those same people might respond that they do not want the vaccines because they fear potential side effects somewhere down the line. Given the limited amount of long-time experience with mRNA vaccines in humans this is not an unfounded risk, although most side effects seem to occur within 6 months of vaccination and as such should have already become visible.

Have you seen the movie 'Babe', the one about the pig which acted like a dog? Do you remember how the sheep in that movie called anything which they deemed to be a threat a 'wolf', leading to a field full of sheep bleating 'wolf' in sheep-speak to each other and to the supposed wolf? Calling anyone who shows the slightest hesitancy towards these rather new vaccines 'anti-vaxxers' (the word seems to be mostly spelled with two 'x'-es) is comparable to how those sheep reacted.

Don't be a sheep, Australia has enough of them already.

Why can't they use ankle monitors that they give people who are under house arrest?

> rather than in a state-run, guarded, hotel room, or without regular police visits to their home

Ah yes these are totally normal things for a democratic country to do

At what point do you kill those that dare live their lives? This happened a generation ago to my people, they said we carried typhus and needed to be cleansed for the public health. Never again, huh?