Can we perhaps agree the that the response to COVID, worldwide, was essentially shit. When faced with a true crisis, the People in Charge fucking lost their minds. It’s laid bare for all to see:

Our governments have failed us worldwide.

I don’t know what we can do with that information. Feels both useless and that we’re helpless to fix it.

Australia just used police to move "close contacts" into "internment camps". Any wrong move inside would get punished by a $5000 fine.

> Hayley Hodgson [...] was ordered to go to the facility after a friend of hers tested positive for the virus and she was identified as a “close contact” by the number plate on her scooter.

> spent 14 days at the Howard Springs mandatory Covid-19 quarantine facility

> "Police officers blocked my driveway. ’What’s going on, are you guys testing me for Covid? What’s happening?’ They said, ‘No, you’re getting taken away. And you have no choice. You’re going to Howard Springs. You either come with us now, and we’ll put you in the back of the divvy van. Or you can have a choice to get a Covid cab.’

> they were even threatening me that if I was to do this again, ‘We will extend your time in here.’”

> Ms Hodgson said she told police “I don’t consent to this”, and asked why she couldn’t “just self-isolate at home”. Police responded ‘We’ve just been told from higher up where to take you. And that’s all that there is,’”.

> She was told to pack her bags and that she would be released when she tested negative. During her two-week stay she was tested three times, and each time tested negative.

> The video includes footage filmed by Ms Hodgson during her stay as she argues with a police officer at the facility, who reprimands her for leaving her cabin without a mask and threatens her with a $5000 fine.

> “I’m gonna give you a warning, yeah?” he says to her as she sits on the balcony. “It’s an official warning that you have to stay on your balcony and obey the rules while you’re here.” When she argues with the officer that the rules don’t make sense, he replies that “it doesn’t have to make sense”. [...] “Highly infectious when all of us people are negative?” she asks. “So far. The risk is still very high,” he says.

> She said at one point when she was distressed and asking to be let out of her room to go for a walk or a run, facility staff instead offered her Valium to calm down.

> Ms Hodgson said as a result of her two-week stay she had lost her casual retail job. “They compensated me $1500 for the two weeks, and that was all,” she said. “Now I’m currently unemployed because of this situation”

Full interview with recordings from inside the Australian "internment camp" https://unherd.com/newsroom/inside-australias-covid-internme...

Mirror: https://archive.ph/GQDkN

Really? I suppose you'll be able to provide proof that people were forcibly taken?

If you think that the 1:30 ratio of guns to people in the US is going to stop the government from doing whatever the fuck they want, you are suffering from a potentially terminal case of optimism. I am an ardent believer in “Those who would give up essential Liberty to purchase a little temporary Safety deserve neither Liberty nor Safety”(even though the context was the Penn family bribing the governor to avoid taxation, I still align with both the original and modern meanings), but a “well-armed militia” isn’t doing jack against an FBI task force or god forbid the military, which has recently been deployed in ever more dubiously-justifiable ways domestically.

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As much as he says a lot of stupid stuff this bleach one always annoyed me because the full clip clearly showed that he wasn't talking about bleach he was talking about looking to find something as effective as bleach, and he was repeating something from an advisor who then pretended to not hear him when he asked. It always seemed like a media setup and I always dislike those no matter how bad the target is