Just an enormous inability for everyone to have a complex understanding of how this pandemic interacts with liberal democracy and capitalism and I’m going to thread this and I’m sorry

Australian Governments have taken the approach that control of the virus is mostly a calculus which weighs the effect on “the economy” vs “human life.”

Lockdowns are useful, but unless you have some people being forced to work, then the economy is too deeply impacted.

So! In order to lessen lockdowns, we close borders to try to keep the virus out. But people have to travel so we restrict entry and create a quarantine system

But we don’t think beyond housing people in hotels which are facilities custom built for having people stay for a short time not containing a virus which clearly has a very high transmission rate.

We could build comfortable and safe facilities but that would cost a lot of money and affect “the economy” (or more realistically require a bolder reorganisation of government spending governments won’t stomach).

So! We have borders, quarantines, and lockdowns as our only policy approaches. Because business still need to make money, and the government still apparently needs to subsidise mines or buy fighter jets.

People are rightly saying that border closure and lockdowns suck. They do! Restricting people entering our country sucks! But there are literally no other policy approaches the government is prepared to take.

So if they go too easy and never overreact, mass community transmission occurs and vulnerable people die. You can see that in the US capitalism and millions of deaths hasn’t become unsustainable.

I don’t think there is a position you can take on controlling coronavirus, in the existing circumstances, that isn’t a choice between shitty policies or death for thousands of older, immunosuppressed or disabled people at a minimum.

Picking at the various bits of the policy is a waste of time because the whole thing is premised on something which will only ever externalise suffering for profit.

I just don’t see how you can look at what IS and feel confident of a tweak that is inherently more moral than any other. The problem is that the options were ALWAYS going to be a choice between various evils.