As reported previously in the Trends Journal, the province of Victoria, Australia has imposed some of the longest and strictest quarantines in the world despite the minute amount of deaths from the virus (820 deaths in a population of nearly 6.4 million or 0.013 percent).
In addition to destroying businesses and causing suffering from isolation, for one man, his love of chicken curry cost him a chunk of his bank account.
In Melbourne, Noel Atkinson, a 48-year old construction worker who had emigrated from India, drove about 18 miles from his home to a Melbourne restaurant that cooked his favorite curry dish. As it turned out, he never got the curry. Police, seeing a driver breaking a quarantine curfew restriction, pulled him over and imposed a fine of U.S. $1,230.
Mr. Atkinson was both perplexed and outraged, telling an interviewer, “I just had a craving for the curry. It reminded me of home.”
As an essential worker in construction, Mr. Atkinson was allowed to travel more during the day than most. He didn’t realize driving to the restaurant in the evening was against the quarantine. He told the interviewer, “I have to risk my life to go to work, but I can’t risk my own life to get food. That’s a bit unfair.”
“Breathtakingly Arrogant”?
On 31 August, another Australian suffered the indignity and expense of a minor quarantine infraction. In Perth, police caught a man using a ladder to sneak out of his hotel room to visit his girlfriend.
The man, Yusuf Karakaya, had flown to Perth from Sydney after being given an exemption to travel to see his uncle. Visiting quarantine rules required he restrict all movements to his hotel room for 14 days. But he was seen sneaking out a window of his room where a friend waited for him with a car.
According to the ABC News affiliate in Australia, the man was arrested. When it came out that he had been sneaking out to see his girlfriend a number of times before being caught, the judge ordered him to jail where he had to serve one month of a six-month suspended sentence. During sentencing, the judge told the man, “Your actions were reckless… you chose to roll the dice with other people’s lives and that is breathtakingly arrogant.”
Around that same time, another Perth resident was fined $3,000 after a citizen reported to the police that the man was seen walking to a nearby beach. Turned out he had not yet spent the imposed 14-day quarantine after returning from overseas.
A professor of economics at RMIT University in Melbourne, Robert Hoffman, commented, “Everyone is operating in a crazy world where our normal rational decision-making goes out the window.”
Global Insanity
More recently, on 7 December, police in Taiwan issued a $3,500 fine after a man broke the quarantine rule for less than 10 seconds. CNN reported that the man fined was a Philippine migrant worker required to maintain a 14-day quarantine. Surveillance cameras installed in the hotel where he was staying caught him leaving his room, and a staff member immediately called in the Department of Health.
According to Business Insider, “Health officials said the man had left his room for eight seconds to leave something at the door of his friend, who was staying on the same floor of the hotel.”
Throughout most of western Europe, as new restrictions were imposed in the autumn to deal with the so-called “second wave,” more people began breaking curfews and quarantines, demanding more freedom. In response, governments are getting tougher:
- Belgian Prime Minister Alexander De Croo made it clear in a TV interview last October that, “We won’t be issuing any warnings anymore. Those who don’t follow the rules get a €250 fine [$294], to be collected immediately.”
- In Italy, new rules include mandatory face masks outdoors with fines in the €400 to €1,000 range. Breaking quarantine can lead to 18 months in jail and a €5,000 ($6,000) fine.
- In Canada, police have issued over 70 fines for violation of the country’s Quarantine Act. According to the Public Health Agency of Canada, more than one million people entering the country since the spring were forced into a 14-day quarantine with close to 250,000 travelers cited by police as potential violators. Fines ranged up to $1,275.
TRENDPOST: In fighting the COVID War, the “authorities” are making up rules and regulations as they march forward and move backward.
The CDC continues to make it up as they go along. At first, they said wearing masks were ineffective to stop the virus, but, then, after getting political pressure, they said we should wear them. (See our 3 November article, “FACING THE TRUTH, PART II: MORE EVIDENCE MASKS ARE INEFFECTIVE.”)
Now, after telling people they must quarantine for 14 days if they came from another nation/state/city or were exposed to someone with the virus or had caught it, on 2 December, the CDC changed their minds, stating “a 14-day quarantine can impose personal burdens that may affect physical and mental health as well as cause economic hardship that may reduce compliance.”
Then, just eight days later, the CDC endorsed the longer, more taxing restriction: “CDC continues to endorse quarantine for 14 days and recognizes that any quarantine shorter than 14 days balances reduced burden against a small possibility of spreading the virus.”
Yet, despite the “small possibility of spreading the virus,” people’s lives and livelihoods continue to be regulated and tampered with by outside forces which have been ordained by the media and governments as the sole authorities to regulate much of humanity.