Excellent article, thanks for that. I agree the Swedish model is the one I would have preferred to live under. The draconian nonsense we experienced in Austria was particularity repugnant. Certainty agree, with self isolation, masks, hand washing etc but that's just sensible stuff. If others don't want to do that they shouldn't have to my defence against that IS the self isolation, mask etc. Closing the borders was the most repugnant thing in terms of human rights I have witnessed in my short 53 years of living in Australia.

Bravo Sweden and we'll watch the fall out from this for decades to come I expect.

Dear Valley Guy,

You harp "Closing the borders was the most repugnant thing in terms of human rights I have witnessed in my short 53 years of living in Australia."

Oh give me a break. Scandinavia in total has a smaller population than Australia. The various countries there closed their borders with Sweden which has a similar population to NSW.

Was that "repugnant" of them to do so?

As to human rights what about those of the 15,000 people who are still alive in Australia because our timely health restrictions? As a Victorian I can tell you there is widespread support for what Andrews has done to get our rates back to zero.

And why in hell are you saying bravo to a country which oversaw far greater deaths due to Covid than comparable countries? What kind of warped ideological positioning allows you to think that is reasonable?

SR,

Once again you are banging on from a somewhat simplistic ideological framework.

Firstly freedom from infection is not a human right or lockdown should be permanent to prevent the 2000 - 4000 people that are killed by the normal flu every year. Whereas freedom of movement and association is a well defined human right.

Human rights can be infringed upon for the common good in emergencies, but even then it should be as short and as light as possible.

The problem with Bubonic Dan is that the Victorian second wave was entirely due to Labor's incompetence, and the lockdown measures taken were often arbitrary.

I see someone is still sulking

shonkyminister,

Dan Andrews and his government is being universally acclaimed for the quick and decisive response to the second wave of Covid-19 in Victoria. Unfortunately the same can't be said for the actions of Marshmallow Marshall and his government in South Australia. MM failed to learn from the Morrison governments error in Victoria. MM thought it a good idea to employ pizza cooks as security guards in hotel quarantine, unfortunately that was a bad idea, MM believing that strategy would solve two problems, security and meals, pizza every night for the inmates! Fortunately South Aussie not having any population to speak of, largest village being Coober Pedy (pop 27 on a hot day), didn't have any deaths. Although Marshmallow Marshall did have his army of pizza cooks on standby to act as undertakers (multitasking) should those services be required!

Pauliar,

Firstly the quarantine stuff up was the sole responsibility of bubonic Dan who refused the offer of professionals from Morrison and instead hired a bunch of clowns from his union buddies showing both incompetence and corruption in one shot.

Secondly, the infection in SA was caught quickly and contact tracing dealt with roughly a dozen infections no deaths and no economic wreckage in stark contrast to the Dandemic where 800 died and 1000s were infected and the economy stuffed.