Calling Sweden, who took in about half a million refugees during the crisis “heartless” is a bit rich, coming from Australia with their asylum policy is hilarious.
The same people also hate our government's treatment of refugees - you can dislike more than one thing. Plus it was brought up in the context of an economist saying we should follow Sweden's model rather than bagging Sweden for fun. Personally I think our government are a moral vacuum. Many of them individually make my skin crawl, Peter Dutton who is in charge of the offshore gulags the most but #scottyfrommarketing isn't far behind.
Australia has no problem condemning people to death in that situation.
See above comments. It is despicable. I've tried to vote these bunch of cnuts our at every opportunity.
As for “elimination”, at what cost? At what point do you consider the health of the rest of country? Not least the children.
The rest of the country has mostly already eliminated covid. The economic hits are coming primarily from Victoria. Elimination is the best economic strategy for Australia although the outbreak in Victoria will make that a challenge. As for the cost the majority view (I think 63% last time I saw) was that an economic hit is worth saving as many lives as possible and the other negatives are necessary to save lives. Under 20 cases per day and NSW (a right wing state government) are seriously considering lock-down again. In the end the cost of lock-down economically and socially, not to mention morally, is far less than the alternatives. I wish we had gone harder and earlier like NZ - who are covid free and open barring the borders.
How long have the Victoria kids been in a forced lockdown since March? When were they last in school? In sport?
Schools are open unless they have an infection, then they get closed for a deep clean. I think junior sport is about to be postponed again in Victoria after recently starting again. Pro sport, or the big ones at least, have moved interstate.
And surely care home residents in Victoria have also been isolated right? In Sweden people go in care homes so late that the average life expectancy is 2 years, the reason they aren’t being taken for ICU is that they are judged to not be able to survive it.
Victoria are struggling with this although complicated by the fact that the private homes are regulated by the federal government and it is the private homes that are being hit. I suspect they are struggling to get people out fast enough and the Australia public will not tolerate this so someone will pay - hopefully the government at the polls if old people are made to pay with their lives. Then again right wing voters often have short memories it seems. I think the difference is here they might have no choice but to leave people in the homes very soon - it wasn't a deliberate policy decision.
Plus covid is reducing life expectancy by 14-17 years (not 2) here and I doubt that is because we put people in old people's homes earlier than Sweden.
I’d argue heartless is condemning non-Australians the way the Aussie government does and having no consideration for the rest of society during a pandemic much more heartless than a country that does it’s best to think of the health of everyone, including non-Swndes.
The majority view here is that Sweden and other countries like the US and UK (with added incompetence) took a deliberate choice to trade lives for the economy and that choice is unacceptable to the majority here.