South Australian Dictatorship Momentarily Averted. Would-be Dictator Blames Pizza Worker
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A strict six-day plan for a coronavirus lockdown in South Australia was abandoned after just one day when it was revealed that the idea was based on a misleading statement made by one person to contact tracers.

The six-day order turning the province into a prison camp was intended to go into effect at midnight on November 19. The list of closures included:

  • All schools closed;
  • Universities closed;
  • All outdoor exercise and sports banned;
  • Visits to nursing homes and care facilities banned except for end-of-life visits;
  • All restaurants closed, including takeout;
  • Elective surgeries postponed;
  • Construction industry shut down;
  • Real estate transactions cancelled;
  • Weddings banned;
  • Funerals banned.

In addition, according to Australia’s ABC News, under the lockdown all citizens were to “stay at home, except when completing essential activities.” People would be allowed to leave home “to seek medical care or provide care for another person.” And, only “one person per household will be allowed to shop for food once per day.”

The new stringent lockdown was intended to counter a supposedly elevated deadly threat from the coronavirus. South Australian would-be dictator Steven Marshall called the effort a “circuit breaker” — as if peoples’ lives are mere mechanisms to be turned on or off at his whim. 

“We continue to face our biggest test to date,” Marshall said, warning: “We are going hard and we are going early. Time is of the essence.”

South Australian chief public-health propagandist professor Nicola Spurrier said, spuriously, that the region faced an outbreak of a new and deadly and fast spreading super COVID. “It has a very, very short incubation period,” Spurrier said. She continued to stoke public fear by outlining a fantasy scenario of what the virus might be doing: “It may be that the virus is spreading rapidly in the community, but it could just be the nature of the individuals infected,” she said. “We know this virus is prone to super spreader events, so it could be that there was a superspreader event.”

Note Spurrier’s uncertainties here: The virus “may be” spreading; it “could be” the nature of “individuals infected.” It “could be that there was a super spreader event.” These are admissions that the bureaucrats have no idea what they are talking about and that their lockdown policies are based on nonsense.

Not surprisingly, all of this turned out be baseless fearmongering, and now the six-day hyperlockdown has been abandoned.

South Australian officials admitted the panicked measures were implemented based on a man who claimed he came down with COVID after picking up a pizza at a restaurant. This apparently led officials to believe that pizza could also deliver coronavirus along with cheese and sausage, sparking the lockdown. “The concern, then, was this [infection] had gone out on a [pizza] box,” Dr. Chris Moy, South Australian president of the Australian Medical Association told the Sydney Morning Herald. In fact, the man had not picked up coronavirus along with his pizza. He had, instead, actually been employed at the restaurant where he had worked “for several shifts as a kitchen hand,” according to Australian news portal Nine.

Dictator Marshall indicated that he was frustrated that South Australia had been misled by the situation.

“To say I am fuming about the actions of this individual — is an absolute understatement,” Marshall said. He continued: “This selfish actions of this individual have put our whole state in a very difficult situation.” 

Marshall concluded: “His actions have affected businesses, individuals, family groups and is completely and utterly unacceptable.”

In fact, Marshall is shamefully using the person who lied about contracting the virus via pizza as his scapegoat. That person did not, in fact, lockdown the region — the government led by Marshall did. That person did not close businesses and hurt families and individuals. The government of South Australia did.

Forcing the closure of businesses, eliminating or even merely curbing the right even to go outside one’s home, preventing people from engaging in leisure and work activities, and more is outrageous tyranny. Imposing these measures on an entire populace via executive action is dictatorial behavior in keeping with precedent set by such luminaries as Stalin, Hitler, Mao, and Pol Pot, to name a few.

Paraphrasing Thomas Jefferson, opposition to these tyrants and despots is loyalty to humanity and to humanity’s God.