CV and mad panic behaviour

[ElwoodBlues1]

When the government removed the ability to litigate if the vaccines proved problematic then you created suspicion and doubt.
You also had vaccines being made available to certain age groups and other age groups were denied the same choices so you created a divide in the community.
Dan fecked up quarantine, lied so why would anyone trust anything coming out of his mouth especially a mandate supported by heavy handed police action. That's China or Nth Korean style politics...

[LP]

When the government removed the ability to litigate if the vaccines proved problematic then you created suspicion and doubt.

Why do people who can have the vaccine but refuse to have it still hold the right to sue for COVID treatment, or sue for harm as a result of failed or imperfect COVID treatment?

I have no problems with the legal stance to protect health care workers(Like your family) and the health care system, that is basically what the law is about, stopping innocent bystanders become collateral damage and stopping spurious claims being weaponised to cripple the system. At the time the laws were introduced there were doctors communicating threats made against them by the anti-vax movement, threats which were designed to scare doctors and health workers away from participation in the vaccination effort.

To me the law just didn't go far enough, if someone can have a vaccine but refuse it then they shouldn't be able to sue the health care workers or system for the harm COVID or a COVID treatment does. Refusing COVID treatment is always an option, but it seems very few do!

[Mav]

Heavy-handed police action? Wow, that's a bit of an exaggeration right there. Has a goon squad been formed I don't know about with batons at the ready?

[madbluboy]

Heavy-handed police action? Wow, that's a bit of a tell right there. Has a goon squad been formed I don't know about with batons at the ready?

A tell of what?

[LP]

a mandate supported by heavy handed police action.

Didn't the crowd charged the police [member=57]ElwoodBlues1[/member]‍ , wasn't that the moment it all changed?

Prior to that moment, the police seemed to be doing what they normally do for any such mass protest, and it was quite interesting to see the length the protestors would go to persuade the public, burly building workers dressing up as elderly women for example. Yet I'm apparently misinformed and mislead by the other side of the debate!

I don't see VicPol in clown suits or goose stepping down Collins St!

[Mav]

I'm happy to amend that, MBB. Hopefully EB can explain how the police enforcing a vaccine mandate (which is restricted at this stage to policing aggressive protests and might in future entail attending premises where unvaccinated people react aggressively to being denied entry) would be heavy handed. Should police refuse to enforce the law (as some Sheriffs do in the US)? Let's assume the Victorian Supreme Court rejects attempts to invalidate the mandate. Would it then be okay for the police to intervene if violence or criminal damage is threatened or occurring?

[LP]

Watch the news, police throwing punches football style, a senior police officer just resigned.

[member=57]ElwoodBlues1[/member]‍ acting a bit like Murdoch and misrepresenting a circumstance doesn't make a perspective right.

The officers own union issued a public statement hope that she gets the help she requires, with a message that concluded with contact details for mental health lines, I suppose not all the officer's duress is applied from one side of the debate, which seems a reasonable position given the area she specifically worked in!

[Mav]

It seems you would advocate defunding the police, EB! You know there are many occasions where the police abuse their powers but no doubt you would say that those are the exception not the rule and shouldn't be used to taint the police as a whole. Yet in this case you suggest that examples of police going off on a frolic of their own should be used to taint the laws being enforced and the lawmakers' intentions. Did Dan Andrews urge police to use unlawful force? Maybe you have some private information about that, but it doesn't seem that anything in the public domain would support such a claim.

The difficulty of putting up anecdotal evidence of police that you know is that it's hard to refute what may be patent exaggerations. But in this case I'm happy to call BS. So Dan wanted police to "arrest mums and their kids" in the playground according to your impeccable sources. Really? I'm surprised your sources were in direct contact with him. Do you think that he might have expected fines to be handed out? Maybe you could get some photos of baby-sized handcuffs police were sent to round up offending toddlers.

And it's okay for police to use pepper spray and batons on the streets but not against violent protesters? How did the anti-vaxxers obtain an immunity from methods the police use generally? If you don't like the use of pepper spray and batons, you should be campaigning against their use by police, period. Tell your police mates/family they should refuse to carry them or use them. Make a stand on ethics which isn't situational. 

[Thryleon]

You must watch different TV Thry.  Dr Norman Swan is a regular on the ABC (TV and radio) and responds to questions from the punters.  Many other doctors, epidemiologists, immunologists, scientists, the team that does the modelling for the CHO, the Doherty Institute, the Garvan Institute, etc, etc are also regulars.

All I am trying to say, is compare this to the coverage Megan Markle received when her and Harry shed their royal titles for a moment or the latest series of the bachelor.  I say a proper community engagment Q&A not reporters asking stage managed questions.  If Joe Bloggs from Croydon could send in a question, it would go much further than a reporter asking someone a staged managed question, but I also recognise that these things could be twisted by the wrong people, and that the answers are not clear cut too in some cases which could also cause a bit of a stir (in fact, this might be more of an issue than not).

The ABC isn't quite the place for a lot of the people who would rather watch netflix and pay tv, and I recognise the challenge, but I think there is a disconnect between government and capturing the publics attention, and I point back to the echo chamber that is the internet (and is definately the tool of choice for the people most likely to resist vaccination).

I've found out more information from the show question everything which is rather satirical, and this forum than I have from the idiot box.  There is a reason it has that term, but frankly, thats where this should be run and won.

I know plenty of people who turned off the press conferences, when it became very apparent that they weren't being transparent with what they knew (*but I understand that its difficult to be that transparent when you are quoted as stating you will provide 4000 beds).  I had never heard of Norman Swan until your post as one more example of what I am talking about. 

The thing is that the conspiracy theorists, anti-vaxxers and neo-nazis are deaf to science and logic.

This is not what these people are.

Anti-Vaxxers.  They are not instituting the final solution.  Most of them actually live their lives a bit like hippies.  They eat clean, they grow their own produce, they shop at farmers markets, they buy natural remedies, they try and stay organic, they have gluten/fodmap diets and intolerances or generally just a bit of different (note, different, not better or worse) view of what is healthy for people.  They are very conscious of what goes into their bodies and dont necessarily believe that modern medicine is out to help people because unfortunately, we live a very consumer based lifestyle, and lots of our modern medicines are synthetic versions of naturally occurring things that are being monetised in the health system (according to them, I recognise, that this is not 100% correct, but there are circumstances where it is).  These are the people I know of.  They live in green wedge, and try and get outdoors, walk around in nature barefoot to ground themselves and believe that community is important, and they have been isolated from their support networks.  They do tend to get hoodwinked by the Qanon conspiracies, and believe in a bunch of crap to go with it, but they do no harm to others and tend to look at most of the Trumpish stuff from the sidelines (genuinely the people I know, are your stand up, walk hard, corporate white collar types) but have genuinely been left with a feeling of not knowing what to believe anymore.

Neo-nazis.  Who are these people?  Where do you find them, and what subset of society do they actually occupy?  The answer, is that this is a throw away term to label people who just dont see the world the way people do.  Conspiracy theorists...  Its the year 2021, and we label a hair dryer with warning labels, not to use in the shower.  Some of them are just idiotic, but the reality is, that the internet is a powerful propaganda tool, and instagram is perpetuating false body images to people who should and do know better, but cannot see past the filters because of a trigger it gives them.  Flat earthers are a thing again, because some very convincing arguments make their way onto the internet, until you remember about the story of Eratosthenes, and how he was able to guess the circumference of the earth within a very small variance of error, just by measuring the suns shadow. 

I prefer to put these people in a different camp.  They are just like those suffering with poor mental health.  They usually latch onto these things, to explain away part of life that they cannot rationalise in their own minds.

How do we deal with people suffering with their mental health?  We dont judge them, we support them, we listen to them, and once they feel heard, usually they start to heal and will come along.

Mav stated something earlier about the mandates abroad.  These sections of society exist everywhere, and there are varying degrees with how this will be policed.  In Greece, the majority of the country has been non smoking for the last 20 years but it was common to see people smoking right next to a no smoking sign with no ramification.  The cultures are different, and there are better ways to bring these people to the party.  Hell, letting them have the experience of finding out a loved one got sick with COVID, will make it real enough for them to buy in, and these guys are not going to flood the system.

[capcom]

There is SOOO much to play out here, it is becoming really serious.  The wagons are circling.