Slower than a speeding mollusc, weaker than a newborn kitten, unable to leap matchboxes in a single bound. Look! Up in the sky! It’s a turd. It’s a drain! It’s Scrotty from Marketing!
Yes, folks, Australia has officially gone off the cliff.
“Australia has now sprinted past 1,000 cases, with the number doubling over each of the past three days, and it is likely this acceleration is only the beginning”, according to an online report in The Guardian.
Marketing genius thinking a thunk
Last night in yet another belated “announcement”, Crime Minister Morrison stepped in front of the cameras for another confusing show-and-tell.
Cutting through the usual blather, this is the government’s latest belated response to a growing health crisis that was apparent at least a month ago:
- From midday today, registered and licensed clubs, licensed premises in hotels and pubs, entertainment venues and cinemas, casinos and nightclubs will all close.
- Restaurants and cafes will be restricted to takeaway only.
- Indoor sporting venues and places of worship will close.
- Enclosed spaces for funerals and “things of that nature” will have to follow the strict four square metre rule which will be enforced.
- On schools, Morrison said the clear medical advice is that schools should remain open. He said he does not want children to miss a school year. Victoria and NSW would re-open schools after the imminent school holiday period, he said, so long as the medical advice allowed it. Schools would move toward online learning but remain open for students who needed it, he said.
- Morrison said this was only stage one of the social distancing measures. If Australians fail to adhere to the rules, more draconian measures will be introduced.
- Stage two has not yet been defined or discussed.
- Shopping centres are not being closed, he said, and there is no reason to hoard.
- Bottle shops are also remaining open. Home deliveries and takeaway food businesses will also continue to operate.
Bottle shops are acknowledged as essential services! Well thank Christ for that!
Meanwhile in NSW there were 669 confirmed cases of coronavirus overnight, an increase of 136 in 24 hours.
What’s more, the NSW, ACT and Victorian governments ARE closing schools, clearly not convinced by the federal government’s months of floundering.
I am not convinced by Scrotty from Marketing’s sudden generosity:
“In one of the largest boosts to social security benefits in Australia’s history, government to spend $14bn over six months.”
That apparently includes almost a doubling of the miserable dole at for Aussies discarded by the economy years ago. At long fucking last!
I’ll believe that when I see it because there are victims of the bushfire crisis who lost everything still waiting for promised government assistance.
So, an additional $550 to fortnightly “Jobseeker welfare payments”.
For six months.
But not until April 27.
That will be too late for some newly jobless “quiet Australians” to pay their rent.
And after six months, support payments to Untermenschen will revert to below poverty level bread crumbs.
Long queues have formed outside Centrelink offices as people who have lost jobs because of business shutdowns respond to government advice to claim the dole.
Too bad the my.gov.au website crashed.
As it does. Often, as all Untermenschen who already rely on this dodgy platform and faceless behemoth to survive from fortnight to fortnight know through long and depressing experience.
Pity all the newbies! Those “quiet Australians” are in for the shock of their lives.
Meanwhile supermarket shelves are still being stripped bare as if by locusts and the prices of fresh food are skyrocketing: $7 for a head of lettuce, $8 for cabbage!
Stephen Koukoulas, 'Australia’s foremost economist and financial commentator' (and chief economic advisor to the former Labor government), says that because of Morrison’s laggy reluctance to do much of anything “The measures taken in response to the coronavirus crisis will… be slow to come into effect and aren’t enough.”
Meanwhile SBS news reports “Much of Europe and the United States have followed China and other Asian countries and introduced drastic restrictions to fight the new coronavirus, with most workers told to work from home and schools, bars, pubs and restaurants being closed,” and quotes a WHO expert as saying “The danger right now with the lockdowns … if we don’t put in place the strong public health measures now, when those movement restrictions and lockdowns are lifted, the danger is the disease will jump back up.”
Global COVID19 cases have surpassed 300,000.
Also, from The Guardian:
- A European clinical trial involving some 3,200 people has been launched to test four possible experimental coronavirus treatments.
- First cases of the virus have been confirmed in Syria, Grenada and Mozambique.
- The International Olympic Committee is considering postponing Tokyo 2020, saying cancellation is “not on the agenda”.
- About 1.5 million UK residents who are particularly vulnerable to coronavirus will be contacted by the NHS and advised to stay at home for 12 weeks.
- There have been 48 new deaths in the UK and 112 in France.
- German Chancellor Angela Merkel has gone into quarantine after a doctor who gave her a vaccine tests positive for coronavirus.
- Germany has banned meetings of over two people.
- 23 people have died and 83 have been left injured in overnight prison riots in Bogota as inmates demanded better protection against the virus.
As is becoming increasingly apparent, Australia’s corrupt and incompetent federal government has been far too slow in enforcing restrictions on movement and mingling, not that the thousands of dickheads swarming on Bondi Beach over the weekend gave a shit.
At least in Victoria the Andrews Labor government has established a “special taskforce” of 500 cops to “enforce the coronavirus restrictions”.
Meanwhile in the “GREAT” USA, crowds are singing “By Bye Miss American Pie” as if it was a new national anthem.
This is going to get ugly.
