Update on SA covid situation. Everyone I have spoken to is upset and anxious. We are cancelling plans and events, working from home. Great to see huge queues for testing - well done all! There are now 20 cases. Fingers crossed aged care facility doesn't have any positive cases.
Lots of people have talked about the 'complacency' in SA over the past few months. It is true we have been living a carefree existence - practicing social distancing, handwashing etc. but apart from that really back to normal. Why is that? Because we had eliminated the virus.
My point is, everyone is better off - economy, people's sense of comfort and confidence - when there is no virus. Elimination and closed borders is not bad for economy, it is only thing that gets the economy back to full health. SA seem to be aiming for elimination again. Good!
Watching restrictions go back on hospitality and entertainment, it’s clear lockdowns are terrible for those sectors and their workers should be supported. Short sharp lockdown (of sorts) is far preferable to out of control covid. Let’s get back to elimination as fast as possible.
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I note one reason for 'circuit breaker' lockdown in SA - framed as legitimate and worthwhile policy as compared to Victoria's which was framed as outrageous - is that SA Health want to give contact tracers time and space to get on top of outbreak. Imagine if Andrews had said that
I'm going to keep calling out the hypocrisy of the way the media is treating the SA quarantine breach outbreak, versus how they reported the Victorian outbreak. I hope some of the worst offenders on here (they know who they are), who roasted Andrews for MONTHS, reflect a little.
I also wanted to note that there is no point having 25km radius restriction in Adelaide, as we're a much smaller city - people don't routinely go more than 10kms from home, let along 25kms. And yes, SA's lockdown is much stricter and we accept that because elimination is worth it
It is so eerie watching SA covid outbreak unfold exactly like it did in Victoria. All the contributing factors that were never focused on in Victoria (because Dan bashing) are all at play here. Casual cleaners. Insufficient testing. Big families. Multiple vulnerable workplaces.
All the focus in Victoria by the biased media pack - not just Murdoch - all the outlets - was on Andrews and contact tracing. This narrative was perpetuated as a political narrative, starting with Morrison himself. Look what you missed! A thread 👇
Because media missed all these contributing factors by focusing on Andrews (and Sutton!), the community didn't understand these risks either. South Australians have basically been told for months that what happened in Victoria was all Andrews' fault so couldn't happen here.
I asked Victorians to tell me what’s it’s been like to live through daily barrage of biased media reporting while also dealing with covid threat. I was inundated with over a thousand replies and DMs. I wanted to summarise what everyone told me. A thread👇🏻
Here is my tweet asking for responses. You can scroll the 100s of responses. There are many common themes which show how terribly the media - national and Victorian - have failed the Victorian public during the pandemic crisis.
Many people said they felt anxious enough about covid - scared of catching it, friends and family getting it, jobs and businesses lost, lockdown isolation, missing family - and that when they turned to the media for information, they were left feeling more anxious and upset.
As Victorians breathe a well deserved sigh of relief this weekend, having smashed 2nd wave in world beating fashion, I wanted to talk about the way simplified media narratives have misled public about how dangerous ‘living alongside covid’ is. News is meant to inform. A thread👇🏻
Once media set a narrative to explain something - like Victorian second wave - they jump on it as a pack. Pack journalism reinforces and simplifies the dominant narrative so that only info that fits the narrative is included, and everything else is ignored. Journos are blinkered.
We all know what the simplified Vic covid narrative was - let’s call it ‘get Andrews’. There were two things used to explain covid spread - hotel quarantine infection and bad contact tracing. That’s it. Nothing else could permeate this simplistic narrative. It became entrenched.
I am doing some research on the impact of biased media attacks throughout Victorian second wave on the emotional state of locked down Victorians. If Victorians could respond to this tweet with short summary of their experiences of how bias impacts them, I would appreciate it 🙏🏻
If you don’t want to share publicly, DMs are open and you will remain anonymous.
The responses to this tweet are making me want to cry. I am so angry that the Victorian community has had the trauma of the covid crisis worsened by a biased media who follow the lead of the PM who threw Victorians under a bus. Journos treat it like a game. It hurts people.
The point of talking about a covid case not telling contact tracers they have been to Shepparton is not to shame that person, but to show the consequence and how virus spreads. Humans are not perfect. This is not surprising. Why aren’t we allowed to talk about this taboo topic?
One of the reasons we’re not allowed to talk about people withholding information from contact tracers is that it makes it harder to blame contact tracers for virus spreading - it doesn’t suit the Andrews’ bashing narrative. If we can’t talk about it, we can’t solve it.
Entire time this simplistic narrative ‘Victoria can’t contact trace and NSW is perfect’ has been politicised, contact tracing critiques have failed to acknowledge complexity of system that relies on humans. This is not judgement of those humans, it’s just acknowledging reality.