Closing the borders

is causing some problems?

Our state government asked for all international flights to be cancelled for three days at the beginning of this week. There was a good reason for this. The number of Covid cases in hotel quarantine has gone up again. The last thing the government wants is for these to extend into the community.

I will admit to some concerns about shortly spending three days at a craft fair. I have had my 'flu vaccination but I have not yet had my Covid vaccination. I have tried but it has not been possible. I will be careful but being careful is not the answer to everything. Like everyone else I know we would like life to get back to "normal" - or something like it was once before - pre-pandemic.

And yes, I know there are people  who are stranded overseas who would like to be here. They believe things are very different here. In a way they are. We are out and about now. People are off to the footy! 

I have a cousin who lives in London. He and his partner had planned to be back here over the summer. They haven't been able to come. Given the opportunity they would but they aren't agitating to come. They are simply being careful where they are. It isn't that they would not like to be here enjoying the "freedom" we currently have but that they know their home for the last thirty years has been in London. They own a flat in central London. It's tiny but it is theirs. They have worked there. Most of their friends live there. They may yet retire here but they live there. 

There are other people in similar situations. They have been away from Downunder for more than "a couple of years" and had no plans to return pre-pandemic. Now they want to "come home" because of the pandemic, because of the restrictions, because they are no longer employed, and much more. 

There are also people who went off on holiday - despite being warned against it - or stayed away on "working holidays". They didn't heed the warnings about "come home before it is too late". There is a mother saying she has not seen her three year old because she allowed the child to go on holiday with grandparents to India. That was twelve months ago - just before the borders closed. The warnings were there but they weren't heeded. There is someone who told me recently of a cousin-by-marriage stuck in a south-east Asian country. Getting him home is going to be interesting and the police might be interested in his return too. Worried about Covid? Yes.

But I think we also need to think about people here. Do we bring in a thousand or more people a week and place them in quarantine - quarantine which is not totally secure  - and risk bringing in the highly contagious mutant strains of the virus? Or do we say to people who could have come home much earlier but made a deliberate choice not to do it ,"Sorry mate but not just at the moment"? 

My own view is that we should keep the borders as tightly closed as possible. There should be no "repatriation" flights for now. The economic cost would be horrendous but letting loose the virus into the community would be far costlier. I am told that this is "selfish" but my thoughts go a little further than that. If we can keep the virus away from here then we can do more to help in places where the virus is rampant. We can produce millions of doses of the vaccine and work through Covax to get it to where it is needed most.

I really am rather tired of people whining about wanting to "come home" when they have been living somewhere else for many years and had no intention of returning until it seemed more convenient to live here.