We have arguments in the U.S. over the scope and scale of lockdowns, but other democracies don’t even tolerate a debate on the suspension of civil liberties.
In Australia, brutal lockdowns have kept people essentially confined to their homes for weeks and banned travel from one state to another.
Now the city of Perth in Western Australia (population 2 million) has been completely locked down for five days after a single person tested positive for coronavirus.
The afflicted person is a security guard at a hotel for quarantined travelers, and the three people he lives with have all tested negative for the virus. But that was enough to ban people from leaving their homes unless it was to buy food, exercise briefly, or keep medical appointments.
Courts in Australia have looked the other way in a country that was once one of the most respectful of individual liberty in the world. Now, freedom is turned on and off on the most arbitrary set of facts and in total disregard to science.