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31,000 Chinese students arrive in Australia despite coronavirus travel ban
By travelling to a third country and spending two weeks in self-quarantine before coming to Australia, [more than 31,000] students were able to satisfy the Department of Home Affairs' travel restrictions. After two weeks in a third country those who have travelled from China are then able to travel to Australia.
Figures from Department of Home Affairs show 31,196 Chinese students have now arrived in Australia since mid-February. The students have been arriving at a rate of about 1000 a day, according to The Sydney Morning Herald.
[...] A spokesperson for the University of Sydney told news.com.au the institution is supporting their students with counselling services and fee payment plans, and have set up a dedicated hotline to help students through what they called a "challenging time".
[...] "We won't know until census on 31 March how many of our students have been affected but we anticipate it could be up to 12,000."
[...] When the ban on non citizens travelling from China to Australia was announced in early February, 106,000 Chinese students enrolled in Australian universities were overseas.
The local education sector has been hit hard by thousands of full fee paying international students being blocked from entering the country.
In response, some institutions, including the University of Melbourne, University of Adelaide and Western Sydney University have offered grants of up to $7500 to affected students to get around the travel ban.
One Chinese student said she spent nearly $20,000 travelling from China to Thailand to self-quarantine and make it to her classes at the University of Sydney.
[...] Similar travel bans have now been extended to Iran, Italy and the Republic of Korea.
(Score: 0, Troll) by choose another one on Thursday March 19 2020, @03:20AM (1 child)
> Of course, people are stupid.... including policy makers.
Yes, but there are very few policy makers, so they don't cause much of an infection problem, the stupid masses on the other hand are why the policies fail.
There are lots of policies that _could_ contain epidemic, but none of them _do_ contain it when fuckwits don't follow the policy.
> If you know you’re infected you’re more likely to isolate yourself.
[begin rant]
Bullshit. If you are not a fuckwit you isolate yourself when you are supposed to whether infected or not, if you are a fuckwit you don't care whether you are infected or not. Aylward is projecting sensible thought and behaviour onto people who simply don't have it, testing only changes behaviour in people who aren't fuckwits, hence it changes nothing because those people will do the right thing anyway.
How many fuckwits are there? A lot. I am not even going to start on the news reports but just from the first-hand experiences of friends and family talking to me I already know of:
- a child returned from holiday in a high risk area sent to school, sick, in a face mask as a substitute for isolation (later tested +ve, other kids in class now infected, as are their families)
- couple returned from holiday in high risk area, instructed to isolate 14 days, their first step of isolation: "go out shopping", if that's not fuckwit enough, their second step was "post it on instagram"
- person sits in crowded waiting room, when called into consultation room says "I'm coronavirus positive and self isolating"
Now, I am isolated for self-protection as I am vulnerable, thus I am not getting out much and not speaking to many people right now, yet I still appear to have a fuckwit-R0 (ok, maybe its R1 really) value of 3-4. Extrapolate that out to the population and weep.
China's solution is simple - shoot the fuckwits. Eventually this leads to an evolutionary / cultural change where the fuckwits and still stupid (inevitable) but they do what they are told. In the free world the process still works, but it is Darwinian and takes a lot longer and the fuckwits cause a lot more collateral damage in the process.
Now, I normally lean towards liberal, I'm a fan of freedom, but for a while the free/western world has been suffering from a liberal/lefty/woke/PC/whatever disease, characterised by the promotion of individual freedom with collective/state/someone-else responsibility - we have the "right" to do as we want and the responsibility for the consequences rests not on us, individually or collectively, but on the state, the system, or as you say "the policy makers". Well, reality is about to smack us in the head with a large clue stick of consequences. Not sure it'll be enough though. I do know that right now I'd vote for a govt. that would shoot the fuckwits on sight and never hold elections again.
[end rant]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 19 2020, @06:37AM
All we need is a STRONG leader finally to enforce the damn policies. Under threat of death! The fuckwits can hang in the streets for all I care so long as the rest of us GOOD CITIZENS obey orders. GODANNMIT!