Brickbat: Smoked Out

Officials in Gold Coast, Australia, have fined a woman $1,300 ($960 U.S.) for violating her hotel quarantine by having cigarettes delivered to the balcony of her room by a drone. Those entering the country are required to quarantine for two weeks. The operator of the drone may also be fined for violating safe flying rules.

Comments

[m4019597]

Canada and Australia and New Zealand have shown themselves to be unworthy of any goodwill shown to them in past decades, based on their awful behavior in the past ten years. Total garbage the way they treat their citizens. Even worse now with coronavirus.

[Kungpowderfinger]

Brits at heart.

[Kungpowderfinger]

In fact, actually:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commonwealth_realm

[KiwiDude]

Sorry but do you have any examples of this awful behaviour?

[perlhaqr]

*points at the story we're commenting on*

[Dan S.]

Why does this breach quarantine conditions? Drones can't catch COVID-19. She may not even have physically touched the drone if it dropped the cigarettes onto the balcony floor. She did not have contact with any other person during the delivery, so as far as COVID transmission is concerned, this seems perfectly safe.

[Will Nonya]

Cigarette smoke is a known vector for spreading covid. So are drone operators. Don't you science?

Besides, she clearly failed to respect their authoritah.

[mad.casual]

Without an MD after your name, how are we to know you speak the truth?

[Its_Not_Inevitable]

Maybe a journalist referred to him once (anonymously) as an "expert".

[Its_Not_Inevitable]

And I use the term "journalist" loosely.

[markm23]

She found a perfectly safe way to have stuff delivered, but has to be punished because it wasn't approved by the power-mad bureaucrats. (What is the approved method of getting necessities while quarantined in a hotel? Room service, with sky-high markups and a person actually coming into her room?)

Mad Casual: If that doctor is a government spokesman, we KNOW he's lying. Anyone else may be mistaken, with or without an MD, but aren't so likely to be lying.

[RedvBlue]

Yep, perfectly safe as far as covid goes. However, this really has nothing to do with covid and more to do with the fact that someone violated the authoritarian policies of this particular government.

[Don't look at me!]

Creative thinking is always punishable.

[Chumby]

The protests in Oz will not result in any real changes. This is the nanny state they have become.

[Earth Skeptic]

The Aussies need another genetic boost with a new wave of global "undesirables".

[Earth Skeptic]

Also, what is it about British heritage that leads to such pussy/nanny societies?

[NoVaNick]

It’s the final stage of the British Empire. This and the Royal Family becoming a tabloid joke.

[Zeb]

I don't know if it's from their heritage (or that they are particularly much worse in that way than lots of others). It's really just post WWII that it's gone that way. Something to do with the decline of an empire maybe.

[brdfshml]

shemales in leeds is very popular web place for sexy chat contacts in UK

[perlhaqr]

But enough about Parliament.

[NoVaNick]

If she had had a dildo delivered, there wouldn’t have been any problem

[Bill Godshall]

She also planned to violate the law and the hotel policy by trying to smoke in the hotel.

So, had the cigarettes been quarantined, they wouldn't transmit covid?

[NoVaNick]

Maybe she smoked on the balcony and that is ok? Probably not though since Australia is pretty anti-smoking

[Roberta]

How was she allowed to get deliveries? How were staff allowed to clean the room?

[perlhaqr]

Unspoken corrolary: The two week quarantine is also a two week fast.

[markm23]

I assume she gets food and other necessities by room service. They might leave a tray outside her door so they're almost as safe as a drone delivery, but the choices are limited, the fees and markup are sky-high, and maybe they won't deliver cigarettes at all.

Cleaning staff _could_ leave fresh linen, towels, and cleaning supplies outside her door for her to do the cleaning, but if I were a hotelier, I'd get worried about going two weeks without staff getting a look inside the room.

[buckleup]

When the GOP take over fully in 2025 we need to review all trade and military agreements with Canada, NZ, and Australia. They have violated many aspects of good governance and western democracy with their behavior during lockdowns, among other things.

[Eeyore]

We absolutely need embargoes on trade with AZ and AU now. I know it will fail, but maybe just maybe we have never embargoed correctly or hard enough.

[Agammamon]

Yeah, NZ is already halfway in bed with China right now.

Embargo and you may as well kiss that continent goodbye.

[KiwiDude]

Remember it was Nixon who went to China.

Not many people in NZ think China is anything but a big bully

[KiwiDude]

Yes our evil fucking government kept the virus out and saved a shit ton of lives but sure we could have done it the USA (USA, USA) way and be light a few thousand citizens.

NZ 0.0000052% of population dead
US 0.0018769% of population dead

So by doing things our way we had 26 dead (total), doing things your way it would be about 9300 dead

Fuck you and your country's response to a global pandemic

[perlhaqr]

Look, I get that y'all are subjects, but doesn't the taste of boot leather ever get old?

[markm23]

COVID-19 was out of control in the USA and most other nations when the Chinese and WHO were still claiming it was not contagious between humans. New Zealand is an isolated and tiny country (by population) that simply got lucky; none of your trickle of Chinese travelers were infected until later, when your authorities knew to be watching for it. Nor did you have the virus spreading through the subways of a city of over 10 million, because your largest city is Auckland with under 1.5 million with apparently no subway.

The USA did have some special screwups: We probably funded the "gain of function" research that genetically modified a bat virus to infect humans in the first place. The most prominent government spokesperson, Fauci, was involved in that and has lied about nearly everything from the beginning. The NHS, FDA, and CDC idiotically thought that a government lab, which produces small quantities of medical chemicals to test them, was the ideal place for mass production of the COVID-19 test kits - and while they were screwing that up, the FDA banned other sources from producing test kits. Trump does bear some responsibility, for not firing people from these agencies that should have been fired long ago, but the main political leaning of these agencies is the same as yours appears to be - towards increasing the role of government in spite of repeated instances of incompetence.

Then there are the governors that forced nursing homes - where the most vulnerable population is concentrated - to take recovering COVID patients. They killed tens of millions. City governments that kept subways and buses running - and in some cases, reduced the number of trains and buses in service to keep them crowded - also helped spread the disease. AND EVERY ONE OF THESE MASS KILLERS WERE DEMOCRATS, LEFTISTS, AND YOUR FELLOW TRAVELERS.

[Dillinger]

did she lick the drone?

[Fist of Etiquette]

Drone as disease vector.

[Quo Usque Tandem]

COVID has literally become the litmus test for overreach. And I hardly expect, even if all traces of it disappeared tomorrow, that we will get anywhere near the relative "freedom" we had before.

[Agammamon]

Guys, I was there in the '90's. This is the same Australia.

[Brason Tay]

ok https://morioh.com/p/46c1deb04908