How does it feel to be That One Guy? That person who refuses to admit defeat, and sits, muttering, “I still say…”, long after everyone else has moved on and is having a good time without you? I’m looking at you, Mark McGowan and Jacinda Ardern.
Western Australia and New Zealand are among the last holdout hermit kingdoms (keeping company with the likes of Angola and Rwanda — how proud you must be!). Everywhere else, even if they won’t openly say so, the Covidians have realised that Omigodicron is the endgame for the festival of absolute power they’ve enjoyed for the past two years. Hell, even the Australian government is grudgingly, kinda-sorta, opening our international borders (unless, of course, you’re a tennis player or surfer who refuses to submit to a forced medical procedure).
Still, I guess your dear leaders must be doing a bang-up job keeping the scary, scary Omnimegatron variant out, huh?
Western Australia’s disaster response group is preparing for what McGowan government insiders now consider an inevitable explosion in Omicron cases behind the state’s closed border.
Two days after WA Health Minister Amber-Jane Sanderson conceded the previously Covid-free state would need to aim to manage rather than eliminate Omicron, the McGowan government outlined some of the steps it was preparing to take as case numbers climbed.
The Australian
Dear, oh dear, it really is a tricky liddle virus. But, if closed borders won’t keep the evil Armageddatron variant out, then absolutely a bit of porous fabric will. Besides, even if masks don’t stop the virus, they’re absolutely useful to authoritarian bullies, who can tell at a glance who is being meekly submissive or not.
Hence the mania for useless mask mandates. In what is surely one of the most pointlessly evil policies imaginable, WA is forcing children as young as seven to wear masks in school.
Not to be outdone, Ardern is imposing an equally nonsensical regime of on-again-off-again mask rules.
Hospitality bosses have criticised the Government’s new mask rules, with one saying say the new policies are an “absolute joke”.
Masks must now be worn at businesses that serve food and beverage apart from when people are eating or drinking, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said.
In practice, diners will now be asked to wear masks when getting up from a table to use the bathroom.
Leo Molloy, owner of Headquarters at Auckland’s Viaduct Basin, said the Government needs to consult with the hospitality industry before shaping their policy, as most of their rules weren’t fit for purpose.
“Now all the customers have to wear a mask while going to the toilet, which is bizarre,” he said.
If we can eat and drink without a mask on, there was no rationale for the customers to go to the bathroom with a mask on, he said.
NZ Herald
There’s a very simple rationale, really: control.
To paraphrase Theodore Dalrymple’s observations on communist propaganda, the purpose of mask rules is not to protect, but to enforce abject humiliation. Every time a diner takes a mask on or off, as they rise and sit at the table, they are reminded in the most humiliating fashion just who is in control.
It also reminds restauranteurs that they have been made complicit in an authoritarian regime. Every business owner who enforces these nonsense rules is, whether voluntarily or otherwise, agreeing to become a government enforcer and snitch.
If you’ve ever wondered how the Stasi ruled with such an iron fist, you’re learning by doing.