Australia, Omicron, and the Red Death
Australia, Omicron, and the Red Death
But the Prince Prospero was happy and dauntless and sagacious. When his dominions were half depopulated, he summoned to his presence a thousand hale and light-hearted friends from among the knights and dames of his court, and with these retired to the deep seclusion of one of his castellated abbeys. This was an extensive and magnificent structure, the creation of the prince's own eccentric yet august taste. A strong and lofty wall girdled it in. This wall had gates of iron. The courtiers, having entered, brought furnaces and massy hammers and welded the bolts. They resolved to leave means neither of ingress nor egress to the sudden impulses of despair or of frenzy from within. The abbey was amply provisioned. With such precautions the courtiers might bid defiance to contagion. The external world could take care of itself. In the meantime it was folly to grieve, or to think. The prince had provided all the appliances of pleasure. There were buffoons, there were improvisatori, there were ballet-dancers, there were musicians, there was Beauty, there was wine. All these and security were within. Without was the "Red Death".
—Edgar Allan Poe, The Masque of the Red Death
More than any other country on earth, Australia meant to insulate itself from the Red Death, i.e., Coronavirus.
Australia has even implemented Nazi-style concentration camps for those who refuse vaccines and those who might have come in contact with an infected person.
But those are internal measures. Australia closed its borders to anyone who is not “fully vaccinated,” a term whose definition changes with the ticking of the clock. No one can visit Australia, not even citizens, unless they are double-vaccinated and boosted. Their borders are officially closed. As secure as Prospero’s abbey.
In the Poe story, the prince throws a magnificent ball for the pretty people who are fully vaccinated and educated, like the revelers at Barack Obama’s birthday bash in Martha’s Vineyard.
It was towards the close of the fifth or sixth month of his seclusion, and while the pestilence raged most furiously abroad, that the Prince Prospero entertained his thousand friends at a masked ball of the most unusual magnificence.
—Poe, Edgar Allan. The Masque of the Red Death . Kindle Edition.
In mid-June, Australia began rolling out stay-at-home orders and imposed its vaxxed-only entry mandate. That means it is towards the close of the fifth or sixth month of its seclusion.
Like Prospero’s magnificent ball, Australia requires masks on everyone, everywhere, and its police forces seem to relish beating, kicking, and otherwise molesting citizens caught without a mask.
The Aussie regime takes its masquerade balls terribly seriously.
And then came Omicron.
And thus too, it happened, perhaps, that before the last echoes of the last chime had utterly sunk into silence, there were many individuals in the crowd who had found leisure to become aware of the presence of a masked figure which had arrested the attention of no single individual before. And the rumour of this new presence having spread itself whisperingly around, there arose at length from the whole company a buzz, or murmur, expressive of disapprobation and surprise—then, finally, of terror, of horror, and of disgust.
—Poe, Edgar Allan. The Masque of the Red Death . Kindle Edition.
Despite its vaxxed-only entry rules, at least five people on the continent of Australia have the dreaded Omicron. And despite its “unusually mild” symptoms, Australia today announced an extension of its border restrictions while it evaluates the spread.
It is likely that many more cases of Omicron will emerge soon in Australia. All five cases involve people who recently returned from Africa. They flew on long flights with many other people, all vaccinated and smug in their masks. Assuming Coronavirus follows the pattern of every other virus in history, successive waves of the infection will become increasing transmissible (more easily spread) and increasingly mild. (This is a form of natural selection.)
And now was acknowledged the presence of the Red Death. He had come like a thief in the night. And one by one dropped the revellers in the blood-bedewed halls of their revel, and died each in the despairing posture of his fall. And the life of the ebony clock went out with that of the last of the gay. And the flames of the tripods expired. And Darkness and Decay and the Red Death held illimitable dominion over all.
—Poe, Edgar Allan. The Masque of the Red Death . Kindle Edition.
Given the pattern most viruses follow, it is unlikely Australia’s paranoid and tyrannical leaders will suffer Prospero’s fate—being brutally killed by the Red Death he’d built a fortress to avoid. It is more likely that Omicron will expose the malignant folly of Australia’s policies. Everyone will get the virus, few will suffer severely.
Instead, Australia might be the case the proves our recommendation of May 2020, reiterated last Saturday, was the right approach all along.
The humane approach to Coronavirus has been and remains to open up and let it spread, to treat cases early with proven therapeutics of Ivermectin and HCQ, and to return to normal immediately.
But we shall see. Tyrants tend to double down. The Australian dictatorship, facing humiliation of having been criminally wrong in adopting Nazi-era remedies, could decide to silence its enemies.
The same could happen here, too. Tyrants hate being proven wrong.
UPDATE: And now, this from The Gateway Pundit:
