Welcome to Queensland

I am truly baffled by anti-vaxxers, especially in a country like Australia where the health system is the best I’ve experienced anywhere in the world with the most diligent and skilled medical professionals I could wish for.? And so, it seems to me that anti-vaxxers are becoming more vociferous due to their scepticism of politicians rather than any wholescale distrust of medical science.

And on that score – who can blame them.??I write this note from government mandated hotel quarantine in Brisbane at cost of $300 per night (coffee extra). ?This despite my six negative PCR tests in the last ten days; my blood tests with sky high antibody levels and also the small matter of my double dose vaccination administered in Queensland.

I’ve been away working in Chile for a few months and their approach to covid management puts Australia to shame but more of that later. With my Chilean visa expiring and my eldest daughter graduating from junior school next week, I took a deep breath and flew back Brisbane fifteen days before her graduation ceremony. ?I arrived in Sydney with a sheaf of medical documentation and was allowed to enter New South Wales freely.?After a rapid negative PCR test at the airport, I flew up to Brisbane and was quickly placed under armed guard before finding myself three hours later in room 302 at Rydges Hotel in Southbank. Welcome to Queensland !

The fire escape plan on the back of the door told me that Room 302 is the smallest room in the hotel, and it has no balcony or a window that that can be opened. ?It looks over rail tracks and a concrete busway and is not somewhere you want to be confined for one day, never mind fourteen.?On day two of quarantine, my amazing wife led our daughters through some off limit areas in the Queensland Convention Centre and found a fire-door that came out on to the fire escape a few floors beneath my window. The kids got to wave up at me as a few yards away, two armed soldiers watched on – just in case my wife had a set of ropes and bolt cutters to get me out.

Every day I get a call from Queensland Health to enquire about my mental (but not physical) health. Ever day I ask for an exemption on health grounds given that I have now had three negative PCR tests since I landed in Australia and I have a friend's apartment I can go to where I can isolate completely on my own. They tell me are still considering my application but there is a backlog - Oh really !!

They finish the call by reminding me to obey the instructions of the Chief Medical Officer at all times. ?They are all nice people, so I bite my tongue about the reason I’m stuck in here which is that the recently departed Chief Medical Officer of Queensland did what she could to undermine confidence in the Astra Zeneca vaccine. ?This was before she underwent rapid political conversion therapy and become a vaccine zealot. Too late though, to stop Queensland vaccination rates lagging well behind Sydney and Melbourne and the resultant border and quarantine chaos.?Truly a self-inflicted problem. ?

I’ve just experienced three months living in Chile which has a very different approach to managing covid than we do in Australia.?Every public place such as an office building, restaurant, hotel, gym for example has a thermometer at the entrance and everybody uses it and cleans their hands with sanitation gel before entering. ??The larger shopping centres have big screen heat cameras at the entrances to identify people with elevated temperatures and car parks have an attendant that checks as you go through the boom gate. ?Everybody wears masks. Nobody protests. Nobody gets violent.

Chileans must have proof of vaccination status on their phone app to do things like enter a gym or eat inside a restaurant. ?Nobody is marching in the streets or screaming about civil liberties and this in a country with big political divides where loud street protests are normal.?Instead, the Chileans are all behaving like adults that care about the common good of their fellow citizens. ?There are some people in Chile that cannot be vaccinated or do not want to be vaccinated and that right is respected. ?But the right of the greater population to be protected as much as possible from infection spread is also respected even if the science of the virus is still evolving.

When I arrived in Chile, my vaccinations were checked and I was given a PCR Test at the airport and taken into10 days quarantine at a place of my choosing.??I chose a hotel apartment with a window that opened and people from the ministry of Health visited me once or twice a day to make sure I was where I should be.?None of them had guns. ??

It took Chile a little while to get their vaccination app working for foreigners that were vaccinated outside Chile, and so for six weeks I couldn’t go to a gym or eat in a restaurant, but I shopped at supermarkets and cooked at home, and I felt safe.?Here was government, and business and a population doing practical things to control covid while allowing life to continue as normally as possible.

Shopping centres in Chile have big screen video thermometers at entrances and store owners inside also check temperature of every customer to minimise chances of covid transmission. In contrast, one of Australia’s biggest retailer groups is loudly promoting the view that it should be shopping centres only that are responsible for checking temperatures and not individual retailers inside. Why can’t it be both as it is in Chile??

What do we think of Australian retailers that want to cram as many people as they can into their shops but expect someone else to do the covid screening for them and then expect the public health system to deal with any covid infections they may have prevented. We also have self interested airline CEOs advocating for airlines to be allowed to keep flying with as few restrictions as possible, even though in the words of one CEO, “some people will die”.? Well maybe not, if we just check the vaccination status and temperature of every passenger on all flights domestic and international.

By day seven of quarantine, I was getting a bit bored, so I turned on the TV and watched Senator Jackie Lambie obliterate one of her opponents in Parliament. ?Leaving aside her theatrical shouting and “goddamns”, I found myself (almost unbelievably) agreeing with every single word as she spelled out what it meant to be a responsible adult during covid. As Senator Lambie said; “People that decide not to get a cab licence are not being discriminated against when we don’t let them drive cabs”. ?The Chilean population also takes the view that people that are not vaccinated are not being discriminated against when they are not allowed into restaurants or indoor public places where there may be vulnerable people present. ?

On a human level, I believe that it’s simply about each of us in Australia being grateful that we live in a wonderful country with a great medical system and I personally believe we should trust our doctors. ?We should also feel responsibility to the community that we are part of.? My experience in Chile was that business owners and the general population are on the whole behaving like adults and as a result, the country is functioning well and managing covid responsibly. ?In Australia, the covid point scoring by some politicians and the sense of entitlement by some of our citizens and businesses is simply embarrassing when compared to the community focused behaviour I experienced in Chile.

Ten years ago in Brisbane, I worked with a lady who lost her newborn child to whooping cough that was transmitted to her baby in the hospital by an unvaccinated adult. At the time, one of my own children had just been born and so that tragic situation has always stayed very vivid in my memory.? Whatever you believe about covid, it does seem to be evidence that some people, especially the elderly and people with auto-immune conditions are very vulnerable to the virus.? Even if some people have personal doubts about that, I still find it very difficult to understand the demands of unvaccinated people to have the right to enter workplaces or public spaces like restaurants where there may be vulnerable people present. how would any of us feel if we knew we were that unvaccinated person that transmitted a virus that caused a death.

Here in Queensland, on day nine of quarantine, I have just been given a new room (425) at the front of the hotel and I feel like I have won the lottery.?I have a balcony and fresh air and the sun is shining and I must be honest and admit that the food at Rydges has been good.?My beautiful wife has also sent me a coffee plunger and an exercise bike, so life is better.?Only five more days to go!

The views published here are my personal views and do not represent the views of my employer or any of the organisations I am associated with. ??

The fact I found the time to put this down on paper tells you how much time I have on my hands in quarantine and also that I have watched every single Scottish international football game I can find on You tube from 1972 to the present day.