I hope everyone is travelling well and getting through this.

[rev]

‘It’s a no-brainer’: Experts call for quarantine sites to be moved out of cities

Health experts are calling on the federal government to build regional quarantine stations as the Holiday Inn hotel quarantine coronavirus cluster that sparked a five-day lockdown in Victoria continues to grow.

International arrivals into NSW and Queensland will double on Monday, with NSW accepting more than 3000 people a week, but Victoria has halted all arrivals.

Premier Daniel Andrews previously flagged wanting Victoria to accept “hundreds” of arrivals each week, but on Friday he said there needed to be a “cold, hard discussion” about whether to cut the numbers returning to Australia now the more infectious British coronavirus strain was circulating.

Adrian Esterman, chair of biostatistics and epidemiology at the University of South Australia, said cities were not designed for quarantine and, until recently, it had taken place in more remote locations such as islands or regional sites.

“Typically, the people working in city quarantine hotels are poorly paid, travel home on public transport, and spread it to their families,” he said. “That’s what happened in Melbourne.”

He said staff in regional quarantine stations lived on-site and if there was a leak, it was confined to the station and unlikely to spread to big cities. “It’s a no-brainer.”

Professor Esterman said the federal government had abdicated its responsibility on quarantine, passing the buck to states and territories.

“It is absolutely a federal government issue,” he said.

Section 51 of the Australian constitution gives the Commonwealth quarantine powers, but it is not an exclusive power, meaning the states’ public health safeguards operate alongside it. While the Commonwealth could have taken over quarantine, it has not and states have not lobbied for it to.

While Victoria’s third lockdown was caused by more leaks from hotel quarantine, Mr Andrews has repeatedly insisted the state has the country’s strongest hotel quarantine system.

Professor Esterman said the Victorian hotel quarantine system was one of the best due to its strict testing regime and the ban on workers having second jobs. But he said poor ventilation continued to be an issue and this could be improved by rolling out air purifiers in every room.

“They would get rid of a huge amount of virus in the air,” he said.

Mike Toole, an epidemiologist at the Burnet Institute, said in an ideal world, every Australian city would have access to a quarantine facility like the one in Howard Springs, near Darwin.

“It has single-storey cabins that are joined but there are no airconditioning ducts,” he said. “They have individual airconditioning units and verandas where you can sit out and get some fresh air.

“It’s a 30-minute drive to the Royal Darwin hospital so it really fulfils everything you’d love to have in a quarantine facility.”

The site has so far taken 3781 people arriving on repatriation flights. The former labour camp is co-funded by the Commonwealth and the Northern Territory government to provide up to 850 quarantine places a fortnight. Prime Minister Scott Morrison has unveiled plans to more than double Howard Springs’ capacity, but reiterated that hotel quarantine would remain the primary mode of dealing with returning travellers.

Mr Morrison said on Friday that moving hotel quarantine to regional areas would only create “another set of risks. You’ve got transfer risks. You’ve got a workforce that you have to have in place in those situations. You’re further away from major, big hospitals.”

But Professor Toole said the federal government should consider building regional quarantine facilities, and Victorian locations could include Avalon Airport, Ballarat and Bendigo. He warned this would be a time-consuming and expensive exercise.

“We’re not China, we can’t build these things in three days, it takes months.”

In the meantime, he said, the priority should be on improving hotel quarantine. He urged authorities to engage with occupational hygienists and ventilation engineers to better understand how air moved in hotels, and said daily COVID-19 tests should also be considered for guests. Guests are currently tested on day three and day 11 of their 14-day stay.

“We should be treating all those cold hotels like they are hot hotels because guests can convert from negative to positive during that period and therefore become infectious,” he said.

Benjamin Veness, a doctor and co-founder of advocacy group Health Care Workers Australia, said there was a good argument for moving quarantine facilities out of city centres. The argument that people needed to be close to city health facilities did not negate regional quarantine centres.

Those who needed to be near CBD hospitals because they were in higher-risk categories could still be housed in better facilities – “newer ones, ones with balconies, ones with windows that open, ones with airconditioning systems you can upgrade so they’re providing appropriate ventilation and not spreading COVID-19 potentially between rooms or into hallways”.

He said returned travellers heading to regional quarantine facilities could also be vaccinated before they flew into Australia.

“That would cut the chance of them bringing COVID-19 into Australia in the first place, and the reduced risk of severe illness would make regional quarantine safe for the vast majority of people.”

Together, these measures would “have the problem pretty much solved”, Dr Veness said.

“There is a lack of political will, not technical complexity, stopping us from finding a better solution” due to state and federal governments being “really stretched”, he added.

“The federal government should be taking responsibility for quarantine, but it has turned out that the states have taken on that responsibility, and so you’ve got this argy-bargy playing out,” he said.

“The feds particularly don’t want to commit, because they know getting hotel quarantine perfect is a tricky exercise and I think Scott Morrison doesn’t want to risk having outbreaks at a federally run facility that then impacts on his election chances later in the year.”

Dr Veness said the NT’s Howard Springs facility was working well.

“There is plenty of fresh air for residents, which is good not only from an infection perspective, but also it’s better from a mental health perspective,” he said.

“I’d prefer to go there than one of the high-rise towers with closed windows like we have in Melbourne.“

On Sunday, federal Health Minister Greg Hunt said state leaders had to remember it was “a vital part of our humanity” to bring Australians home.

“[These are] mums and dads coming home to see their sons and daughters, children who have been studying overseas, families that have been separated, people coming home to say goodbye to loved ones, some themselves who may have terminal conditions,” he said.

“That is our deep, profound, human duty, and we will continue to do that, and we’ll encourage all states and territories to do that.”

But Labor’s spokeswoman on home affairs Kristina Keneally said the federal government should be running a quarantine facility with surge capacity to cope when states halted or cut their international intake.

“Quarantine outbreaks of COVID-19 remain the biggest failing right now in our COVID response, and Scott Morrison needs to take action to ensure that Australians are able to return home without exposing the broader community,” she said.

https://www.smh.com.au/national/it-s-a- ... 5726b.html

[rev]

Opinion
Hotel quarantine is no longer fit for purpose

Kitty, my 18-year-old daughter, is a type 1 diabetic, an incurable but manageable affliction from which she has suffered since she was four.

It also means her immune system, like tens of thousands of other Australians, is significantly compromised, making her more vulnerable than the rest of us to COVID-19. She recently completed her VCE and is about to start studying at the University of Melbourne.

Shortly after Christmas, she caught a throat infection. Because of the vulnerability of her immune system, that soon became a chest infection.

Last Thursday, hours before she was due to take a job interview, she woke up with a bad hypo; a condition to which all type 1 diabetics are vulnerable where their blood sugars drop to a life-threatening level. She could not remember her name, let alone the date or the name of the Prime Minister.

That issue was resolved, but after a brief recovery she started vomiting and developed a severe migraine. Advice from the brilliant endocrinology team at Melbourne’s Royal Children’s Hospital, who have managed her condition since childhood, resulted in her being admitted to hospital.

She has now been diagnosed with sepsis and meningitis – threatening to her life at the best of times, but significantly more dangerous during these plague years. She is just one of tens of thousands Australians whose lives are even more at risk in the midst of the pandemic.

It matters little to them and their families who has responsibility for keeping the virus at bay and they are deeply grateful to the largely successful efforts of all governments to make the current state of Australia the envy of much of the world.

Now, more than ever, is a moment for shouldering responsibility at all levels of government, not for blame-shifting.

We now know much more about SARS-CoV-2 (the COVID-19 virus) than we did a year ago. At that time, it may have seemed eminently reasonable for the federal government and the states to agree to outsource the Commonwealth’s constitutional responsibilities for quarantine to the states and leave them to manage overseas arrivals in quarantine hotels in the major cities of the nation.

Not any more.

With the best will in the world and with the arrival of the more virulent British strain, the quarantine hotel system is no longer fit for purpose, if it ever was.

As recently as the middle of last year, Australians living overseas were not to know the real risks they faced as Boris Johnson’s government, for example, encouraged them with vouchers to go to restaurants.

The British mutation had not made its presence felt. Decisions to remain overseas seemed reasonable then, but no longer. Justifiably, many of these unwitting exiles want to come home.

The Commonwealth and the states must now face the consequences of these escalating realities. They must think of moving quarantine out of the cities to the safety of remote Australia.

Howard Springs in the Northern Territory has provided the model, proving highly effective and a safe environment for quarantine.

The Royal Australian Air Force has several fully functioning air bases in northern Australia, including Tindal, for example, which have runways capable of handling big planes. The Defence Force has shown itself adept at managing the fallout from natural disasters, from bushfires to tsunamis and cyclones.

The ADF should be mobilised to bring these remote facilities up-to-speed so that returning Australians can quarantine in an environment safe for them and the rest of the community.

There is a price and there would be logistical challenges, but as recent experience in NSW, South Australia and now Victoria have shown, constant and unpredictable lockdowns will keep inhibiting the ability of the economy to become anything like COVID normal.

In short, the cost to the economy, as well as the damage to business and workers alike, will be even greater than investment in safe quarantine facilities.

Many years ago, I had the good fortune to live down the street in New York from Joe Allen’s – a noted Broadway bar. Joe himself died a couple of weeks ago at the age of 87. On his 80th birthday, he noted that “it’s not when you die … but how”.

Well said, but Joe got to his ninth decade. Kitty is 18.

The best of her life and of thousands of Australians like her ought to be ahead of her, not behind her.

Over to you, Prime Minister and premiers.

Jim Middleton is a father, a former political reporter for the ABC and Sky News, and a media consultant.

https://www.smh.com.au/national/hotel-q ... 572be.html

[rev]

Lockdown ‘probably’ would be avoided under Qld quarantine proposal: Miles

The acting Premier of Queensland claims the Victorian lockdown “probably” would not have happened if there was a dedicated national quarantine system.

Queensland will close its borders to greater Melbourne from 1am on Saturday after Victoria announced a “hammer-style” five-day lockdown to deal with the growing cluster of coronavirus cases linked to the Holiday Inn.

Acting Premier Steven Miles, who is also Queensland’s acting Health Minister, said he was not surprised the virus had breached quarantine in Melbourne, as it had done recently in Brisbane and Perth.

He pointed to the Queensland government’s recent proposal to the federal government to set up quarantine facilities at remote locations such as mining camps.

“I think one thing we can say is that Victoria probably wouldn’t be going into this kind of lockdown if there was dedicated national quarantine facilities,” he said.

“What we have been saying for some time is that this new strain is more dangerous in hotel settings. And if you look at the three instances, or three recent instances, but particularly this instance now in Melbourne, we’ve been saying for some time that hotel hallways are not designed for infection control.”

Mr Miles said moving quarantine out of hotels would also separate it from the largely casual workers who often had to work second or third jobs, opening up further transmission points.

“If you had a dedicated project, you could have a stable workforce working full-time that could even be an offer of accommodation on site,” he said.

“What’s accelerated the concern here has been, in particular, the contacts at the airport - thousands and thousands of people coming into contact with people who also worked in hotel quarantine.”

Queensland contact tracers are working to do full tracing on about 1500 people who travelled to the state via Melbourne’s Tullamarine Airport Terminal 4 between 4.45am and 2pm on Tuesday, January 9.

Acting Chief Health Officer Sonya Bennett said the decision to close the border for 14 days to greater Melbourne was to allow contact tracers to get started on working through those people.

“Whilst the Victorian contact tracers have been doing an excellent job in identifying cases and contacting contacts, by the time they do that often the close contacts of the case are already infected,” Dr Bennett said.

“This particular virus, which we know is the UK variant of concern, does transmit very quickly.”

Queensland recorded no new cases of the virus on Friday after 7110 tests were done on Thursday.

There are just six active cases of the virus in the state, out of a total of 1318 since the pandemic struck.

State Disaster Coordinator Steve Gollschewski said they would not be establishing hard road border checkpoints at the NSW border as a result of the Victoria situation.

Any Queenslanders returning from greater Melbourne in the next 14 days will have to go into quarantine.

“For Queenslanders who are intending to travel to Victoria at the moment, they must be aware of what their requirements are locally, which is a five-day lockdown, and that they will then be subject to the same requirements coming back into our state,” he said.

An on-the-spot fine of more than $4000 remains for travellers lying to Queensland border officers about where they have been and when.

Mr Gollschewski said anyone from Victoria needed to complete a border declaration pass upon arrival in Queensland, but those who had been in greater Melbourne in the past 14 days would be refused entry.

https://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/nation ... 5723i.html

[Nort]

Yes, these experts make some good points, while repeatedly also pointing out that the solutions won't be "easy".

[rev]

Yes, these experts make some good points, while repeatedly also pointing out that the solutions won't be "easy".

Wont be easy. Great excuse for sitting on your ass and doing nothing. Pretty much sums up what's wrong with the younger generations. Lazy losers.

Thank God we had generations of people who were hard working, who weren't scared to get their hands dirty, during two world wars.
Imagine today's precious little snowflakes faced with the catastrophe of a world war, and rebuilding afterwards.


Because something isn't easy, doesn't mean it isn't worth doing.

The alternative is to continue on the path we are on, and continually destroy our own economies through lockdowns and business closures, and our own people through the mental toll it is taking (there's an article about how this is all affective kids and the self harm and suicide rates going up), or we can get on with setting up proper quarantine facilities regardless of how hard it is, and save our economies and reduce the mental and health toll on society.

[SBD]

Yes, these experts make some good points, while repeatedly also pointing out that the solutions won't be "easy".

Wont be easy. Great excuse for sitting on your ass and doing nothing. Pretty much sums up what's wrong with the younger generations. Lazy losers.

Thank God we had generations of people who were hard working, who weren't scared to get their hands dirty, during two world wars.
Imagine today's precious little snowflakes faced with the catastrophe of a world war, and rebuilding afterwards.


Because something isn't easy, doesn't mean it isn't worth doing.

The alternative is to continue on the path we are on, and continually destroy our own economies through lockdowns and business closures, and our own people through the mental toll it is taking (there's an article about how this is all affective kids and the self harm and suicide rates going up), or we can get on with setting up proper quarantine facilities regardless of how hard it is, and save our economies and reduce the mental and health toll on society.

I love the assumption that it would be feasible to staff a quarantine centre in a remote area.

We have a shortage of doctors and health workers in regional SA already (see for example https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-11-08/ ... a/12858198 but there are many other articles). If we can't get doctors to live there to treat the resident population, what would make them go there to treat travellers?

[Will]

Yes, these experts make some good points, while repeatedly also pointing out that the solutions won't be "easy".

Wont be easy. Great excuse for sitting on your ass and doing nothing. Pretty much sums up what's wrong with the younger generations. Lazy losers.

Thank God we had generations of people who were hard working, who weren't scared to get their hands dirty, during two world wars.
Imagine today's precious little snowflakes faced with the catastrophe of a world war, and rebuilding afterwards.


Because something isn't easy, doesn't mean it isn't worth doing.

The alternative is to continue on the path we are on, and continually destroy our own economies through lockdowns and business closures, and our own people through the mental toll it is taking (there's an article about how this is all affective kids and the self harm and suicide rates going up), or we can get on with setting up proper quarantine facilities regardless of how hard it is, and save our economies and reduce the mental and health toll on society.

I love the assumption that it would be feasible to staff a quarantine centre in a remote area.

We have a shortage of doctors and health workers in regional SA already (see for example https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-11-08/ ... a/12858198 but there are many other articles). If we can't get doctors to live there to treat the resident population, what would make them go there to treat travellers?

At present doctors earn less and work more hours in country SA compared to urban areas. Easy to understand why there is a shortage.

Maybe we could learn something from the mining industry. If you pay people double to do the same job in a remote area, compared to what they would get in the city, you probably wouldn't have trouble filling these roles.

[Nort]

Yes, these experts make some good points, while repeatedly also pointing out that the solutions won't be "easy".

Wont be easy. Great excuse for sitting on your ass and doing nothing. Pretty much sums up what's wrong with the younger generations. Lazy losers.

Thank God we had generations of people who were hard working, who weren't scared to get their hands dirty, during two world wars.
Imagine today's precious little snowflakes faced with the catastrophe of a world war, and rebuilding afterwards.


Because something isn't easy, doesn't mean it isn't worth doing.

The alternative is to continue on the path we are on, and continually destroy our own economies through lockdowns and business closures, and our own people through the mental toll it is taking (there's an article about how this is all affective kids and the self harm and suicide rates going up), or we can get on with setting up proper quarantine facilities regardless of how hard it is, and save our economies and reduce the mental and health toll on society.

JFC you love to project.

edit: For the record there's nothing wrong with hard things, the difficulty comes when people who think they are a lot smarter than they actually are insist that changes will be easy. All that does is lead to failure when the difficulties of reality are encountered.

[rev]

Yes, these experts make some good points, while repeatedly also pointing out that the solutions won't be "easy".

Wont be easy. Great excuse for sitting on your ass and doing nothing. Pretty much sums up what's wrong with the younger generations. Lazy losers.

Thank God we had generations of people who were hard working, who weren't scared to get their hands dirty, during two world wars.
Imagine today's precious little snowflakes faced with the catastrophe of a world war, and rebuilding afterwards.


Because something isn't easy, doesn't mean it isn't worth doing.

The alternative is to continue on the path we are on, and continually destroy our own economies through lockdowns and business closures, and our own people through the mental toll it is taking (there's an article about how this is all affective kids and the self harm and suicide rates going up), or we can get on with setting up proper quarantine facilities regardless of how hard it is, and save our economies and reduce the mental and health toll on society.

I love the assumption that it would be feasible to staff a quarantine centre in a remote area.

We have a shortage of doctors and health workers in regional SA already (see for example https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-11-08/ ... a/12858198 but there are many other articles). If we can't get doctors to live there to treat the resident population, what would make them go there to treat travellers?

As I've pointed out already, we have a mining industry with FIFO workers who are working in even more remote locations and inhospitable conditions then where our detention centres are located.

As Will pointed out, they get paid a lot of money.

Pay people accordingly. They will go.

And as I said, the ADF could be used.
Soldiers/MPs could man the centres, military nurses and doctors could be stationed there.

What's your next counter argument going to be SBD, that they didn't sign up for that specifically?

Christ allmighty.

[rev]

Yes, these experts make some good points, while repeatedly also pointing out that the solutions won't be "easy".

Wont be easy. Great excuse for sitting on your ass and doing nothing. Pretty much sums up what's wrong with the younger generations. Lazy losers.

Thank God we had generations of people who were hard working, who weren't scared to get their hands dirty, during two world wars.
Imagine today's precious little snowflakes faced with the catastrophe of a world war, and rebuilding afterwards.


Because something isn't easy, doesn't mean it isn't worth doing.

The alternative is to continue on the path we are on, and continually destroy our own economies through lockdowns and business closures, and our own people through the mental toll it is taking (there's an article about how this is all affective kids and the self harm and suicide rates going up), or we can get on with setting up proper quarantine facilities regardless of how hard it is, and save our economies and reduce the mental and health toll on society.

JFC you love to project.

edit: For the record there's nothing wrong with hard things, the difficulty comes when people who think they are a lot smarter than they actually are insist that changes will be easy. All that does is lead to failure when the difficulties of reality are encountered.

Without knowing 1 damn thing about me, what am I projecting?

Not you nor SBD have any solid counter arguments.
Every negative you guys can conjure up can be overcome.
Not one obstacle you two have thought of, or will think of, is insurmountable. Probably why you tried baiting eh.

Sorry to point it out for you.
But even the lack of political will at the federal level to do it can be overcome.

[Nort]

Not you nor SBD have any solid counter arguments.
Every negative you guys can conjure up can be overcome.
Not one obstacle you two have thought of, or will think of, is insurmountable. Probably why you tried baiting eh.

Sorry to point it out for you.
But even the lack of political will at the federal level to do it can be overcome.

Cool, now please show where in this thread I have said anything that disagrees with any of this.

All I've done is push back against the narrative that there is an easy fool-proof solution to the current situation when you have specifically and repeatedly claimed that you are always correct and that it would be easy, which is actually harmful to the argument in favour of remote quarantine because it implies it only stacks up when weighed in a biased comparison.

[SBD]

Wont be easy. Great excuse for sitting on your ass and doing nothing. Pretty much sums up what's wrong with the younger generations. Lazy losers.

Thank God we had generations of people who were hard working, who weren't scared to get their hands dirty, during two world wars.
Imagine today's precious little snowflakes faced with the catastrophe of a world war, and rebuilding afterwards.


Because something isn't easy, doesn't mean it isn't worth doing.

The alternative is to continue on the path we are on, and continually destroy our own economies through lockdowns and business closures, and our own people through the mental toll it is taking (there's an article about how this is all affective kids and the self harm and suicide rates going up), or we can get on with setting up proper quarantine facilities regardless of how hard it is, and save our economies and reduce the mental and health toll on society.

I love the assumption that it would be feasible to staff a quarantine centre in a remote area.

We have a shortage of doctors and health workers in regional SA already (see for example https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-11-08/ ... a/12858198 but there are many other articles). If we can't get doctors to live there to treat the resident population, what would make them go there to treat travellers?

As I've pointed out already, we have a mining industry with FIFO workers who are working in even more remote locations and inhospitable conditions then where our detention centres are located.

As Will pointed out, they get paid a lot of money.

Pay people accordingly. They will go.

And as I said, the ADF could be used.
Soldiers/MPs could man the centres, military nurses and doctors could be stationed there.

What's your next counter argument going to be SBD, that they didn't sign up for that specifically?

Christ allmighty.

Yep, I know a FIFO mine worker who flies to remote WA and back - 1 week on, 1 week off. If he was flying to do security, food, medical etc at a quarantine facility for a virus with a 5-7 day incubation period, he'd almost certainly be in his week off when he was infectious! The people are moved, but the problem is not.

I accept the argument that doctors would be more likely to want to work in regional areas if they were paid more. Do you think that should be that "general consult in a regional area" should have a higher Medicare benefit so doctors could still bulk bill, or that the gap to be paid by country people should be a lot higher than for city people?

And no, my argument about the ADF is nothing about what they signed up for, it's about whether they are needed to do their normal job, which I've already stated.

[rev]

Not you nor SBD have any solid counter arguments.
Every negative you guys can conjure up can be overcome.
Not one obstacle you two have thought of, or will think of, is insurmountable. Probably why you tried baiting eh.

Sorry to point it out for you.
But even the lack of political will at the federal level to do it can be overcome.

Cool, now please show where in this thread I have said anything that disagrees with any of this.

All I've done is push back against the narrative that there is an easy fool-proof solution to the current situation when you have specifically and repeatedly claimed that you are always correct and that it would be easy, which is actually harmful to the argument in favour of remote quarantine because it implies it only stacks up when weighed in a biased comparison.

Where have I repeatedly claimed that I am always correct on this topic?
Where have I claimed using detention centres would be easy and fool proof?

I don't need to repeat my self, again and again, for the benefit of fools and trolls who think they're being smart or funny.
If you want to draw your own conclusions which in your mind justify your trolling when I post, go for it. There's no point clarifying posts because at the end of the day you're not here to have an honest sincere debate but to troll.

[rev]

I love the assumption that it would be feasible to staff a quarantine centre in a remote area.

We have a shortage of doctors and health workers in regional SA already (see for example https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-11-08/ ... a/12858198 but there are many other articles). If we can't get doctors to live there to treat the resident population, what would make them go there to treat travellers?

As I've pointed out already, we have a mining industry with FIFO workers who are working in even more remote locations and inhospitable conditions then where our detention centres are located.

As Will pointed out, they get paid a lot of money.

Pay people accordingly. They will go.

And as I said, the ADF could be used.
Soldiers/MPs could man the centres, military nurses and doctors could be stationed there.

What's your next counter argument going to be SBD, that they didn't sign up for that specifically?

Christ allmighty.

Yep, I know a FIFO mine worker who flies to remote WA and back - 1 week on, 1 week off. If he was flying to do security, food, medical etc at a quarantine facility for a virus with a 5-7 day incubation period, he'd almost certainly be in his week off when he was infectious! The people are moved, but the problem is not.

I accept the argument that doctors would be more likely to want to work in regional areas if they were paid more. Do you think that should be that "general consult in a regional area" should have a higher Medicare benefit so doctors could still bulk bill, or that the gap to be paid by country people should be a lot higher than for city people?

And no, my argument about the ADF is nothing about what they signed up for, it's about whether they are needed to do their normal job, which I've already stated.

The ADF's normal job also includes assisting the nation in time of crisis. That crisis could be anything, from war to natural disasters to other emergencies. As we've seen them called up to help many times before for a variety of things.


You could perhaps have a longer period in the quarantine/detention centres instead of what some FIFO workers do in mines.
Rather then 1/1, you could have 2 and a half months on, which would include being tested prior to going up, and a mandatory 2 week quarantine/testing period before returning. If you were to use private security.
Could also apply for health staff.
But a better idea imo, would be to use the ADF. We have 28,000 reservists in a variety of roles.

Like I said, what's worse, shutting down Victoria and other states over and over again and causing economic devastation (go speak to small business owners if you think this isn't a big deal especially in Victoria), or having a few thousand people pulled from their day jobs and activated in their ADF reservist roles (which they get paid for)...like one of the articles headlines..it's a no brainer.

Victoria removed private security, allegedly, from hotel quarantine, started using the police instead, and improved things overall.
But here we are again and their in lock down because of a breach.

How many more hotel quarantine breaches will there be, and how much more economic devastation will be caused as a result?
How many more people will self harm or commit suicide?
How many people who rely on certain services or community groups, will return to drug habits?
How many more cases of domestic violence will there be?

It's not just statistics on a piece of paper, it's real peoples lives, well being, and livelihoods being destroyed.
How many more lives will be destroyed until they get it right, if they ever do get it right?

And that's kind of the point that you don't see. It's not about the logistics, it's not about the cost.
Human life is worth more then all of that.

[Nort]

Where have I repeatedly claimed that I am always correct on this topic?
Where have I claimed using detention centres would be easy and fool proof?

Well since you asked...

If I'm wrong, which you appear to agree I'm not despite your efforts to argue with me, then why is the government going to close down the medihotel program and move them all into a single facility?

Private security firms wont be involved. It will be the police and police security that will look after the facility. Possibly the army will be involved as well. GHS might sleep better tonight while he waits for his vaccination.

All be it they're looking at something in the city, which is still wrong, but they're moving them into a disused hospital facility, whose equipment (correct me if I'm wrong) has already been donated to third world/developing countries as announced quite a while ago, at least what could be re-used by them.

So, how are they going to do it? They're going to have to re-furnish it so that it's suitable and usable aren't they. Just like they would have to do if they used one of the outback detention centres.
Perhaps they've already done it as the government did lease the facility when the virus hit our shores as a precaution so we have capacity to cope if needed. So in other words, they may have already done what would be required to be done at Woomera or Cultana, or are about to if they go ahead with the old Wakefield hospital plan.

So you see, again, I'm right, and you know I'm right on this, but you just choose to start an argument being a nuisance for the sake of it.

https://www.adelaidenow.com.au/coronavi ... a70db457cc

(note that this post also involved you drastically misunderstanding the situation they had described)

Those things could easily be set up.
There's absolutely no need to move families and children of staff up there for rotational work.
You're not going to relocate people there.

What would happen, is the facilities would be reopened, cleaned out and prepared.
Temporary accommodation units can be very easily moved up there and setup quickly for staff, and in fact such transportable units can be setup for basically almost any purpose you can imagine.

Staffing is easily manageable too.
You would send staff, be it security, nurses, doctors, cooks, cleaners, up there on a 2 week basis.
They would go up there, quarantine separately from the civilians for the mandatory period, then get to work. Before returning to Adelaide, they would again go into quarantine. Rotating people in and out. And what's to say that there aren't suitable staff in nearby towns.
Or whatever similar arrangements.

And what do you mean it's not easy to get it done?
We have massive mining operations in the middle of nowhere, in some of the most remote places in the world, not just here in Australia but in other parts of the world. Mines with thousands of people living and working there. Every day there are supplies flown and driven to those mining operations. Those mining camps have all the creature comforts of home too.
We already have the buildings in a secure environment setup in the form of detention centres that can accommodate thousands of people.
They have power, water, gas.
Get the ADF involved with helping to get them ready, setup medical facilities.

It's not that bloody hard. Stop pretending like it is. It is literally the movement of people and equipment on a bitumen highway to a secure facility. There's been bigger and harder undertakings done in mankinds history.

How have I changed tact? I've been saying the same thing.
It is easy to replicate facilities out there. The buildings, the accommodation areas, ALREADY EXIST. The secure facility, ie SECURE FENCING AROUND THE FACILITY, already exists.
It would be very easy to bring that entire facility on line.

One guy is sooking about the border being closed because the economy..The others are spouting shit as if they're experts.

Meanwhile yet again hotel quarantine in cities has failed and lockdowns are back.
Right again.

Rotations on weekends? WTF, again, just another wild assumption you're making.
I haven't posted some detailed outline or schedule of workers to/from. I've made a simple suggestion that would take the risk of an outbreak OUT of our major population centres. You know those major population centres, like the one you presumably live in, that are the heart of our nation and our economies. The same places that keep taking a beating every time there's an outbreak caused by a hotel breach, which in turn batters the economy.

And finally, let's have another example, including you dropping some of your snide racism in for good measure:

Simply use the existing facilities that we have, that are outside of major population centres.
Oh I guess because they're not illegal immigrants, but Australian citizens, we can't put them in those centres right?

That may not be the perfect solution, but it is a better solution to what we have going on now, because it allows life to continue on near as normal as possible for the majority of the population. The economy will not keep taking such a massive hit, which we can't afford to keep happening.
Would it suck for those returning or the sick? Of course.
But what's worse is for the whole country to continue to suffer, for the economic situation to continue to deteriorate.

Melbourne is stuffed again, because of another hotel quarantine failure.
How many more times will the hotel quarantine setup fail before the right call is made to move the whole operation to the detention centres outside of the major urban areas?
If the lockdown there extends beyond 5 days, and it probably will as the list of exposure sites keeps growing, that will have a bigger impact on the national economy (which affects all of us, in case you were wondering).

Keep them there. The returned, the staff, they can all stay there. Staff can quarantine for a couple weeks before returning to cities.
Pay them properly and accordingly. Provide the full complement of PPE.
We have a military and a reserve force, call them in, that way we can remove the incompetent foreign security guards, cleaners etc (mostly Indians, Pakistanis etc) who get filmed/photographed sleeping on the floors, not wearing PPE and so on.

If this is a global pandemic, it's time to start treating it like one.